The Great Indian Kitchen
This post doesn’t have much spoilers about the movie but if you haven’t watched it yet, do watch it (with your partner, if you have one) and then come back to this post for an introspection. I’ve been recommending every couple I know to watch this movie. Made even my parents watch it.
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable
~Cesar A. Cruz
I belong to the latter stock in this context.
The success of The Great Indian Kitchen lies in breaking the norms of showing aesthetic and non-repetitive scenes. If it created an impact on viewers, it was because it showed those ugly, disgusting and mundane activities that an Indian woman has to perform in the house day in and day out. It made me revisit the chores that I do not participate in and think how I can contribute to some of the household chores going forward.
Here are the topics that this movie brings to the table for discussion.
Gender Roles
Even amongst educated youngsters of today prevails a conditioning that the pre-defined gender roles are to be performed only by a man or a woman.
- ‘If it is going to a job and winning the bread, it is to be done by the man in the house.’
- ‘If it’s cooking and taking care of a household, it’s the job of the woman’.
- ‘Women has to prioritize family over their career’.
- ‘Women does a better job in things like cooking and raising kids’.
They are as regressive of a thought as they exactly sound, yet not many newly wed has grown out of this age old conditioning.
There is a scene where Nimisha keeps asking Suraj to arrange for a plumber to fix the tap, but Suraj keeps forgetting. One of my friends had an opinion about that scene — ‘she being an educated person, why does she keep expecting Suraj to call the plumber and why not do it by herself?’ Though this argument talks about the story literally, I welcome this thought because that question just means the person is really getting into understanding the pre-defined gender roles and break the norms. The movie is exactly trying to initiate these kind of discussions in the household.
Patriarchy
To begin with, did we ever think table manners is not just about how we behave while dining in a social gathering, but also about how we dine in our own homes? Not really. A friend of mine used to say Indian people lack civic sense because they take sanitation workers for granted. While it is caste discrimination that make people take janitors for granted, it is patriarchy that makes women in the house for granted. Patriarchy is the thought of a man considering men as the power center of a family or a household and thinking everything should be done, every decision should be made in favor of a man. It goes on to an extent to even say, ‘If you don’t establish authority in the house, YOU ARE NOT A MAN’.
I know men who doesn’t even wash the plates they eat in and who do not wash their own underwear too by themselves. They think women are supposed to do these for them. Reverse the roles for a moment and imagine the same scenario? The man might not only feel disgusted but also take it as indignity. Why go that far? The movie itself has a scene where Nimisha requests Suraj to buy her sanitary napkins during her period but Suraj is taken aback when she asks him that. He doesn’t believe for a moment that this woman is real. He becomes highly hesitant before he decides to buy it for her.
Sometimes we do not realize how tedious and maybe disgusting it would be for women to make up for our pride and ego. Who is to be held responsible the way a grown-up man thinks getting served by women in the house is their birthright? His mom for not raising him well, or, his dad for maybe being a bad role model? Most likely the latter. It’s time we progress towards discussing, demanding and accepting ‘equality in marriage’ where there’s a fair share of household chores to both the man and the woman.
Benevolent Sexism
There is a scene in the movie where Nimisha’s father-in-law says ‘Oh you used a mixer to grind the coconut? It would be of better taste if you had used the grinding stone (Ammikkal). This is also good’. There is another instance where he says in a very endearing tone ‘Don’t wash my clothes in the washing machine, dear. They’ll be torn soon.’. When Nimisha gets an interview call letter for a job she loves, there is an epic dialogue from her father-in-law: ‘Having a woman at home is auspicious to the family, dear. What you all do is greater than the service that bureaucrats and ministers do to the nation’. Jump cut to the next seen, we see Nimisha washing a men’s underwear with her hands.
People who try to establish patriarchy follow this method called ‘Benevolent Sexism’. Their intonation wouldn’t be harsh or authoritative. But it would be pleasing in such a way that they finally make women do what they want them to do.
