Chaitanya Paranthas

If you know Fergusson College Road, you probably know where Liberty Garden is, and that is where you will find Chaitanya Paranthas. It is a small place, really. We spend most of our hours standing over the tawa. It gets hot, and your arms get tired from rolling out the dough all day long. We get a lot of students because of the colleges nearby. They are usually in a hurry and looking for something that fills them up without costing too much. The floor is made of plain tile and we have to mop it constantly because of the foot traffic. We use a lot of butter, so the surfaces always feel a bit slick if you don't wipe them down every hour. It isn't a place for a fancy date, but it works for a quick lunch. The street noise from FC Road is always there, like a constant background hum. We have a few staff members who have been here since the start. We don't really have a big corporate structure or anything like that. We just talk to each other across the kitchen and get the plates out. Sometimes we run out of a certain filling by evening and have to tell people we're sorry. It’s a simple business. We buy the flour, we make the food, and we hope the rain doesn't leak through the front awning too much. It keeps us on our feet.