Knead. Flatten. Flip. Knead. Flatten. Flip. My hands worked deftly with the dough as I chanted instructions in my head to shape the dough into small, flat circles, easy enough to consume in four bites. “Careful now.” My mom had said, “Slide it in. You don’t want the oil to splatter.” The oil was hot and it was my first time making traditional Indian puris, so her concern was quite valid. I dropped it in anyway (sorry Ma). The oil didn’t splatter but the flat circle of dough instantly puffed up. I remember turning to my mom, exclaiming in delight as I tried another one and it puffed up just as beautifully.
When we sat down on that Sunday morning to break our fast on many of those puris, I turned to my mom and joked, “Well hey, at least I’ll find a good husband now, right?” Even as a joke, my mom’s reaction was instantaneous, “No, I’m teaching you to cook for you.”
Since I was a kid, I loved being in the kitchen. As young as age 4, I used to help my mom cut soft vegetables like mushrooms and spinach with a plastic knife (safety is paramount after all). As I grew older, I moved to bake basic cakes and cupcakes, which slowly progressed to slightly more advanced cheesecakes, pana cottas and the lot. Cooking eventually came into the mix too. I just like being in the kitchen. It’s calming, it’s relaxing, and at the end, I get something yummy to eat out of it. And no, this hobby has nothing to do with my gender, even though all debates seem to bring it down to that.
So the eternal question remains do women belong in the kitchen? Or rather, who exactly belongs in the kitchen?
Despite years of social change and (apparently) adapted mind sets, the conventional answer is that the kitchen still remains a place that is dominated by women (and the only place women should be allowed to dominate). This is dangerous, not just because it undermines women who simply enjoy the recreational aspect of it (like myself), but also because it alienates and discourages men who enjoy it for the same reason. It forms a glass ceiling in one of its most encountered yet unacknowledged forms. Paradoxically, if we put the kitchen in a professional context, we see more male chefs than female. Sridevi put this conundrum into words in her movie English Vinglish: “When men cook food, it’s art…but when women cook, it’s their duty.”
We gender-brand everything from colors and toys to professions and household chores but the irrationality of it all only just seems to be coming to surface. What’s worse is, to those who have already realized it, the change is coming all too slow, so much so that they may as well be as ignorant as those who have yet to come to their senses.
When someone says ‘Go make me a sandwich’, I’m not concerned with whether or not I could potentially follow through with it. Yes, I can make a sandwich. I can make several types of sandwiches in fact, each as good as the next. PBJ, BLT, grilled cheese, you name it. The question isn’t about sandwiches. It’s about what they represent, what the kitchen represents.
Being able to cook is a matter of independence, a guarantee that if I have say three ingredients, I will not starve to death (Don’t worry Ma, I have a meal plan this year). Everyone being able to cook without discrimination based on gender is a matter of social change. We’ve got to respect the kitchen for what it is: a hub of life (because food = life, right?).
At the end of the day, everyone belongs in the kitchen. The kitchen has food.
