Food and Drink Editor Safreen AC unpacks her relationship with cooking and attempts to critically interrogate cultural relationships to food in relation to gender and domesticity.
Food is the center of life across borders. It is not just sustenance but also part of community and kinship. Any talk of celebration - from festivals, to weddings, and small family gatherings - generally centres food as a key feature. Food and the kitchen have historically been seen as the domain of women’s care work. While this pattern isn’t exactly the same in every culture or location, cooking was and continues to be something that tends to fall upon women within most households.
The Indian subcontinent is filled with a diverse range of regional cuisines. While the food prepared may differ in its ingredients, taste, and appearance, daily meal preparations remain a woman’s task, for the most part. Those who can afford it hire cooks or domestic workers to help with household tasks, and more likely than not, the person hired is a woman, usually at the lower end of the economic and social order. While things are slowly changing, the ability to cook is still seen as something that a woman must know, while for men, the same is seen as worthy of special praise. When people host gatherings, even in otherwise “progressive” households, it is not uncommon to see the men seated at the table first, and leaving without picking up after themselves.
While I’d like to say I was entirely immune to the norms of patriarchal society, I have to admit that there were times when I was oblivious to the amount of labour and effort that went into what I was eating. I too am guilty of finishing my meal and leaving my dishes on the table, with no thought about how they got there, or who is going to pick up after me. In some ways, what made me realize my own bad behaviour was observing it in others, namely men, when I was finally placed in the position of having to run in and out of the kitchen to ensure that food was on the table, and that dirty plates would remain unseen.
At the same time, I find myself in environments where I don’t even want to admit that I know how to cook (let alone that I enjoy it) because it feels like accepting a prescribed role.
While most of these things are not unique to the subcontinent, it probably does not come as a surprise that my own relationship with cooking is somewhat contentious. I happen to really love cooking, and growing up without the obligation to do it has given me the ability to unwind as I go through the steps of a recipe. At the same time, I find myself in environments where I don’t even want to admit that I know how to cook (let alone that I enjoy it) because it feels like accepting a prescribed role. The rational part of me knows that it doesn’t entirely make sense. Cooking is an essential skill, and I’m glad I am not a person who doesn’t know how to chop an onion or make a cup of tea (I once met someone like this, it was fascinating). But having seen that work rendered invisible has made me feel the need to be explicit about wanting no part in it.
Despite the critical role of food when it comes to maintaining members of a household, being the one who prepares said sustenance rarely comes with a position of authority in a typical household. Many women cook because they have to, and despite its thanklessness, handle it with efficiency and most significantly, love. But maybe the framing of cooking as solely a labour of love is precisely what makes it so easy to keep hidden behind closed doors; the only sign is smells of something delicious wafting through the tiny space left in the doorframe.