My Trysts with Homemaking
I have been getting sermons (necessary and unnecessary) about cooking and managing a household, mostly kitchen, since I have been approaching my 20s. “You should know how to manage the kitchen”, “Career vagaira is fine, you should pursue that, but you should know how to cook”, “what will you do when you get married and go to your ‘sasuraal’? Will you give them short stories instead of ‘poli’ ‘bhaaji’?” Such statements were a regular feature of my conversations with my grandma. Sometimes even with my mother. I used to squirm and make faces at such statements and loath them, wondering what is the big deal? I mean why does it matter so much if a girl cannot make perfectly fluffy and spherical ‘phulkas’ or cannot whip up a special, succinct vegetable dish for her boyfriend’s or husband’s friends or business associates? I have been pondering over these questions and issues related to it. I have not yet got the answer, but I think it somewhere lies in the gender based roles. These roles