Being A Brown Daughter: How I Was Taught To Cook While Growing Up

The patriarchal mindset of the country is so deep-rooted that most of us fail to realise how little things can scar a woman's mind. Growing up, I would see my mother and grandmother cooking for me, my father and my brother. I would wake up and find both of them in the kitchen, packing our lunch boxes and plating our aloo parathas and dahi for breakfast. My brother and I would quickly have our brekkie and our mom would drop us at the bus station. We would come back home and our mom would ask us to quickly freshen up and sit for lunch.

Post lunch, we would rush for our tuition. Three hours later, our mom would come to pick us up. Evenings were for TV time and hot pakoras with our grandma.

For dinner, my mother would place bowls filled with freshly made daal and sabzi on the dining table and then she would call me for a helping hand. I remember serving hot phulkas to everyone for dinner.

Daughters Made To Learn Cooking For Their Future Husbands

Over time, as I got into high school and college, my mother would ask me to stand next to her in the kitchen, and try my hand at making phulkas. Often, my grandma would ask me to prepare a tempering for daal. Believe me, I always argued with her, asking why me and not my younger sibling. She would tell me that I eventually have to get married, leave home, and go to another house where I will be the caretaker of the entire household. "You will need to cook for your husband", "What will you feed to your kids", "Your in-laws will shame you if you don't know how to cook'', "Way to a man's heart is through his stomach", "Cooking is a must for every woman" and these remarks were never ending and all targeted at me becoming a good cook for a 'good life'.

I don’t blame the women in my house. As I grew up, I realised that they too were schooled the same way. For them, women were born to cook and it was their responsibility to feed everyone. Gender roles in the country are defined as such that a woman is expected to be in the kitchen. Decades ago when women didn't step out of their homes for work, they were expected to take up duties like cooking, cleaning and housekeeping among others. Over time, as women got educated, they started working, however, the housemaker duties were still their onus and it continues to be so. Imagine coming home at night after a fun weekend getaway with family, everyone places their bags in the living room, quickly freshens up and now it’s time for dinner. Even on days like these, the woman of the house is expected to cook for the family, no matter how tired she is.

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The Real Issue

No, I don’t mind learning to cook but first, let’s dig deeper. What’s the real issue? No, the problem doesn’t lie in women cooking for everyone in the house, it is the notion that makes women follow this drill. Remember how women across the country instantly connected to Sridevi's character in English Vinglish? Gauri Shinde’s character Shashi so beautifully called out the bias that patriarchal society continues to throw at women. Women are given the lifetime duty of cooking food, housekeeping, and tending children, and oddly their efforts are never acknowledged. Women are believed to take up all of it because the norms suggest so.

Why can’t cooking be a shared responsibility? Why can’t a woman call it a day without preparing food for the entire family? Well, time has changed and so should the norms. However, I am sure it won’t happen overnight since a woman’s mindset too needs to change. Over the years we were made to think of ourselves as food-making machines, we have lost our own identities and never found a space for ourselves in our very own homes. Now to bring about change, it has to start with us.

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Today, at 30, when I return home from work late evening, I am under the pressure of getting to the kitchen quickly. There are days when my husband would offer a hand or even suggest eating out but it still puts me in guilt, I always feel I am not doing enough. Yes, that’s how deep a mindset can scar us. However, slowly and gradually, I am sure I will get there.