The Kitchen and the Cage
Suraj Venjaramood and Nimisha Sajayan in The Great Indian Kitchen.
Jeo Baby’s remarkable film The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) is a critique of patriarchy in Indian households, a delicious recipe of a discomforting, cold dish.
The coconut oil is sizzling hot. Into it goes the batter for some hot unniyappam, and next comes some crispy pazhampori. We then have some delicious-looking laddoos, halwas and munchies laid out on table, making it a mouth-watering experience not just for the audience, but also for the ‘couple-to-be’ on screen. Two scenes later, this nameless couple—portrayed by Suraj Venjaramood and Nimisha Sajayan—enter into wedlock with yet another grand sadhya. Gathered relatives savour tea and juice, while the newlyweds enjoy sweet dishes.
Cut to the next day: the bride enters the kitchen, all fresh and lively. Naadan chutney and sambhar are prepared. We see more cutting, cleaning, boiling, cooking, frying and serving for the breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then, more dishes, vegetarian and non-vegetarian, sizzle on the plates, while the husband and the father-in-law heap praises on the new bride.
Then the process repeats. More preparation, more dishes, more cleaning. But soon, we realise that dishes on screen begin to lose their lustre. They don’t seem mouth-watering anymore. The preparation smells of exhaustion, the kitchen looks gloomy, and a weary bride has lost her spark. She looks trapped. The elephant is the room will have to be addressed.
The scenes of labour repeat, day after day, gut-wrenching in their daily duplication. Baby places repetitive scenes of household chores, slowing the narrative, but hammering in larger realisation: a woman’s unpaid work is toiling, frustrating, and exhausting.
For a movie that starts with “Thanks Science”, you know we aren’t in for the usual recipe. This isn’t another Salt and Pepper, Daawat-e-Ishq, or Chef. We aren’t here just to enjoy the dishes. Director Jeo Baby is here to serve you the most uncomfortable dish—patriarchy—in the most delicious manner, maximising its accessibility and affordability through his 2021 Malayalam-language drama, The Great Indian Kitchen (available on NeeStream app).
At the backdrop is the simple story of an aspiring dancer who is married into a traditional upper caste household, where she soon takes over the responsibility of maintaining not just the household but two men, her husband and her father-in-law, who personify gendered privilege. She soon realises the cage she’s entrapped in, when both of her new, male family members disapprove of her aspiration of being a dance teacher because “having a woman at home is very auspicious for the family.” We see the increasing frustration in a woman stuck in the rut of repetitive daily tasks, exhausted at day’s end, before having to attend to the sexual labour of her husband. The tension builds up with a parallel narrative of the stigmas around menstruation in an upper caste household, finally culminating with an explosive reaction that brings out the pent-up emotions of the unnamed woman (hereafter addressed with the name of the actor, Nimisha, to avoid confusion).
What sets TGIK apart from films like How Old Are You? or English Vinglish—films that took tepid steps to address patriarchy—is how the former tackles the challenge head on. While other women-centric films tried to achieve the larger goal of ‘women empowerment’, the underlying issues of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity were left half-explored. In order to depict a successful woman, who fight the odds by the end of the movie, these films did not provide enough screen space for the root cause of all these issues.
In TGIK, this root cause is the core of the narrative. The film depicts a Gulf-bred modern woman’s struggle to ‘adjust’ within a traditional household, which takes her unpaid labour for granted, while also denying her freedom of choice to work. It also explores the deep roots of this structural injustice of patriarchy, not just within men but also within women who have ingrained these highly-discriminating practices as the norm.
The scenes of labour repeat, day after day, gut-wrenching in their daily duplication. Baby places repetitive scenes of household chores, slowing the narrative, but hammering in larger realisation: a woman’s unpaid work is toiling, frustrating, and exhausting. Through the repeated depiction of the chores, viewers are given CCTV-footage like experience of what a homemaker’s day looks like.
And why does it hit the viewers so hard? These are often the activities that we take that for granted, that we overlook in our own everyday lives. The scenes are haunting, so much so that we, too, feel the same suffocation as Nimisha on screen. And in that point, the viewer realises their position in the narrative: You either start embodying the character for sharing her experiences, or you feel the shame of taking a woman’s efforts around home for granted.
Compounded to the effect is the eerie nature of the scenes. There is no background music, but the ambient sound does its job. The sound designing syncs with the cuts like background music, chopping, frying, boiling, serving, and cleaning. With rising tension in the household, the ambient, constant sounds of activities—cooking or washing clothes—increase in intensity, too, building with the narrative, keeping the audience taut, frustrated for the character at the centre of this silent storm.
