When the kitchen becomes irrelevant
I live in a colony with lots of young families, most of them I notice are nuclear units. This means they have a father, mother and one or two children. As both the parents are working, the children are left in the care of a maid or minder. They spend more time with an illiterate or semi-literate person, despite the fact that their own parents are highly qualified and intelligent people. What they pick up from the TV and the limited worldview of these helpers is a disturbing thought. In these work-from-home times and when schools are shut, such homes are chaotic: the parent, mostly the mother, is torn between working on her computer while also supervising the online lessons the children have to take. To buy peace, parents allow their children treats like their favourite food ordered from Swiggy or Zomato, or from those numerous sites that offer ‘nutritious and tasty treats’. So, all day I hear the ‘ding-dong’ of the lift as these goodies are delivered to waiting kids, and often to the parents as well because who has the energy to cook meals that are acceptable to all members of a family?
Cooking each meal in your own kitchen is a dying tradition. Even rarer is the idea of sitting down together at a dining table exchanging jokes, opinions and banter. I hear mums complain that their children will not touch greens and veggies and only want chicken or paneer for their lunch or dinner. How times have changed from the time when we were kids and the question of food preferences was never entertained (except by loving grannies when we visited them). To dodge the boredom of the same lauki, parwal or gobhi and their more hateful cousins, such as shalgam and tinda, we had secret rates of exchange between ourselves. ‘I will eat your lauki today if you eat my shalgam tomorrow’, or something. And we all vowed that when we grew up and ran our own homes, certain veggies would never cross the threshold of our kitchens. I laugh now when we eat precisely all those things we hated as children and try and re-create the taste of that food.
Jokes apart, what I fear is the fallout of handing over our kitchens to food companies that have no interest in healthy and nourishing meals: all they look at is maximising their profit. Yes, the taste is often enhanced by bunging in monosodium glutamate or such chemicals that have been proven to be dangerous for humans, but that is not the only fear I have. It is that many young couples have virtually stopped cooking at home as eating out is both tempting and provides a huge variety of choices. Gone are the days when families sat down together at the table, and if they do, they are busy fiddling with their phones. This includes parents as well as children. I am sure all of you are sent several posts by friends on memes created around the addiction to the mobile phone. But that is the topic for another rant.
When the kitchen becomes irrelevant, out goes the dining table and its warm chatter. The family retreats into individual spaces. This can be the study or bedroom but the joy of a shared table where a mother would lovingly serve a meal she had thoughtfully prepared for everyone has already disappeared in the West and is likely to vanish here in another few decades. The nature of a nuclear unit is that it breaks up into smaller units and finally ends up with one person living a lonely life in a flat. When nothing binds the family together, marriages are treated with scant respect and most households in the US and Europe are now headed by single mums or (less so) by single dads. It is a no-brainer that, given this trend, future generations will not just forget their cousins and aunts and uncles, but even their siblings and parents. This is already happening in another way in developing countries, where immigration has split siblings and one half of the family is barely aware of the other half. The mushrooming of assisted-living facilities in our towns is because they are an attractive option for parents whose children have migrated to other countries and seceded from their natal ties. These are pointers to a future I am thankful I won’t be alive to see but it saddens me and many of my generation, I’m sure.
It is humbling to see how our poor and village communities still keep these ties alive. For the last many months, our driver has been looking after his ‘phupha’ — his father’s sister’s husband. The old man arrived from a village in Bihar with cancer to seek medical treatment in Delhi. He never asked whether his nephew-in-law was willing to shoulder this responsibility because he was secure in the knowledge that he would be cared for. The poor driver has been run off his feet seeking medical assistance and spending time with him as he undergoes painful cycles of chemotherapy. He does grumble but sending his ‘phupha’ back is just not an option he’d consider.
His attitude made me question my own conscience. Would we (with all our education, money and resources) do the same for our ‘phupha’?
And yet we call such people backward!
