I have a passion for NOT cooking

Image Courtesy: "Khao Suey" by Samita Nanda

You know how some things just isn’t your thing; yet, people try and convince you or judge you and become all sermonizing about it. That is how I feel about cooking. It’s not that I don’t know how – anyone can do it with a little help from YouTube. I just don’t want to. It is strange because I like eating good food, always ready to explore a new eatery. Yet, on the few occasions I cook, it has to be simple and fast.

So you can imagine my absolute shock at the announcement of an all India lock down on March 23rd. It wasn’t the confinement to my home for 21 days that bothered me but the absence of my part-time cook that took the wind out of my sails that evening. But like a good Indian woman, I shook off my discomfort and met my nemesis head-on for full 60 days. I did it (with huge contribution by my daughter & a lot of help from my son) and to my surprise, with much enthusiasm and love but by the time I hit the 60-day mark, I was done. That’s when I wondered how my mother did it for most of her life? Simple-it was her thing, not mine.

And that ladies and gents is the genesis of this piece.

“It is odd that how low cooking ranks in the estimation of many academically minded people where the tendency to consider this subject is suitable primarily either for girls who cannot make the grade for a university or for those who intend to become teachers” noted Constance Spry in her 1200 page magnum opus of recipes and cooking tips in 1956. My grandfather was one such academic minded person, who made no bones about looking down upon anyone who dedicated their life to housework, cooking, childcare and other such “frivolous” activities. The sad part is he never replaced it with any other idea that would motivate someone to do something different. Not that he didn’t try by quizzing the general knowledge of his grandchildren at the lunch table, but it ended with his bowl of ice cream or mango or peaches with cream.

But his disdain rubbed off on me as I am clearly one of those “Indian” women who view cooking as sheer drudgery, quite odd considering my mom made it her life. I can’t say if I believed that cooking was a demeaning pursuit for women who wanted to get on in a man’s world or the forced role on women to cook was off-putting. Either way I refused to spend any time in the kitchen, much to my mother’s chagrin.

“First you sink into his arms, then your arms end up in his sink”, perfectly sums up the mindset of many generations of men and women and unsuccessfully my mother tried to thrust this mindset upon me too, mind you, not chosen by me. When I was young, my poor mother would spend hours cooking stuff to appeal to all our taste buds. My grandfather couldn’t handle spices or garlic in his food, my father couldn’t eat a meal without potatoes, my cousin had a sweet tooth and my brother loved all things made by our mother. I grew up seeing her toil hard to meet the approval of her in-laws through her cooking so it’s not surprising that she lived by the adage, “A way to a man’s heart is through the stomach”, and it wasn’t exclusive for romantic love for her because my father was already in love with her. But this sentiment is deeply problematic at another level; because men, like women, do have other intellectual and emotional needs beyond food.

As a young girl, it seemed a colossal waste of time when I could be singing, dancing or running around in the world of imaginary characters. So, my training in the kitchen started with helping my mother while she baked cakes or needed help to setup the table for a house party. It usually ended in disappointment for her and boredom for me. “What will become of this girl” was repeated often, sharing her worries about the condition I would be in when I got married. This enormous pressure on women to not just cook but also love cooking continued to bother me, largely because it’s thrust upon us, taken for granted, and relegated to a woman’s only job, and in the social pecking order it was right down there at the bottom with most women being embarrassed or apologetic about being “just a housewife”.

Unconsciously, she continues to measure my achievements through the lens of food and proudly tells her friends of my one & only signature dish (Khao Suey) I make to pass me off as a “good cook”. I often wonder if she will ever accept that her daughter is anything but a culinary queen who relies on either stocking up her freezer with ready-to-heat&eat goodies or employ someone to feed her and her family. My philosophy is that we eat to live and not live to eat. But I was guilt-ridden admitting that I don’t like cooking and our magazine ads and TV commercials churned out stereotypical patterns of dad at work, mum at home with the kids, and that was how things should stay. Additionally, if I shunned women’s work then I had to justify replacing it with something else that was regarded “worthwhile” by society. My disinterest in participating in the kitchen or trying out new recipes was soon interpreted as incapability or lack of enterprise. I was not a career woman, so what is my excuse for not wanting to be the perfect chef/cleaner/caregiver/seamstress etc.? The evidence pointed towards laziness or ineptitude, perhaps both?

I struggled with this question myself but have finally made peace with the fact that it is ok to not like cooking and neither be career-minded. Which is brought out powerfully in Brandon Sanderson’s empowering quote, “Why is my place in the world defined by my role? Shouldn’t my strength lie not in my role, whatever it may be, but in the power to choose that role?” So my self-esteem is not hurt anymore when I declare that I don’t like cooking or have no ambition to climb the corporate ladder. Instead, I quietly tell myself that I am good at expressing myself and making people believe in themselves through my stories, articles and counseling, which is good enough for me as your love for cooking or corporate ambition is for you.

This piece would be incomplete without addressing the patriarchal distribution of gender duties (which badly needs updating), especially for many generations of men and women who raised their sons and daughters to adopt it in unconscious, covert ways. Adam worked outside delved in the fields, and Eve minded the hearth, housekeeping, cooking, childcare, etc. But now Eve also works outside the house, so its time to refresh the proverb to “The way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach” or “First you sink into her arms, then your arms end up in her sink”. I know many would gawk at the idea but is it really so bizarre to share domestic responsibilities based on aptitude & passion rather than gender? I know that the square peg that I am is the right fit for the life I have carved out for myself. And my daughter and son proudly claim that I have managed to pass this legacy on to them that has helped them tame any specters of stereotypes that they encounter.

But coming back to the main point of this piece, cooking is not therapeutic or a joyous activity for me and anyone who thinks that a woman who can’t cook is as useless as a man who can’t fix things needs to re-examine their mindset.

Inspired by:

“Why a woman’s place in in the kitchen” by Rosie Boycott

“Yes I am an Indian woman and NO I do not love to cook” by Rhea Anglesey

“I cook ‘coz I’m expected to- don’t like my cooking? Cook your own or whatever…” by Kiran Jhamb