As a doctor and a feminist I may seem an unlikely survivor of domestic abuse. But The Great Indian Kitchen, playing on Neestream, shows us how insidiously abuse closets itself within the ‘respectable’ middle class.
Under Jeo Baby’s smooth and unhurried direction, Nimisha’s understated portrayal of the unnamed protagonist holds a mirror to so many of us who have lived the film’s events, in ways subtle or striking. Agile camerawork and meticulous sound design carry us into her daily, green-bean-chopping, mustard-spluttering tedium. Suraj brings to life the soft-spoken, passive-aggressive husband who has only to glance at the wife to make us shudder. In a revolutionary first, Mruduladevi’s lyrics bring to Malayalam cinema the enveloping melodies of the Paluva language. Creative subtitling keeps the essence of the film accessible to audiences who don’t speak Malayalam or who may be unfamiliar with the subtle cultural references made in the screenplay.
The film’s cinematographic and technical achievements aren’t, of course, what have made it the subject of such fervid debate amongst Malayalis globally. Overnight, every Malayali has become a film critic.
Most reviews and comments laud the film as a feminist social critique and accept that it realistically portrays the patriarchy’s oft hidden yet profound and paralysing grip on women’s lives. TGIK has evoked predictable outrage from many men as well as ‘good women’— for ‘exaggerating those little things in normal family life that should be ignored so as not to cause aggravation’. All that abuse ‘comes from love’! ‘Loving elders’ will always ‘protect’ the woman and although she might find such control stifling, she should be grateful! The film does anticipate such criticism, and highlights the perils of the subtle yet pervasive abuse masquerading as loving protection.
More worrisome are responses from apparently progressive commentators who label the portrayal anachronistic, or blame women for supposedly not taking a stand. It’s these last two points of view that I seek to address.
Granted, the extent of domestic slavery portrayed in the film goes beyond the norm for today’s average middle-class Malayali household. But that’s only thanks to (1) widespread and easy access to domestic help – both manual and technological – in such families and (2) the increasing number of nuclear families, especially in the cities.
I grew up in a city, both my parents working full-time. We had domestic help, and over the years electric appliances too, to lighten the load. My mother is an intelligent, outspoken and articulate woman. She brought me up to believe in, and to fight for, gender equality. Nevertheless, to this day, she has always been the one responsible for running the household and has in fact always done most of the chores herself. My father would never consider his daughters less worthy than their male peers in any way. But alas, I have never seen him bat an eyelid about the totally unequal division of labour between himself and his wife! He has simply become used to her stepping into the ideal of the all-sacrificing mother, ingrained in her from childhood. They are but creatures of their time; amid their everyday actions and inactions, a patriarchal culture amplifies itself.
When I was just 19, I thought I had found my life partner. He had revolutionary far-left ideas, including on gender issues, and his proclamations of those ideas dazzled me. I ended up marrying him, despite the concerned protestations of friends and family who could see through his façade. The abuse had started long before we even got married.
In TGIK, the protagonist is made to apologise for criticising her husband’s table manners. Apologising, begging and pleading for forgiveness was a nightly bedtime ritual for me. In the early days, my sins included winning college union elections and academic prizes. My crimes became more egregious as the years went by – I was ‘too dark’, ‘too ugly’, had ‘refused to convert to his religion’ (although never in my life have I been affiliated to any religion), had not ‘brought dowry’ (by this time he had realised that ‘he was worth crores’). My parents became ‘too poor’ and also ‘low caste’. The intensity of the punishments grew with the severity of the crimes; verbal and emotional abuse became peppered with physical abuse.
His eldest brother and family lived in the ancestral home with his parents. From dawn to dusk, my then sister-in-law single-handedly toiled in a filthy, smoky kitchen not dissimilar to TGIK’s, without even the freedom to properly feed herself and her children, lest she irk the in-laws who maintained a tight grasp on the purse strings. This indenture was flaunted as an ideal arrangement worth emulating. I was told proud stories of how my revolutionary hero had shown his older sister her place, dragging her by her hair out of the living room where she had been seated with ‘legs crossed’ (a sin for a woman).
I was a doctor with an assured income, I was brought up to be a courageous feminist and I strove to be truly fearless. Unlike most Indian parents including those of the film’s protagonist, my family would have supported me wholeheartedly, had I decided to leave. For 11 long years I put up with levels of abuse that today I myself find hard to believe. With love, I could change things – or at least that’s what the films I had watched and the stories I had heard had seemed to suggest. More importantly, I had internalised all those accusations, I had begun to believe that I was indeed guilty as accused, and all the abuse was proportionate penance. I had been almost completely dehumanised by the relentless criticism, my self-esteem had been crushed and trampled as if I were mere dust on the ground.
I saw no escape; in fact, I never made any serious attempt to escape, until the threat to my life itself became tangible. And that’s why I can empathise with women who are accused of putting up with abuse, why I could never blame someone for not trying to walk out on the patriarchy. In the thick of it, it’s not as easy as one may think.
Despite my having reflected deeply on my experiences, the film brought back - along with many painful memories - intense shame, guilt and anger. For 16 years I have been trying to rationalise and forgive myself for putting up with all that for all that long, for not breaking free earlier, for failing to be true to the values that I’ve held so dear. And slowly but surely, I am getting there. But TGIK jolted my conscience once again, reminded me of my responsibility to millions of my sisters in the same house where I once dwelt, of my duty to hammer unyieldingly at its walls. However small each of our blows, those kitchen walls will fall under the might of millions.