Great Indian Kitchen Inspires Urgent Call to Unlearn Roles
The Great Indian Kitchen on Amazon Prime – Film Review by Vandana Shah of Cary, North Carolina, Founding Creative Justice Leader for SisterScene. Will you please join Vandana in making the connection between how cultural critiques, questions, conversations and the use of social media can promote multiracial social justice? Join the SisterScene here: www.simplysupportivecommunity.org.
The Great Indian Kitchen is a Malyalam movie that so beautifully and graphically highlights the everyday drudgery of millions of South Asian women. The film vividly captures the most pervasive and in many ways crushing manifestation of patriarchy in every day life for most South Asian women – the singular burden she faces as the wife/daughter-in-law/mother to provide a freshly cooked meal three times a day. The movie depicts the constant chopping, frying, grinding, cleaning, pressure cooking, serving the male family members, eating the leftovers once the men are done, cleaning up and then starting all over again for the next meal. This is depicted day after day in a staccato manner which is very powerful to capture the grinding nature of each of these repetitive tasks.
The film captures how women at every socio-economic level are shaped by the patriarchy that limits and defines their very existence every minute of every day. Every South Asian woman who has grown up in the region or even the diaspora will have experienced this role and routine in some direct or indirect manner.
I was surprised at the anger it evoked in me. Not at the men, but at myself! How even I,with my education and ambition, had unquestioningly accepted that role when I first got married and moved to the United States. The learned behavior of seeing every woman in my extended family was engrained deep into my psyche and I struggled to fulfill the role even as I worked hard to build a fast paced career. I take full responsibility for assuming (based on my cultural conditioning) that the responsibility of putting a nutritious meal on the table was primarily mine – and one of the important dimensions of fulfilling my role as wife and mother.
My husband was an excellent cook when we got married but I remained comfortable with the notion that he would make the occasional exotic dish for a party or on the weekend but the daily responsibility of cooking with some help from him was primarily mine.
Only after nearly two decades did I manage to gently (and sometime not so gently) renegotiate these roles to share the responsibility of every day cooking more equally. I can happily report that he now takes pride in telling our friends that he makes a way better dal than I do – and I heartily second that!
My advice to all my young South Asian sisters who are dating and/or considering marriage with a man from our region –do not assume or more importantly let him not ever assume that you are his means to “freshly cooked hot meals every day!”
It is not easy to unlearn centuries of reinforced behavior on what it means to be a good wife, mother, daughter in law – but every time you are able to demand some modicum of equality in sharing household chores, you are making not just your own life easier but also paving the way for all those men and women who are taking cues from you.
Dear SisterScene Readers,
How have you received Vandana’s story about her path around sharing/changing gender roles, exploring family and ancestral commitments, questioning ways to meet expectations, and making room for growth and progress? SisterScene invites us to see and explore cultural critique, personal interrogation as a process or pathway to gaining liberation, personally and collectively. No matter what gender you claim or identify with, no matter what your ancestors or society claims your role is supposed to be, you are invited here to share your reaction, your response and your ideas. Will you please join her in making the connection between how cultural critiques, questions, conversations and the use of social media can promote multiracial social justice? Join the SisterScene here: www.simplysupportivecommunity.org
The SisterScene is simply a supportive community for creative, multiracial justice. Vandana and I have been exploring how making personal connections about marriage, parenting, cooking, art, poetry, film, work and political challenges since we met in 1998 via our dear friend, Elin of Reykjavic. Elin recognized Vandana and my voices as feminists who love family and food and culture, so Vandana was invited to my house to learn how to make gumbo and we have been cooking up revolutionary ideas about our family and work lives ever since!