The film’s cinematography adds another layer to this world within a world. Never have I seen a kitchen so closely as visualised by Shalu K Thomas in TGIK. Imagining a lion’s share of a film in a kitchen that otherwise looks basic, traditional, and increasingly dingy with passing scenes—while not boring the audience—is an extraordinary task. The brilliance in the framing comes across as the narrative builds tension. The cinematographer doesn’t shy away from close shots of dirty dishes, a leaking sink or an unkempt table. He doesn’t resort to the usual wide-angle shots of kitchen that could have reduced his efforts while showing everything happening in the same place. In some of my favourite shots, we see the top angle of the kitchen stove where the woman is simultaneously boiling vegetables in one burner while making sambar in the other, depicting her juggle with multiple tasks at the same time, slowly but surely rising to boiling point.
There are no villains in the movie; there are only men. As mentioned above, both the father-in-law and the husband personify male entitlement and privilege. Their actions, words and rituals depict both gendered and upper caste privileges that men hold in the society.
There are no villains in the movie; there are only men. As mentioned above, both the father-in-law and the husband personify male entitlement and privilege. Their actions, words and rituals depict both gendered and upper caste privileges that men hold in the society. The father-in-law’s expectations begin from having the toothbrush given to him in his arm chair, to having chutney specifically made on stone grinders, to cooking rice in the traditional stove using firewood, to having his clothes washed by hands, to his sandals being placed under his feet before he leaves his house. While his own wife has long been accustomed to his habits, we see how he cleverly and subtly he is able to affect his daughter-in-law to do the same in his wife’s absence. Never does he shout, threaten or coerce; but subtly, in the most paternalistic tone, laden with sugar-coated words, he gets his daughter-in-law to acquiesce.
We see a similar pattern in his son, Suraj, who takes more of the screen-time. At first, the audience is tricked into believing that Suraj is unlike his father. He tries to adjust here and there with his wife, Nimisha, while also trying to be a loving husband. But there is soon an emergence of a pattern: Suraj, too, demands that his lunch be packed before he leaves, since he doesn’t like to eat hotel food. He demands for variety in food because that could lead to a healthy life. He demands that his father’s needs be met since he is the patriarch of the family. While both the male members demand their share of attention, food, and other chores, neither don’t move a single finger in helping the women—be it the mother or Nimisha. The women are shown in a hassle, often running around in the kitchen, while the men are left to their own leisure activities.
And slowly, these scenes start to taste bitter. The more the male members demand, the more the burden on Nimisha grows, and gloomier her face looks. What is to be appreciated here is the director’s choice of depiction of these small sorrows. In multiple films in the past, we have seen the same old formula of women being forced into doing activities with use of force or intimidation. Baby, however, uses more subtle ways of manipulation, ways of ingraining the masculine hegemony in women. In a brilliantly-performed scene, we see the husband, who is upset that his wife pointed out his table manners, manipulating her to apologise. He doesn’t raise his voice, nor does he touch her. But we see that the wife is clearly intimidated into complying with him. She’s reluctant because she knows that she wasn’t wrong, and yet, she has to apologise to please her husband.
The director often emphasises the different ways in which the men manipulate the women to accept male dominance. In one of the most crucial portions of TGIK, the father-in-law promptly rejects Nimisha’s wish to pursue a career in dance. With great pride, he says that the women in the family, even though were highly educated, chose to stay at home and look after the family. To gaslight her, he says that the work done by homemakers is greater than any other jobs in the world and when they do so, the children of the home (i.e., the men of the house) achieve greater success. The caste privilege is exemplified in the scene where we see the pride in an upper caste privileged male in having the women of the house confined to do unpaid household labour, while also tending to all the needs of the men. Scholars like Uma Chakravarthy have extensively written about the plight of the upper caste women being confined to the house because their income isn’t seen as important to run the house. Moreover, they are looked as the gatekeepers of the future generation and are held responsible for ingraining the values and traditions of the caste into the next generation.
The director contrasts this with the introduction of a domestic worker, Usha, who belongs to a lower caste. She is brought in to take care of the household chores when Nimisha is menstruating. As per the tradition, the menstruating women of the upper caste families are confined into a particular room since they tend to ‘pollute’ the house otherwise. While in conversation with protagonist, Usha says that she tends to keep silence and continue to work even during her periods. Amazed by her wit, Nimisha asks her how she’s able to do so. Unflinchingly, Usha replies, “We have to. We don’t have a choice. If I don’t go for work for 3-4 days, who will pay me? I have to teach my two kids, right?” and then with a sharp remark she concludes, “By the way who cares whether I have periods or not?”
