DHANALAKSHMI keeps three types of flour in her kitchen: Khapli atta for the family’s everyday rotis; a custom blend she assembled herself — jowar, bajra, oats, wheat, ragi — for her elderly grandparents; and a packet of regular atta held in reserve for puris, sweets, and the large joint-family occasions when thirty people sit down together and practicality has to win. She is a Bengaluru-based professional who works late shifts, goes to the gym every morning, and researches nutrition the way some people research travel. She did not arrive at this three-flour arrangement by accident. She arrived at it the way most things get decided in Indian kitchens: by paying close attention to what her household actually needed, and adjusting accordingly.
Dhanalakshmi is not unusual, it turns out. She is just ahead of a curve.
Across urban India, quietly and without announcement, the roti — that most democratic of Indian foods, one dough-one tawa-one meal for everyone — is being personalised. Not loudly. Not as a wellness statement. But in the specific, practical way that Indian home cooks have always solved problems: by asking whether the thing that worked yesterday still works today, and what might work better.
The short answer, for a growing number of households, is a different flour altogether. Among the grains making a quiet comeback in urban Indian kitchens — millets, ragi, jowar — one is gaining particular momentum for reasons that go beyond nutrition: Khapli. Made of an ancient Emmer wheat variety with deep roots in Karnataka and Maharashtra, Khapli atta is higher in fibre and protein than modern wheat, and lower in gluten (though not gluten-free). It largely disappeared from urban kitchens during the Green Revolution, displaced by the high-yield modern wheat that was easier to mill and cheaper to buy. And now it is coming back, through brands like Aashirvaad Chakki 100% Khapli Atta — stone-ground, sourced directly from farmers in Karnataka and Maharashtra, and put through 40+ quality checks with a traceable certificate on every pack — into the hands of home cooks who are asking more of their daily flour.
Dhanalakshmi’s entry point was her own body. Her usual diet was leaving her bloated and heavy — the kind of heaviness that follows you into the next morning. She went looking for answers online, found Khapli, and — after the kind of kitchen-table conversation that requires no agenda, no slides, and no printouts, but occasionally requires patience — got the whole family on board. The first objection was price: boutique brands were too expensive to justify as a daily household flour, especially with elderly grandparents to feed and a joint family grocery bill that adds up fast.
Aashirvaad’s Khapli Atta offered the perfect solution: it came from a brand the family already trusted, at a price point that was manageable once they shifted some spending around. “We used to spend a lot on bakery items,” Dhanalakshmi says. “We cut that down. The budget shifted.” One and a half years later, she has no intention of going back. She wakes up light the morning after a Khapli roti dinner. Her tiffin rotis — made at 1.30pm, eaten at the office at 8.45pm — stay soft. She found, through trial and error, that adding a small amount of milk while kneading the dough makes the rotis softer still.
Sandhya, also in Bengaluru, came at it from a completely different direction — not research, but recognition. When her husband developed a skin allergy and began paying more attention to what he was eating, he came across Khapli wheat flour and suggested she look into it. She did, and found that she already knew it. Her mother and grandmother had used it. Not as a health food but simply as part of the flour rotation of an older generation — Khapli alongside Sharbati and Tukdi, chosen because that was how it had always been done.
For Sandhya, switching was less discovery than return. She is clear-eyed about what Khapli rotis are and aren’t: darker than a regular chapati, less glossy, requiring a little more patience under the rolling pin, and a touch of ghee to finish. “When you know the health benefits,” she says, “you adapt.” It sounds like a concession. It isn’t. It’s a considered decision, made by someone who knows exactly why it’s worthwhile.
And then there is Jyoti, 44, who came to Khapli the simplest way of all: she tasted a roti at a friend’s house, liked it, and brought some home. In her household, the reasons to stay were real — a diabetic husband, a vegetarian family, a quiet ongoing anxiety about whether their daily diet was giving them enough protein. She noted that three rotis made with Aashirvaad Chakki 100% Khapli Atta provide around 34% of your daily fibre requirement and 23% of your daily protein. That is a serious nutritional lift from something you were already making every day. Jyoti’s household aligned quickly. Her husband and daughter were on board. The switch became a family decision.
But here is the detail that captures the personalised roti in its most honest form: when Jyoti has guests — a sister-in-law, extended family, people who aren’t used to the taste — she switches back to regular atta. Because hospitality has its own grammar in an Indian home, and that grammar is written in familiarity. The guest-table roti is the roti everyone already knows. The family’s daily roti is the one that answers a different brief.
Three women, three entry points, three different reasons the same flour earned a permanent spot on the shelf. Dhanalakshmi’s body told her something wasn’t working. Sandhya’s grandmother already knew the answer. Jyoti tasted it at a friend’s table and simply liked it. The flour that brought them all there — the same flour, from the same source. But the reasons it works in each kitchen are entirely their own.
The roti has always been personal. It just took the flour a while to catch up.