Why I, a woman, man or others, do not want to cook everyday
Jayu, could you make the dosa today?
Roll chapatis today.
Sambar is so simple. I am tired. Why can’t you make it today?
You are 19. Sufficiently grown up to learn to cook with oil. Here, fry some vadai for the pongal today.
Do you know I learnt most of the kitchen theatrics by observing my mom. Learn to observe, you. I may not be able to teach you everything.
Jayu, when you go to that aunty’s place be polite and offer to help.
An aunt: Maya spent the weekend at her aunt’s. Oh! so much praise she received for being so adjusting and helpful at the kitchen. I am very proud of my girl!
Beyond these biased preachings I grew up loving to cook. It is mentally exhilarating. Working the mind to focus on prioritising kitchen tasks and developing cooking strategies for two hours at a stretch is almost like coming out of a meditation. In the end there is also the rewarding healthy home-cooked food I like.
In an ongoing study on kitchens, we found that women or men who cook, on an average spend about 6 hours a day in the kitchen. This includes cooking, casual snacking, chatting, tea making and tea-drinking. Beyond these we tend to pass by the kitchen to fill the water bottle, wash a few vessels, access the fridge, assess the stock, etc. The 2020 lockdown exemplified our close relationship with the kitchen — which is often provided the smallest floor space area if we don’t consider the balcony and utility for a comparison.
However the lockdown also taught me about how I spent my energy— mental and physical. It introduced me to a new and unfamiliar feeling — hatred towards cooking.
Everyday after cooking I felt drained. Drained of my mental and physical energy. I struggled to concentrate on work after. I started to stock ready-to-eats. My body physically showed resistance to entering the kitchen. My brain was exhausted to even voice its restrain.
I was confused. I enjoyed cooking. Sometimes I used to find it as a getaway. Enjoyed buying the ingredients. Mixing them to the flavour the family preferred. Kitchen as a space used to not bother me much. I was not conscious of the amount of time I spend in that space. But now all that have turned topsy-turvy. I needed courage to enter the kitchen. I had to make convincing arguments on why my husband or I needed to cook that day. When what we really needed was to spend all that time and energy on our work and towards self optimizatiton.
In short I finally realised the economics of drudgery in cooking and routine housework.
There is sufficient discourse bringing to light the impacts of burnout on health and self. It is the mental and physical exhaustion we experience because of overworking, working under stress or working insignificantly without acknowledgement or appreciation. Unsurprisingly burnout conversations in the context of housework is not appreciated. Which is why I feel shame and humiliation to ‘confess’ that I buy ready-to-eat meals or order-in once a day. I had to build up courage to ‘expose’ myself in this prose. As I type this Medium post, my shoulders are stiff, I am shaking my legs in anxiety and my mouth is dry. I am internally questioning myself, whether have I gone wrong? Could I have made it work — everyday cooking I mean? Am I falling short? Somewhere in me I feel guilty in spending on a cook or ordering in from outside. Expenditures I could have saved. But at what cost? Our work productivity? Our energy, our passion?
At this juncture let us pause for a moment to reflect about the human potential. Our brain is the powerhouse with which we are able to think. Think about thinking. Talk. Act. Innovate. One could say that the purpose of our lives is exploiting our brain’s potential. Using up the human potential is what will help uplift our societies. And everyday cooking is currently stopping me, and many, from using up our potential on non-mundane tasks. Yes cooking is a needed survival skill which many of certain gender types are yet to learn. Nevertheless, typing from a stage of affordance, is it necessary to exploit the mundane task-oriented skill at the cost of a quality time spent?
I have often wondered. We have robots cleaning spaces. How about robots that can cook? Internet is filled with recipes. So all one has to do is feed in personalised recipes or a weblink to favourite recipes. Make a choice for the robot to cook. And we know that robots can learn. So they will learn out kitchen space, our preferences and many more! Such a robot, if made, may be easy to scale globally! Additionally, how about building self-cleaning kitchen counters?
Smart innovation in the home improvement space is nascent to nil. But one can dream! Or maybe if homemakers were given an opportunity, they would have long before made a head start in this direction.
Until then, I side with, “Say no to drudgery. Guilt can be overcome.”