This scene speaks volumes about the caste-based discrimination inflicted upon women, and how it affects different sections of the women differently. Menstruation-based taboos have been a curse on women for centuries. The notion of pollution and negative energy associated with menstruation—notions introduced by men—have allowed for their dominance over women and their body. Claiming women to be polluting beings and men as the superior spiritual beings, the men have been able to control the biggest of the influences on humankind: religion and faith. In Hinduism, this has been codified by the upper caste Brahmin males while passing it on to the other lower castes. Hence, its impact was particularly harsh on the upper caste women who were directly facing this structural violence.
In TGIK, while the protagonist is confined into a room like a prisoner, lower caste women like Usha remain silent and continue their work. This in no way is to claim that a lower caste woman has greater freedom than upper caste woman, but it is to say that their lower socio-economic privilege forces them to break such taboos to survive.
An interesting character that is brought at this juncture is an elder woman who happens to be the sister of the family’s patriarch. She is brought in to look after the family when Nimisha gets her period while the male members are holding their vrata (abstinence taken before Sabarimala pilgrimage). This elder personifies a large section of Indian women who have accepted the male dominance and patriarchal practices as the norm of the society. She happily goes about tending to the male members while teaching the girl about the do’s and don’ts in an upper caste household. She does it so candidly, because these are women who have never been provided an avenue to question the norms. Right from childhood, they have been conditioned to believe that men are the superior beings, and a woman’s life must be naturally subordinated. And hence, when other women tend to rebel against such discriminating institutions like patriarchy, these women tend to disqualify such protests while wholeheartedly supporting patriarchy.
Suraj could be considered an extreme case of an unhelpful man, one that doesn’t even wash his own cup. Male audiences commenting on the film, particularly on social media, ‘othered’ and distanced Suraj’s character from themselves.
There aren’t any loose ends in the movie. Without being preachy, Baby is able to craft a story that brings forward the plights of homemakers who have suffered at the hands of their husbands who take their labour for granted. The film is a slap on the face of men who called these household chores only as a women’s duty.
However, the director does skip over spotlighting the other kind of man, those who think they are doing a great service to the women by doing small chores. These men often imagine that their ‘help’ eases the burden on the women of the household, while they do not realise the fact that it is in fact their (men’s) share of work—cleaning their clothes, cooking food for them, cleaning the house and their dishes—that the women take it upon themselves to do. The existing character sketch of the husband—Suraj—could be considered an extreme case of an unhelpful man, one that doesn’t even wash his own cup. Male audiences commenting on the film, particularly on social media, ‘othered’ and distanced Suraj’s character from themselves, claiming that they themselves were more helpful with household chores. This, too, is a problematic, as this ‘help’ isn’t actually addressing the problem of societal notion that the unpaid household work is a woman’s duty. Hence the step must be to stop romanticising unpaid domestic work, to share the responsibility of the domestic work equally between the members of the household, and to call a halt to the discriminating and humiliating institution of patriarchy.
At the backdrop of the story of the kitchen is the Sabarimala controversy. Father and son decide to take the Sabarimala pilgrimage while Nimisha is on her period. She’s confined to her room where she watches videos of women’s activists who are fighting for the entry to the Sabarimala temple, while the conservatives—both men and women—deny them this right in the name of faith and traditions. Highly motivated by the stand of activists, especially after having to face such humiliating conditions in the house, Nimisha shares the video across her social media. Infuriated, Suraj threatens her to delete the video. In a particularly pivotal scene, Suraj is unable to enter the room because Nimisha is menstruating, while Nimisha refuses to delete the video and challenges him to enter. She tactfully uses what the society termed as ‘impure’—her menstruation—to challenge that same society and stand against it. Her patience, often tested, has finally given way.
Twists and turns will follow, and moods will swing, but this face-off in the kitchen is the narrative’s climactic moment, where Nimisha takes her ‘sweet revenge’ for all the humiliation and disrespect she has faced in the household.
Moments like these contributed to TGIK critical acclaim and success, success that the director Baby acknowledged in a recent interview with The Cue. TGIK, however, is much more than a hit. The film’s success is important, for without it, we’d not only be doing a great disservice to the art that is cinema, but also losing an opportunity to open a much-needed social dialogue.
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Deekshith R Pai is a second year MA Development student at the Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He is a photography enthusiast and has a photo exhibition to his name. You can find him on Instagram: @dr.pai98 and Twitter: DRPai98.
