In Pictures: A taste of Afghanistan helps these bakers find home in India

|
Shefali Rafiq
People buy bread from Afghan bakers in the Lajpat Nagar area of India’s capital state, Delhi. The Afghans living in India have introduced their traditional bread, and customers have developed a taste for it.

For Najibullah, the birds act as his alarm clock. As soon as the chirping starts, he leaves his apartment for the small bakery shop in the Lajpat Nagar area of south Delhi. He does not care about the weather or the time, but trusts the birds.

He and three co-workers, Wali Khiri, Shahrukh, and Niamatullah, have been working in the shop for the last seven years. They are among the many Afghan refugees to seek safety in India. Since the late 1990s, Afghan naanwais (makers and sellers of naan, or bread) have been plying their trade in India.

For the four young men, bread-making starts at 7 a.m. and goes until 8 p.m., with small breaks in between. They mix wheat flour with water, yeast, salt, and sugar and set it aside. After this, dough balls are made and weighed so that each one is the same size. The balls are then flattened and kept under a cloth for the yeast to do its work. Then the rounds are shaped by hand, imprinted with a decorative pattern, and sprinkled with water and sesame seeds before going into the tandoor, or clay oven. The men spend the time chatting and listening to Wali Khiri’s jokes – they say he has a great sense of humor. 

Afghan naan is different in shape, texture, and taste from Indian varieties. While the main ingredient – wheat flour – is the same, Afghan bakers hand-shape the dough, rather than rolling it out, and their use of a tandoor results in large, pillowy rounds. The bread is enjoyed alongside curries at meals and eaten plain or topped with butter as a snack throughout the day. It is eaten by not only Afghans, but also by Iraqis, Sudanese, and Kashmiris, and now by local Indian customers, too. 

According to Wali Khiri, they are able to sell 500 loaves a day and are doing decent business. After Afghanistan was retaken by the Taliban in 2021, Afghans who had traveled to India for medical treatment or jobs went home, which affected sales. “We would otherwise sell 1,500 breads a day,” he says.

The bakers also sell to small food stalls and local restaurants, with Niamatullah making the deliveries on his bicycle. 

Najibullah says they have no plans to go back to Afghanistan. When asked if they miss their home, he says with a smile, “This is our home now.”

You've read 3 of 3 free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to In Pictures: A taste of Afghanistan helps these bakers find home in India
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2022/0525/In-Pictures-A-taste-of-Afghanistan-helps-these-bakers-find-home-in-India
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe
CSM logo

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Explore values journalism About us