The Great Indian Kitchen

Writer - Director Jeo Baby's - "The Great Indian Kitchen" (TGIK for convenience) examines the drudgery of housework through the experiences of an unnamed recently married woman (Nimisha Sajayan). The wife’s physical and emotional labour is invisible to her family, especially her insensitive husband (Suraj Venjaramoodu). For some the move would be out of age, and for other it would be unrelatable, nevertheless the movie has received rave reviews across the board, especially from women.

The “frustration” at having to constantly cook and clean was what inspired filmmaker Jeo Baby, to make this movie. This the family realized after the new born when he found himself and his wife Beena spending more time than usual in their kitchen. The director is hell bent on playing the cooking scenes on a loop in the movie, to emphasize on the frustration. The movie like the mundane job in the kitchen, slowly unspool the daily frustrations of patriarchy, each day getting more infuriating than the one before. They accurately reflect how each microaggression adds up in a situation where women aren’t allowed to have a voice. Patriarchy  just fails to make you realise that women have their own feelings too. 

Especially in the 21st century, it's a shame to think that such incidents do happen, and there are many who feel it is not realistic, for in cities this might not be very common. Opinions are definitely shaped based on experience. This movies masterfully depict the fault in patriarchy as a system and show how men defend and bolster it.  It is said, that the success of a negative character, is in how much you end up hating him. I hated Suraj Venjaramoodu in the movie, for  being such a husband. Nimisha a modern day girl, born and brought up in the Middle East but is coy during a bride seeing ceremony and there is no open conversation with the man she eventually marries. When we think of today’s educated girls maybe we relate to those whom we know closely. The fact is there are so many out here who still live these regressive realities. We may be privileged to be in a set up that is participative and we cannot compare the girl in the movie to every other city bred women, just because she was brought up outside India. There are families who bring up their children, in different ways, in every part of the globe. 

Today's girl who is extremely comfortable with social media and has been outgoing has to live with the  plumber issue in the kitchen, because it's her responsibility to take care of the Women's job at home, and there are men who would interact with outside men. In spite of being from a comfortable background with fairly supportive parents and armed with enough confidence to handle her life on her own terms, she is submissive to her husband which shows the helpless situation of a girl who is new in a surrounding which doesn’t even have the support of her parents and her man and his family seem to be living in the 80's, wanting the rice to be cooked using firewood, cloths not to be washed in washing machine, and coconut not to be grated in the mixture. Even today families like that exist. At home women with periods have to remain separate, but the man is a teacher, going out of home daily, in touch with so many other women, is there a count on how many have periods? As the occasional help at home say, few people think, they don't get this. Another teacher in school do try to make the man understand that one need to change with time, and not follow the strict rituals while going to Sabarimala. 

Midway through TGIK, we see the protagonist and her husband eating at a restaurant. She observes him devour chicken, carefully placing the bones and waste into another plate without spilling. Then in humour, she asks him a rhetorical question — “So you have table manners when you’re outdoors, is it?” So when the protagonist jokes about her husband’s manners, he doesn’t apologize for treating her with indignity. Instead he loses his temper, admonishes her and walks away from the table. Later in the night, he tells her “If you think how you behaved with me was wrong, then apologize to me.” She apologizes and her husband ‘forgives’ her, only to nickname her “Mrs. Manners” the next second.  For about 45 minutes before this scene, viewers painfully watch as the protagonist cleans the dining table each night. The surface is always littered with half-chewed meat bones and food waste left behind by her husband and father-in-law. The cleaning comes after she has spent an entire day in the kitchen while the two able-bodied men refuse to even wash their own tea glasses. This story repeats itself everyday. Then there is a relative visiting home, when the men decides to take over the kitchen, to cook for a night, the plight of the kitchen after dinner was pathetic, and when said she has things to be done in the kitchen, men make fun of her saying all were already done by them. Isn't it the usual story, when some men enter the kitchen? Again not all, a biggest exception to this was my father, but I have seen and been through these plights. 

Her background gave her strength to break it once all limits were pushed. The final dance piece has been brilliantly choreographed and it was good to see her becoming independent - the mother of the family shifts to salwar - kameez, the moment she lands at her daughter's place - that is a very subtle way of presenting the patriarchal and orthodox mindset of the father I guess.  Away from home, the man's own pregnant sister is shown as extremely modern, independent and non - conformist in the few scenes that she appears. Though the male members of the family did not want the protagonist to apply for the job, saying taking care of a home is a job greater than IAS, she has the approval from MIL to go ahead and apply, who had done her MA during her times, but was not allowed to work. My concern with the movie is the uncalled diversion of focus from the real issue with an agenda to attack something else which diluted the actual issue. These issues are not confined to particular community, but is universal, to be seen in any family irrespective of cast, religion, state or nationality. The Sabarimala women entry issue to the narrative - seems to be an intention to take jabs at a particular section of the society by resorting to this kind of a narrative.

 It's good to see such movies being made, such issues being addressed and such discussions being initiated, but am sure all these will be soon forgotten, and some men will remain men, to remarry like the man in the movie.