To anyone who knows me this heading would have seemed completely out of character. For one I don't cook. And certainly not well enough to boast about being particularly good at it. So why did I just make that tall claim? It was a certificate given to me by my 8-year-old this morning. Maybe because it was the first time I have ever personally made her favorite breakfast for her and she wanted to encourage me to keep it going. My reliable domestic help of many years quit after her children assured her she need not work for a living anymore. We are currently in the gap period between her leaving and finding a replacement for her. Out of necessity, I have now donned the cape of Cook, which I wear awkwardly and fully intend to bury once I have a new 'Chechi' who will make idlis for my children (even if they are not 'the best in the world').
My mother is in that league of mothers whose cooking everyone always lauded and talked of with great fondness (her physical condition does not allow her to cook much anymore). Neither of her daughters cook. And I don't mean can't. I mean don't. Choice. Of the conscious variety. Early in life, my sister and I realised we didn't particularly enjoy sweating it out in the kitchen - or the fact that whatever else we may do with our lives, we would still be judged on the tang of our Sambar or the shape of our chapathis. What do we normally do in households when a job turns up that we don't know how to do or prefer not to do by ourselves? Like plumbing. Or a blown fuse. Or gardening. We hire someone who knows how to do the job and pay them for it. That has pretty much been our policy on food from the time we became independent adults. We entrust the cooking to someone who knows how to do it and chose to do it to make a living. (I realise there are many interjections I need to make here - like the fact that everyone who chooses to make a living by cooking for others may not be doing it by choice either. They are putting a skill set to work and I respect that.) When I got married, in the initial days I thought I needed to fit into the definition of a 'good wife' and cook three meals for my husband every day. I tried. Neither my interest nor my patience lasted for long and my husband told me he would rather see me do the things I was skilled at or enjoyed doing rather than be tied up in the kitchen, trying to dish out meal after meal. In retrospect, I realise if things had not worked out that way at that point in time, I would have ended up a bitter and unhappy woman who resented her family for reducing her to "person-who-puts-food-on-the-table" over and above anything else I did with my life.
I have never quite understood this equation of women and cooking. When I joined the radio station I worked in for 7 years, one of my first assignments was to critique their popular celebrity interview segment. That particular week they featured two popular female singers who were to be married soon. To both of them, the interviewer put that most crucial question: So how are the cooking lessons going? Like it was a given that henceforth their lives were going to be all about feeding the men who were being so kind as to take charge of their lives. I raised the point in my report: why was it so crucial to know whether two successful independent women who made a mark with their singing could cook well enough to please their husbands?' A very incredulous RJ asked me, 'what is wrong with that? Isn't that what people want to know?' Years later, a prominent newspaper carried a story on newly elected women mayors after the local body elections. Every single profile of these women who were going to be the first citizens of their towns focussed on what they had cooked for breakfast that morning and how they intended to 'manage home and work at the same time' once they assumed office. I made a call to a sub editor I was acquainted with and told him I found it offensive that they had narrowed those women down to their kitchens on the day they had just been entrusted by the people of their town with the charge of running the town! He incredulously asked me, 'what is so offensive about that? That is what people want to know.' Really? Even before we know their views on the state of the roads and the garbage piling up all over? Does it validate our choice of Mayor to know that they are going to cook for their families first and foremost before they go about doing anything else? After the previous election, when a male mayor had assumed charge I don't remember reading about how he intended to balance his work and home or whether he would continue to stand in line to pay the electricity bill for his household henceforth (keeping with the gendered character of roles in households in general.) PS: this was before everyone started paying all their bills online ☺
A couple of years ago, my husband was featured in a magazine in an article on flat-life in Kochi. In addition to the standard questions on aspects of convenience and facilities and his ideas on decor was an innocuous looking question at the very end: which part of the apartment is best described as 'the' family space? The answer was this: 'The kitchen. When my wife is in the kitchen, cooking, we all tend to converge there to spend time together.' There was just a simple problem with this question. It was never actually asked or answered. I am guessing the interviewer, when writing his final draft, figured he should have included something in the family angle and threw in what he thought was a typical question to which there was only one typical answer. Except nothing could be less true in our household. We have never considered 'converging in the kitchen as my wife cooks' to be the definition of fun family times.
Now let me stress here that I am not in any way denigrating the art or the daily necessity of cooking or looking down on those who happily, willingly, do it three times a day, every day. I just have an issue with it being this gendered responsibility that is pushed down women's throats like that (along with procreation) is one of the reasons for their existing. Or the conception that marriage entails a man getting a free cook and housekeeper for life. Food is a basic necessity. Cooking is a life skill that any human being, male or female, should master, to the extent of being able to brew their own cup of coffee or tea in the mornings and a couple of life saving mini-meals like an omelette or 2 minute noodles (or whatever falls in your definition of survival food or a no-frills staving-off-hunger quick fix). Anything beyond that is - should be - based on individual choice and capabilities. Like music or dance lessons beyond the mandatory minimum that is taught in primary school. It is not a male/female thing. It is a human thing.
