The Great Indian Kitchen (2021)

Directed by: Jeo Baby
Music: Sooraj S Kurup
Lyrics: Mridula Devi S, Dhanya Suresh
Starring: Nimisha Vijayan,
 Suraj Venjiramoodu,
T Suresh Babu, Ajitha VM,
Ramadevi, Kabani

In one corner of a tharavad, an ancient traditional home, is a kitchen sink. It stands for all that is ‘dirty’ – vessels used for cooking are routinely dumped inside it; its drain leaks, a dirty sack placed beneath to absorb the equally dirty water; the women in the household are seemingly tied to it – both by duty, and by routine. And as the movie plays out, you realise this is a universal truth, not just the story of this one sink in this one kitchen. 

 

Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen sets out to explore a woman’s world in detail. Gathering material from his personal experiences during the lockdown, the film, written and directed by Baby, is a scathing and often despairingly realistic look at the inner workings of a patriarchy that subsumes women’s lives. Its deliberately satirical title doesn’t prepare you for the dawning realisation that we are either the perpetrators or the victims (or both) of a patriarchy that’s all the more insidious because of how normal it all seems.

This is not toxic masculinity as we usually know it. The men are not wielding sticks or knives; there are no cuss words; there isn’t even a raised voice. These are the men and women I, you, and everyone know; we are them, they are us.

So much so, neither of the leads have a name in the movie. Neither do anyone else. The elders are amma (mother), achan (father); the others are referred to by their relationships to the main characters.

The woman (Nimisha Vijayan) is a dancer. This is established in one scene that quickly segues to the ‘penn kaanal’ (ladki dekhna/’seeing’ the girl) and a marriage is quickly fixed. 

Just like that, her life changes. Generations of women have been conditioned since adolescence on how to dress, how to walk, how to behave – and how to help their mother-in-law in the kitchen. So also with our protagonist, who quickly comes to her mother-in-law’s aid the day after the wedding. What she doesn’t know then is that her life is about to begin a cycle of preparing food, cooking food, clearing up, washing the vessels, cleaning the kitchen – only to begin the cycle over again. Over and over and over again.

Because, in this traditional household, the men don’t eat leftovers. Nor know the turmoil of cooking multiple meals, with multiple dishes. Nor do they lend a hand to clean up after themselves. Or worry about a leaky pipe that the women regularly beg to have fixed. And woe betide the wife who jocularly comments at the difference in her husband’s table manners – at home and in a restaurant. The punishment is both verbal – taunts, and emotional – wounded silence. Until, of course, she learns the error of her ways and apologises.

Things come to a head when ‘amma’ (Ajitha VM) has to leave – to be an unpaid ayah in her pregnant (and entitled) daughter’s household. Our lead character has to now deal with two grownups who were born with a sense of entitlement and don’t even know they are entitled. After all, the husband (Suraj Venjiramoodu) is very ‘progressive’- he has no problems with his working or continuing with her dance. But – yes, there’s always a ‘but’ – just have some patience; he will decide when the time is right.

‘Achan’ (T Suresh Babu) is a bit lost without amma around – he needs her, you see, to give him his toothbrush with a dab of toothpaste on it. He explains it oh-so-softly to his daughter-in-law who brings him his morning coffee. Oh, he doesn’t want his clothes being washed in the washing machine because, you see, it spoils them, so could she please wash it by hand instead?

He even calls his wife to tell her to tell their daughter-in-law to please cook rice on the firewood stove, and not in a pressure cooker. It just doesn’t taste the same. 

And work?? Outside the home, you mean? No, no, no – our women don’t work. Working at home isn’t ‘work’. It’s – he doesn’t even know what it is because he hasn’t thought about it.

It is amma who quietly encourages her daughter-in-law to apply for a job as a dance teacher in a school. But with a word of caution – don’t tell anyone I told you to do so. That one arc establishes the story of women in this society.

And the men? They are products and archetypes of that very society as well. They can criticise the food, but not help clean up. They can order chappatis for dinner, instead of eating leftovers.

The husband needs sex, and never mind that the wife is bone tired. He can help her ‘get over’ her tiredness. Even if all she can smell, taste, see in her mind’s eye is the food she has cooked, the food she needs to cook, the vessels she needs to clean and that Damned. Kitchen. Sink. 

