Yesterday when my mother wanted some help with her curry, she called two of us: my cousin, who happened to be at home, and me. My cousin told me she knows hardly anything about the kitchen, so I took over. Her answer nudged me to finally write this.
Even earlier I’ve asked many female friends of mine the question, “Do you cook?” and you rightly would’ve anticipated: I was in for a thunderstorm of feministic self-respect and curses against the apparent male domination. So, I construe that most, if not all, young women misplace their anger over the situation of women in contemporary society. They believe that to shift the status quo, they need to stop cooking.
What’s the definition of cooking? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it crisply as, to prepare (food, a dish, or a meal) by mixing, combining, and heating the ingredients; I believe they should’ve instead defined it as an act of severe indignity that should immediately be eradicated before it erodes the gender fabric of the world. But that definition of cooking, a poor thing as it was, doesn’t even mention the doer of the verb.
If a woman wants herself to be really progressive and independent, she has to first know it entails depending on no one for something as basic as food. Imagine what anyone could accomplish in this world when one is uncertain even about one’s food. I do not propose that you’ll have to prepare everything you eat in your own kitchen, but you’ll have to go on even if you have to. “Independent survival” is the most rudimentary form of any other independence you name.
What is India? India is food. Indian food is thousands of dishes, colours and tastes. You must long to swim in this ocean of tastes, taking further the culinary heritage that is second to none that our country nurtured for millennia. All right, let’s for a moment forget about India. Everyone is different; so is one’s cooking. You do not want your mom’s signature dishes to fade away in time, do you? What you do instead, for example, is: you realise that she pours some oil into the rice right before it boils and that is the secret of her soft, puffy and perfect rice; be amazed by her detail; learn your mother’s recipes; immortalise her by passing these to your children long after she’s gone.
Speaking about mom, I would want to go a little further. Didn’t you always have those juicy, heaven-like gulab jamuns ready for you on your birthdays? She was ready with the sweets the day you told her you’ve got a good rank in the IIT-JEE, and the day you got your job offer. You can never become that mom to your children because you cannot tell methi from palak. In other words, cooking was, is, and will always be an expression of love. You feel like crap when you want your loved ones to know how much you love them while there’s little you could do than order the best pizza on the phone.
As Michael Pollan argues in his book, Cooked, cooking at home keeps junk at bay.
“If you cook, you’re not going to have French fries every day. Homemade French fries are delicious, but they’re such a pain to make. There are things built into the process of cooking that guard against those very tempting, but ultimately not very healthy, foods. You don’t even have to worry about what you’re cooking because you will naturally gravitate toward simple things. You will not make a lot of junk food.” This makes a lot of sense.
Finally, did you ever wonder why most of the festivals have cooking at their core? Because cooking, for centuries, has been a social activity. It develops bonds, fraternity and belongingness. Although I could prove none of the said things, it is not difficult to imagine that it was indeed the case when we were still nomadic, living in little dwellings.
Maybe home-cooked food is even more independent and a sign of defiance than eating out because you cook what you like, put how much ever oil you wish and the world finally listens to less of your nagging about the dry rotis and that oily sabzi outside.
Ladies, please know that cooking doesn’t necessarily mean giving in to male domination, and certainly you are not jabbing a knife into your highly held self-respect. In fact, as I finish my whining, it dawned on me that these things I enthusiastically preached to young women remain equally true to young men too. Justifying this realisation, I change the title to: Men, women, and waiting kitchens.