Everyone thinks their mother is the best cook in the world. My mother (and I think pretty much all mothers in the world would have said variations of this to their children) used to say it is because mothers mix love into the food they cook. I never wanted to be that mother. I mix my love into the time I take to read to my children, take them wherever they need to go, talk to them, tickle them, listen to them or in general be with them. Because there isn't just one kind of mother - the mother who makes the best idlis in the world. I am not her. Have never aspired to be her. Do not wish my daughters to grow up thinking they need to be her.
My mother is in that league of mothers whose cooking everyone always lauded and talked of with great fondness (her physical condition does not allow her to cook much anymore). Neither of her daughters cook. And I don't mean can't. I mean don't. Choice. Of the conscious variety. Early in life, my sister and I realised we didn't particularly enjoy sweating it out in the kitchen - or the fact that whatever else we may do with our lives, we would still be judged on the tang of our Sambar or the shape of our chapathis. What do we normally do in households when a job turns up that we don't know how to do or prefer not to do by ourselves? Like plumbing. Or a blown fuse. Or gardening. We hire someone who knows how to do the job and pay them for it. That has pretty much been our policy on food from the time we became independent adults. We entrust the cooking to someone who knows how to do it and chose to do it to make a living. (I realise there are many interjections I need to make here - like the fact that everyone who chooses to make a living by cooking for others may not be doing it by choice either. They are putting a skill set to work and I respect that.) When I got married, in the initial days I thought I needed to fit into the definition of a 'good wife' and cook three meals for my husband every day. I tried. Neither my interest nor my patience lasted for long and my husband told me he would rather see me do the things I was skilled at or enjoyed doing rather than be tied up in the kitchen, trying to dish out meal after meal. In retrospect, I realise if things had not worked out that way at that point in time, I would have ended up a bitter and unhappy woman who resented her family for reducing her to "person-who-puts-food-on-the-table" over and above anything else I did with my life.
I have never quite understood this equation of women and cooking. When I joined the radio station I worked in for 7 years, one of my first assignments was to critique their popular celebrity interview segment. That particular week they featured two popular female singers who were to be married soon. To both of them, the interviewer put that most crucial question: So how are the cooking lessons going? Like it was a given that henceforth their lives were going to be all about feeding the men who were being so kind as to take charge of their lives. I raised the point in my report: why was it so crucial to know whether two successful independent women who made a mark with their singing could cook well enough to please their husbands?' A very incredulous RJ asked me, 'what is wrong with that? Isn't that what people want to know?' Years later, a prominent newspaper carried a story on newly elected women mayors after the local body elections. Every single profile of these women who were going to be the first citizens of their towns focussed on what they had cooked for breakfast that morning and how they intended to 'manage home and work at the same time' once they assumed office. I made a call to a sub editor I was acquainted with and told him I found it offensive that they had narrowed those women down to their kitchens on the day they had just been entrusted by the people of their town with the charge of running the town! He incredulously asked me, 'what is so offensive about that? That is what people want to know.' Really? Even before we know their views on the state of the roads and the garbage piling up all over? Does it validate our choice of Mayor to know that they are going to cook for their families first and foremost before they go about doing anything else? After the previous election, when a male mayor had assumed charge I don't remember reading about how he intended to balance his work and home or whether he would continue to stand in line to pay the electricity bill for his household henceforth (keeping with the gendered character of roles in households in general.) PS: this was before everyone started paying all their bills online ☺
A couple of years ago, my husband was featured in a magazine in an article on flat-life in Kochi. In addition to the standard questions on aspects of convenience and facilities and his ideas on decor was an innocuous looking question at the very end: which part of the apartment is best described as 'the' family space? The answer was this: 'The kitchen. When my wife is in the kitchen, cooking, we all tend to converge there to spend time together.' There was just a simple problem with this question. It was never actually asked or answered. I am guessing the interviewer, when writing his final draft, figured he should have included something in the family angle and threw in what he thought was a typical question to which there was only one typical answer. Except nothing could be less true in our household. We have never considered 'converging in the kitchen as my wife cooks' to be the definition of fun family times.
Now let me stress here that I am not in any way denigrating the art or the daily necessity of cooking or looking down on those who happily, willingly, do it three times a day, every day. I just have an issue with it being this gendered responsibility that is pushed down women's throats like that (along with procreation) is one of the reasons for their existing. Or the conception that marriage entails a man getting a free cook and housekeeper for life. Food is a basic necessity. Cooking is a life skill that any human being, male or female, should master, to the extent of being able to brew their own cup of coffee or tea in the mornings and a couple of life saving mini-meals like an omelette or 2 minute noodles (or whatever falls in your definition of survival food or a no-frills staving-off-hunger quick fix). Anything beyond that is - should be - based on individual choice and capabilities. Like music or dance lessons beyond the mandatory minimum that is taught in primary school. It is not a male/female thing. It is a human thing.
Everyone thinks their mother is the best cook in the world. My mother (and I think pretty much all mothers in the world would have said variations of this to their children) used to say it is because mothers mix love into the food they cook. I never wanted to be that mother. I mix my love into the time I take to read to my children, take them wherever they need to go, talk to them, tickle them, listen to them or in general be with them. Because there isn't just one kind of mother - the mother who makes the best idlis in the world. I am not her. Have never aspired to be her. Do not wish my daughters to grow up thinking they need to be her.
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