Hunger, recipe to fight back

A familiar kitchen katha! Women chop, cook, serve and wait on the table to get their report cards. Men shout instructions — chutney should be hand-ground and not mixie-made, roti should be served straight from the tawa, biryani cooked in dumpukht style, not pressure-cooked; they eat and leave without acknowledging the effort that goes inside the kitchen!

Depending on their mood, mutton or chicken arrives with clear instructions — mutton curry for night, chicken biryani for lunch, etc, etc. Mercifully, director Arati Kadav spares us the sharabi-kebabi husband and shudh-shakahari wife binary.

In ‘Mrs’, the Hindi adaptation of the acclaimed 2021 Malayalam film ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’, newly married Richa (Sanya Malhotra) tries hard to adjust to the ways of her marital home. Soon, the free-spirited girl, who loves to dance, feels trapped in the patriarchal household where women toil round-the-clock to keep the home and hearth going while the men — husband Diwakar Kumar (Nishant Dahiya), a gynaecologist, and father-in-law Ashwin Kumar (Kanwaljit Singh) — need to be waited on from morning till night.

Richa heads to the kitchen from day one as her husband believes that “kitchen is the solution of every problem”. Mother-in-law Meena (Aparna Ghoshal) mechanically carries out the chores, washing, cleaning, cooking, laying out the chappals for her husband to get down from the bed, preparing jeera water to ease his constipation.

The plot, too, would have been constipated had it not been for Kadav’s nuanced storytelling skills. She might have had a tried and tested template to fall back on, but she and her writers, Harman Baweja and Anu Singh Choudhary, have incorporated cultural and religious elements specific to the region to make it their own. As a result, ‘Mrs’ comes across as a fresh concept.

The first half is quite restrained, focusing on Richa’s struggles as she tries to strike a balance between her duty of being a perfect bahu and retaining her identity. Food is the star character. The camera hovers over pakoras dancing in sizzling oil, rotis puffing up on a gas burner, curries simmering in slow fire, capturing each dish with tantalising details.

But food soon turns out to be an agent of oppression, a gender divider. The poison of patriarchy creeps in.

Diwakar’s remark, “you smell like the kitchen, the sexiest smell in the world”, soon stoops to the level of “you stink like the kitchen”, and that is the trigger for Richa to find her foothold. Her act of rebellion is delightfully dramatic. And that is the only piece of out-of-character drama in this family saga.

Each emotion, each emotional outburst is otherwise measured. Subtlety is Kadav’s strong point and she uses it to her advantage. She would rather use metaphors to convey the deeper meaning. A leaking kitchen sink to denote Richa’s crumbling marriage, accumulating dirty water in the bucket as a metaphor for toxicity piling up, the concept of prime numbers — indivisible except by 1 and the number itself — to evoke the power in women.

‘Mrs’ shows the mirror to patriarchy, but never ever does its tone get preachy. Nor does it get loud to hammer a point. Kadav just makes you witness the life of a woman trapped in a patriarchal setup. Witness and think.

Sanya nails every scene, every emotion — when she is happy, confused, vulnerable, stubborn and, finally, courageous enough to walk out. Nishant as the mild-mannered, misogynistic husband has done a good job. Kanwaljit’s scowls are enough to make you hate him whenever he appears on screen. Aparna Ghoshal as Richa’s overworked mother-in-law evokes empathy. Each one is honest to their part, including a cousin (Varun Badola) and an aunt (Lovleen Mishra).

Richa’s stage performance in the end gives out a happy vibe. And as for Diwakar, he does what he does best, patronising his Mrs No. 2 who offers him a slightly burnt roti with, “Pehli roti aksar jal jati hai, dusri sahi banti hai”. That’s food for thought!