Now that we have all learned to bake banana bread and stir-fry frittata during the lockdown, maybe we should ask ourselves why, if the kitchen is such an important place for both men and women, was it hardly ever seen before the pandemic? Where was it all along except in Instagram, where designer kitchens are presided over by even more designer hashtag-owners?
Calcutta is food-obsessed. Yet even a century earlier in a prosperous Bengali household, the kitchen would be hidden away. It would compete with the other most-neglected, least-ventilated places: the bathroom and the toilet, which would often be separate (for ritualistic sanitation rules that defined what was impure), the