The Great Indian Kitchen Malayalam Film Review - A Lesson in Patriarchy and Poor Communication

 After reading many rave reviews and listening to umpteen discussions triggered by it, I finally watched the Malayalam film, “The Great Indian Kitchen”.

The movie follows a young newly-wed couple as they embark on life together. The focus is on the bride who has to adjust to the different way things are done in her in-law’s home than her own.

The primary takeaway of the film is that household chores, particularly cooking and cleaning, is the responsibility of women in Indian families, with no help from the opposite sex. And despite the year being 2021, I sadly have to admit that in most Indian families, this is still the way things are.

Director Jeo Baby succeeds in demonstrating the drudgery and monotony of these chores by repeating the same scenes of chopping vegetables, making dosas, serving food, clearing up the table after a meal and cleaning the dishes, almost to the point of boring the viewer. In fact, these repetitive scenes constitute nearly half of the initial minutes of the movie.

As the movie progresses, the character of the wife, played by Nimisha Sajayan, grows increasingly stifled and irritated under the weight of society’s patriarchal expectations and eventually explodes.

But as I watched the credits roll, what I really wanted to do was enroll this heroine, who is supposedly smart, intelligent and educated, in an interpersonal communications class.

The woman never really makes an effort to communicate her displeasure to any members of the family, not even her husband. Her only attempt at communication is the snide remark she makes about her husband’s table manners when they eat out at a restaurant, something to the effect of “Oh, so you do know table manners”, which is a sarcastic way of implying that he does not use table manners at home. The wife’s remark about her desire for increased foreplay during sexual relations also comes across as critical. 

Criticism and snide remarks rarely amount to actual communication. When you criticize someone, the end result is often them liking you a little less, rather than realizing their own faults and deciding to make changes. More open and honest communication between the spouses might have had a different effect. 

The family portrayed is a small one - consisting of the husband, wife and the husband’s father as the inhabitants of the home for most of the movie. The character of the husband, played by Suraj Venjaramood, is far from menacing, and is portrayed as a loving and kind person. The husband blissfully does yoga or relaxes while the wife cooks and cleans.

“Etta, enne onnu sahaayikkaamo?” (Dear, can you help me?) I don’t hear the wife ask her husband this question anywhere in the film, “The Great Indian Kitchen”!! 

You can’t expect people to be mind-readers. The husband has been living in a home where his mother does everything and he never steps foot in the kitchen. If the wife would like to see a change in that behavior, I believe that she should let him know what her expectations are. And if the husband does not respond by making the changes the wife demands, then she is free to leave the relationship or do whatever else she feels like she needs to do. Keeping quiet rarely gets someone to change their ways. 

Overall, this movie is groundbreaking in that it addresses the archaic patriarchal system that is followed in most Indian homes, where the kitchen is the domain of the women, and men rarely, if ever step foot in there. The maid culture in India, where almost every middle or upper middle class family avails the service of maids for daily kitchen and household chores accentuates this problem. Even many mothers dissuade their sons from entering the kitchen, while pushing their daughters to help out in cooking and cleaning. It is high time our society moved toward a household where all members of the family contribute in performing all household chores. I loved the premise of the movie, though I wish it depicted more of an effort from the wife to try to talk to her husband about things. 

I hope the young women watching this film would remember that it is important to communicate their desires and expectations to their husbands and the members of the households that they are married into, before giving up. I agree that talking to someone who has no interest in changing their ways is not going to accomplish much, though we get the satisfaction of having made every effort to make the relationship work before walking out.