Rewatched The Great Indian Kitchen Tonight And Remembered This Post. The Silence And Low Background Noises

Rewatched The Great Indian Kitchen tonight and remembered this post. The silence and low background noises in the movie really really beautifully capture the revolting disgust the protagonist faces while having to handle all the food & kitchen wastes and her internal battle on the same. I wish I could better describe it but it just felt like a very raw and emotional movie tonight.

Adding to point #3 : P's friend from Kerala recently told her mother in law fired the kitchen helps within 3 months of her marriage because now she's expected to take over the duties of the help. It sounds dystopian to imagine these stereotypes exist nowadays but they do.

Random chain of thoughts on gender politics and homemade food

Patriarchal traditions manifest in something as trivial as not saving a chicken leg piece for the woman in her in-laws house.

My mother decided to just give up eating meat because of years of being forced to eat the last few pieces while the better parts were saved and served for grandfather and father

P's mother in law getting into an argument with her because she wanted a leg piece one day and was told it was a fasting day and she should be doing a puja for her husband's wellbeing (this in a 2023 urban Delhite family)

Grandma refusing to eat 'indulgent' food because she's now a widow and she 'doesn't deserve' to have such a luxurious life ; as a response to me giving her a pizza slice to eat.

Internalised and deep rooted belief that men are inherently more deserving of finer cuisine - something which is prevalent even now in the so-called modern woman ( is this just an expression of affection or something we've just been conditioned to)

Most cuisines which are deemed complex (cultures with a wide range of traditional dishes each meal) and depicted as enviable , place an unspoken demand on effort and time of the woman, which is rebelled against now, as seen by the rise in popularity of one pot means in such cultures

Young girls refusing to learn cooking as it is still inherently tied in with the aspect of making food for your own family someday (idea of caretaking of a future partner when you yourself are a child is something I've struggled with) and later on accepting and weaponising cooking as a skill to reject matrimony and uphold it as a survival skill

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dear diary the past week has been shit and I've never been this horrified by this country need a break and looking forward to long weekend kitchen politics fascinate me need more movie recommendations which deal with similar themes pls