Inside Bollywood’s Kitchens: Why Romanticise Women Making Rotis?

In ‘3 Idiots’, Sharman Joshi’s mom is lampooned for complaining about the labour she puts into the khujli-wali-roti.

What’s with the sexualisation of the dough in Bollywood films?

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube screenshot)

Last week, I had binge-watched some early 2000 Bollywood flicks like Yash Johar’s Chalte Chalte and Guddu Dhanoa’s Bichoo. I was clearly up to no good and hence, I over-emphasised the ways these love stories broke for intermission.

Strangely, I noticed that the major rift/conflict in the plots was due to the inability to manage household work like cooking and cleaning.

These issues crop up immediately after the couples share the same roof. It brought back flashes of early 90s when Indian parents have been shown to have an atrocious solution to these –

In Manik Chatterjee’s Bahurani (1989), Madhuri’s (played by Rekha) would-be-father-in-law proudly claims that he wouldn’t require dowry to arrange the wedding. Instead, he would require culinary services from his ideal bahu – karele ki bhaji, arhar ki daal, dum ke aaloo, hari mirchi ka achar and special kheer at the end. He says, “Dahej mein mujhe chahiye ek vakt ka khana—Madhuri ke haath ka” (I need a meal a day to be cooked by Madhuri as dowry) – which was of course, gladly accepted with no objections, whatsoever.

In fact, we are so accustomed to seeing women cook on screen constantly in the kitchen to ensure family peace and togetherness, that it hardly comes across as worrying.

This doesn’t mean that their smiles and happy faces convey absolute bliss in that space – time and again, there have been complaints, be it in the form of regret or passive-aggressive behaviour. And brief though these scenes are, they are worth a look again, I feel.

Sexualisation of the Dough

Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta (2005) has Saif’s mother complain in a scene that they, the women, are forever expected to work in the kitchen. If they didn’t, they can even be penalised – however, when Shahid Kapoor fails to cook khichdi in Dil Maange More (2004), it is just treated as a frivolous error.

In Lunchbox (2013), we literally have an invisible woman who is working round the clock in the kitchen. She converses with Nimrat Kaur, giving her tips to spice up her conjugal life through creative cooking.

Perhaps the depiction of the ever-excited (glee-faced) woman overburdened with work at home is a social strategy. When the plot doesn’t satisfy that trope, complaints of the woman are presented as absurd and hilarious.

For example, in 3 Idiots (2009), Sharman Joshi’s mother is lampooned for complaining about the labour she puts into the Khujli-wali-Roti. Further, her inquiries as to why bhindi is priced at Rs 10-12 a kilo are dismissed with mockery.

If feeding isn’t a gendered quality – why do we still have vestiges of these representations in Bollywood? To me, it is all connected. The fixation with the “perfect roti” aka the “perfect wife” on screen is as worrisome as the nation-wide trend of saving women for the purpose of rescuing the kitchen.

To oppose the erstwhile notion of women as perpetual cooks, I also see comparative memes which pinpoint that empowerment for them lies outside the household. While we hope that women be not confined in the kitchen, how often do we ask: Why don’t the men join this same space? Why is it that stories in Bollywood films do not address this – and instead lament about how relationships fail due to mismanagement of household work?

Popular culture has shown us how women cooking is heavily romanticised – so much so, that when the men come to that space, it is seldom to help with the drudgery of the job. Rather, these intrusions foster recurrent stereotypes of romance, food, sex and the female body.

One of the greatest examples of this is the sexualisation of the dough in Bollywood films. Remember Bobby Deol trying to teach Kareena Kapoor how to make rotis in Ajnabee (2001)? Or Shah Rukh Khan’s romantic persuasion of his wife as she cooks parathas in Hum Tumhare Hain Tumhare Sanam (2002)? Consider Govinda willing to teach Karishma Kapoor how to cut vegetables with the knife in Hero No 1 (1997). As he tries to woo her in the kitchen and she hesitates, in case somebody catch them making out, he has a sarcastic comeback, “Iss ghar ke aurate bhi kitchen mein nahi aati hain” (even the women of this house do not come to the kitchen).

The Trend That Makes Kitchens “Invisible”

While romantic scenes of the man helping his female lover stir the curry or make the dough (think Tumhari Sulu!) are aplenty, some crude utensil-washing on a Monday morning is hardly depicted.

There is not much thought given to the kitchen as a site of labour, where all genders must contribute and interact with. Instead, it is a prop meant to fulfil the dominant masculine gaze – hence, the deliberate camera angles of accentuating the female body in that space in a certain way.

Consequently, these prejudices do not go away – not even when architects design hot kitchenette structures to gradually make the kitchen “invisible”. It is envisioned that this physical invisibility will tone down the traditional worth attached with the space; in other words, it won’t incarcerate women’s work anymore.

Among a certain class now, in urban areas of the country, the fantasy of the shrinking kitchen is finally coming true. What changes will this entail in terms of food consumption, gender performance and housing structures? Will it really revolutionise the lives of women and men? What will they eat and where shall the cooking be outsourced from?

Disappearing kitchens, aka the saga of urban middle-class comfort is also the tale of people who choose “not to see”– and care. And particularly not see through what the Bollywood screen tries to show them.

Years ago, if my grandmother would have known Anna Puigjaner’s concept of the “21st century Kitchen-less house”, she would have taken the world by storm. The waste would be collected outside of the kitchen, an area kept very clean due to hygiene issues.

Kitchen wastes don’t even feature in the millennial dream – we just have no idea where the food comes from and where it all ends. Pretty much like our glitzy melodramatic films – where silencing of women’s work, or not taking their worth in the kitchen too seriously, serves to feed our myopia. In such a scenario, will we really move towards liberation if kitchens disappear?

It is time to ask this question of ourselves once again.

(The author is a freelance writer and researcher based in Guwahati, Assam.)