There is a different aroma about my kitchen today. As I sit back and think about it, I realize how much the kitchen has become a part of my mundane existence. The early morning walks to the kitchen to prepare tiffin, the several hours of grilling myself in the kitchen to prepare the lunches and dinners and oh, of course the tea and coffee. I remember how the kitchen smelt the same for the past several ages. Generations of great grandmothers and grandmothers and mothers have used the same spices and everything nice in different proportions to suit the taste buds of the family.
As I conjure up images of my immediate distant female relatives, I realize that the kitchen had been an integral part of their lives, too. Perhaps, their identity. Every article in the kitchen spoke the life story of a woman. As if the kitchen is her chassis. I remember how my mother and grandmother ground chillies and other spices to fine powder and added them to flavour and texture the various stews. I now realize that those spices were similar to a woman’s role in household too.
Does not a woman add beauty and grace to her father’s or husband’s house? Does she not function like a chilli, letting off slight snide remarks, invoking desires or despite in her man’s heart? And, did not too much spice made the uncles’ eyes water? How the ladies rushed to get to some sugar. Sugar. Spice. Equivalent of Woman. 5 letters and enough congruency. If anyone was sick, he or she was forced to gulp down glasses of turmeric milk.
Did not turmeric reflect a woman’s role to be the care taker and healer in a household? The mint juice that we were served in summers to quench our parched throats serves as a reminder that a woman is expected to function like a coolant. She should be there to satiate the needs of her family. A woman is expected to be calm and composed. A woman with too much heat within herself is bound to lose respect in the society.
A woman is as essential as the tea. She flavours the life of her household just as the tea leaves flavour the milk. Too much and too less are harmful to the health of her survival. Above all, a woman’s role to provide food to everyone in the house proves her position as the nurturer of the family and yet, is treated like the extra food that is destined for the dustbin.
There is so much about the kitchen that resembles the life of a woman. Her conduct, her ethics, her role and her life. So much that it has now become pretty difficult to differentiate a woman from a kitchen. As I think about it, my olfactory senses are stimulated by the strong smell that is coming from the kitchen. I know it doesn’t smell like the food cooked by my mother or some aunt. As the smell comes nearer and nearer, I look up with gleaming eyes and thank my husband for cooking the food that night.
-by Sonakshi Srivastava
