The invisibilisation of our kitchen katha
I’m hoping that my film ‘Mrs’ will bring sensitivity towards women who are toiling in the kitchen 24x7
Streaming on ZEE5, Sanya Malhotra in ‘Mrs’, an adaptation of the Malayalam film ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’.
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I come from a family of foodies. My mother would take pride in rustling out innumerable dishes for everyone in the family. But now I realise the unfairness of it all. And I also realise my own complicity. How women, even the educated ones, seek validation by being compliant. As a teenager and as a young woman in a joint family, even in a nuclear setup after marriage, women are constantly seeking validation. I was that woman, doing things against my own grain because I didn’t know any better.
When I got married, my progressive and well-to-do in-laws had helpers cooking elaborate meals. Yet, the first question my mother-in-law asked when she met me was, “Do you know how to cook?” I said no. She beamed as she responded, “Great, we will teach you our own way of cooking.” I never learnt either this or the other way of cooking.
I saw the Malayalam film ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ during Covid in 2021 when I was in isolation. I was stunned at its simplicity, and also its craft. It is a simple story, vignettes from somebody’s home. But after I saw it, I wished my mother had seen it and also my father and husband. I knew though that not many would watch it, as it is a difficult film, and because films are usually for entertainment, at least for a large part of the audience.
Three months later, I got a message from my agent asking if I had seen ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’. By then, I was already known as the ‘Adaptation Queen’ because I was doing a lot of adaptations — ‘Aarya’, ‘Grahan’, ‘Shastri Virudh Shastri’. I knew that this was no casual query. I immediately told her, no questions asked, please tell them that I would love to adapt ‘GIK’ for the hinterland.
I could see the possibilities of what the adaptation could be turned into in a North Indian setup. There were so many nuances that one could bring about from one’s own life in terms of dialogues or characters.
When I wrote the first adaptation, a few things were very clear. Like the origins or placing of this family whose characters will inhabit the movie. The family name is Kumar, which could be from anywhere in the North. The film never mentions any neighbourhood or city.
There was so much potential to adapt ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ to the context that we come from, particularly the dynamics of North Indian culture.
I grew up in a family where the patriarchs were all great cooks. They would put food in their mouth and tell what is wrong with the dish — if jeera was burnt or the masala needed more sauteing. But there was no appreciation for the efforts women were putting in the house. There was always invisibilisation of household chores. So, that came naturally.
Also, there’s a lot of dialoguebaazi in the North. The humour is very convoluted and crooked. I borrowed a lot of things from memory. That is what made writing this script quite exciting and scary. A lot of conversations between Richa and her mother-in-law about cooking are the actual conversations I have had with my mother. Like, she would always say that the way you chop vegetables and its size decide its taste.
A North Indian setup also gave me the leeway to subtly bring in the caste and class dynamics. The house help, obviously, is from a higher caste as is allowed to cook, but is certainly from a different class. In one scene, the maid is shown cooking even during her periods because Richa has been banned from entering the kitchen during her periods. I have heard this in my childhood — a fire burns every impurity, so the maid can enter the kitchen, but Richa can’t. How convenient!
When you’re borrowing heavily from real life, you’re also worried that you’re calling out a lot of things which may offend the people around you. But, thankfully, my mother is quite proud, though she and one of my aunts said that they knew where all this was coming from, “We could see your father and many more from the family in the male characters”.
That precisely makes ‘Mrs’ so universal, since all these characters are around us all the time. The kind of messages I’ve been getting prove that it is ghar-ghar ki kahani, which is unfortunate. The husband/father/brother may be working 12-14 hours, but the wife/woman isn’t sitting idle either. There was also a specific reason why we chose to portray Divakar as a male gynaecologist to show the dichotomy. He understands female anatomy, but not the psyche or the soul.
We could bring a lot more nuances through the new adaptation. The characters are all educated, speak very well. They have resources to hire help, and yet they choose not to. Because it’s presumed that household chores are the woman’s job. ‘Mrs’ throws light on a harsh reality that progressiveness is not directly proportional to the degrees you get. It comes from basic empathy.
This kitchen katha is happening in a lot of well-to-do families too. But we all live in denial because it’s convenient. It’s easy. We don’t have to face it. That is why ‘Mrs’ hits hard and bothers you quietly. The response has been overwhelming, even from women in the US, UK, Canada and Singapore.
Men have found it triggering. So have a lot of women. I think a lot of men are actually not watching because of that fear. Somewhere or the other, they may realise how compliant they have been, and this could be their story too.
I’m hoping that the film will shift the needle a bit where there will be some sensitivity towards the caregiver or the provider or the one who’s toiling in the kitchen. And also there’s some respect for the drudgery that women do 24x7.
— The writer is the script and dialogue writer of ‘Mrs’
(As told to Renu Sud Sinha)
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