Never mind that the mere mention of foreplay is enough to make her husband sulk.Worse is to come – the woman gets her period. And is thrust out to the outhouse for the customary 7 days. Purity matters, you see. Especially so when the men are preparing for the 40-day vrat preparatory to leaving on the pilgrimage to Sabarimala. Even her maid (Kabani), it appears, has more freedom than she does – the latter gleefully tells her that she keeps quiet about her periods because she cannot afford to take a week off from work. 

 

In a chilling sequence that follows, the woman offers her husband a helping hand – and is excoriated for having defiled him by her touch. The very same touch that he demands as a part of his conjugal rights. When the priest, who is called to ‘cleanse’ him says that drinking gau mutra or eating cow dung is the only way to purify himself, the husband cringes. (Because even cow excrement is more exalted than a woman who's menstruating.) Whereupon, the priest nonchalantly says that in today’s times, a dip in the temple pond will do. That’s when the sheer ignominy of her life strikes the protagonist.

What strikes you about the The Great Indian Kitchen is the sheer repetitiveness, the routine drudgery of work that women are supposed to do – and like doing. 

The camera shows you the women in their domain, surrounded by pots and pans and the gas stove and wood stove – and the ubiquitous sink. Then it pulls closer and we get shots of hands chopping vegetables, washing them, and the curries simmering on the stove. We get multiple shots of washing, cleaning, and the women hanging one smelly, sodding sack out to dry while another takes it place under the leaking drain.

The men? They are repetitive too – they eat, they make a mess, they go about their lives. 

Even when they cook, and demand that the women be happy they have cooked that one meal, they don't seem to realise that cooking is just part of the process. The women are still left to clean up. The men are happy that they are good men, polite men, decent and respectable. They don’t make unnecessary demands, not they, just ‘reasonable’ ones – after all, what are wives for? (And others' wives as well - when a relative comes to visit, he subtly criticises the tea that's given to him, by mansplaining how 'good' tea should be made – which translates into "tea that's specifically to his taste".)

And as the horror of the drama plays out, nothing changes – neither the men, nor for the women. Generations of men and women have played these parts before; generations to come, will continue to do so. 

What makes it so nerve-wracking is the superbly internalised performances from the two leads and the characters (all drawn from the theatre) surrounding them. Nimisha Vijayan is a fantastic actress, and here, she hands in a performance that is all the more chilling because it is so realistic. She is a good daughter, a good daughter-in-law. She certainly is no martyr. She just wants to be her own person, free to dream and live her life a little.

Suraj Venjiramoodu, who is always brilliant as the ‘common man’, fits into his character like a glove. He thinks of himself as a modern, progressive person. He has no clue – even at the end of the film – that he’s just his father’s heir-in-waiting. At one point in the film, he's told by the community elders to admonish his wife – she 'Likes' a FaceBook post in favour of the Sabarimala verdict. By this time, however, the worm is turning. When faced with a very angry husband who threatens her (very subtly) from outside the room (she has her periods and is in isolation), she snaps, "How does it affect you? What will you do? Can you see me? Touch me even?" This reminder of his 'purification' ceremony gives the husband pause.

But the women are no saints. If amma is supportive, then the woman’s own mother, and her husband’s aunt (Ramadevi) are both enablers of patriarchy. Her mother admonishes her for having walked out of her home; after all, her husband is a 'good' man from a 'good family'. Has she spared a thought for her younger sister? Who will marry her?

Her own brother is a patriarch in the making, as a sharp, clipped scene towards the end reminds her – and us. 

 The Great Indian Kitchen hits hard (and was a conversation starter in Kerala when it released) because they are us. We are them. Or we know someone like them. People we love, good people, decent people, who don’t own their privilege because they don’t realise they are privileged. Baby effectively uses silence to set a scene – the only sounds you hear are the familiar ones that echo in every home - the sizzle of water boiling, the sound of running water, the clank of vessels being washed, the swish of the broom as the women sweep... and Nimisha's face, strained and drawn as all her cheerfulness dissipates in the unending gloom of household drudgery and a husband who doesn't care a whit for her opinions or desires.

A simple tale about one woman's emancipation, The Great Indian Kitchen is nevertheless a scathing testimony to the insidious reach of patriarchy which makes victims of people, irrespective of gender. Her final emancipation is worth cheering for, but this is the fictional story of one woman. The reality for millions of other women is that nothing changes.