Doesn’t necessarily mean every man who follows benevolent sexism does it for the sake of establishing a patriarchal authority. Maybe that person does it subconsciously due to the way of conditioning. If you’re a man reading this but you believe in equality, watch out your thoughts and words next time when you’re requesting your partner to do something for you in a lovely manner.
Internalized Misogyny
There should always be someone to do chores for Nimisha’s father-in-law. He wouldn’t take out a brush and paste to brush his teeth, he wouldn’t take out the slippers by himself when he goes out, he wouldn’t even wash his plate by himself.
There are 2 women who gets to encounter this situation — Nimisha and her mother-in-law. While Nimisha did not think what her father-in-law demands from the women is right, her mother-in-law never thinks it is not okay for her husband to do so (or she thinks so but doesn’t voice out against it). In a scene, Nimisha’s father-in-law says his wife is an M.A. graduate, yet she understood her family responsibilities and stayed at home. When the mother-in-law gets a good reason, she escapes from the situation indefinitely. In an instance, she advices Nimisha over phone to apply for the job and we’ll decide further if she gets an offer, but advices her not to tell the men in the family that she advised so. She does all that but never pushes back her husband or son to do their chores by themselves. This is called ‘Internalized Misogyny’ where women subconsciously project sexist ideas onto themselves — settling down with the thought that the pre-defined gender roles exist for a reason and it is not bad to follow them. (You can notice this behavior sometimes with housemaids — they would feel extremely hesitant when we ask them to sit on the couch or dine with us, because they don’t think they deserve to be seated on a couch) This is again the conditioning with which women are raised and they wouldn’t realize this is a mistake from their end unless someone tells them.
Sexual Boundaries and Taboo
I don’t think marriages in our country happen after sexual preferences and boundaries are discussed between a couple. Sexual Boundary is when a woman or a man is not comfortable in performing sexual acts that their partner expect them to do. Reason why such discussions don’t happen between a couple even after getting married is that, sex is considered to be a taboo topic. Taboo is when a social or a religious construct forbids a topic to be openly discussed.
When Nimisha tells Suraj that it would be good if they did foreplay before sex so that she wouldn’t hurt, Suraj gets offended. He asks ‘Oh you know all that?’. It instantly hurts his male ego. He gives a mean response ‘I should feel something about you to have foreplay’ and that’s the same man who had been penetrating her anytime he wanted to without bothering about her interest. Next morning, after Suraj starts observing abstinence as he becomes a Sabarimala pilgrim, Nimisha mistakenly serves food from last night. When Suraj asks Nimisha if she did it deliberately, she swears she didn’t know it shouldn’t be done. Suraj asks ‘Oh, you didn’t know this until now?’ and smirks. If you read between the lines, that question and the smirk means ‘Oh, you didn’t know this until now, but you knew what foreplay is?!’.
A college senior of mine used to say ‘Marriage is just license to sex’. After reading stories that #MeToo movement brought up, I feel ‘Marriage is license to just legally rape a woman’ if it doesn’t bother about consent or thinks it’s taboo for a couple to discuss sex.
Discussing sexual preferences and boundaries before getting married to someone is far better than coming to know about it after marriage and getting disappointed, isn’t it? However, it’s never to late to begin this conversation with your partner.
Religion that perpetuates Patriarchy
Well, I have some apprehension to discuss this topic in public. Because, I myself do not have a stable opinion about this topic; my perceptions tend to change and I take contradicting stands from time to time. Personally I felt this movie could have avoided touching upon Sabarimala issue or at least not as intensely shot. For the reason that this topic has multiple layers and couldn’t just be touched upon just on the go. It is a topic in itself. While we’re discussing gender roles at home, the interconnection between religion and patriarchy couldn’t be accommodated if we aim to keep the discussion healthy.
If you’re someone (a man or a woman) who haven’t thought of all this before getting into a married relationship, that’s nothing to worry. Are you ready to initiate the dialogue and ready to listen to each other, is the question.
And that’s all that I was able to reflect upon watching this great movie called The Great Indian Kitchen. Your perspectives are welcome.
