Jan 21, 2021 By Sreejith Mullappilly
After watching Jeo Baby s film entitled The Great Indian Kitchen , I failed to recall the names of the characters in it. So, I instantly checked the information on Wikipedia, only to find Nimisha Sajayan s character being described there as the wife , and Suraj Venjaramoodu s as the husband . They are newlyweds. For the bulk of the film, the wife describes the husband as etta , and the latter calls the former edi .
Most Indian families probably function like the household in Baby s film. A household where the head of the family always looks at the daughter-in-law with a male gaze. The old man cannot even walk a few steps to take his toothbrush, so he tells the daughter-in-law to get it for him. It makes her wonder what am I supposed to do here other than doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, and running the kitchen.
A still from ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’
A new film shows that it is individual insurrections that could prove critical in challenging hegemony
About a month after actor-politician Kamal Haasan’s party manifesto said Tamil Nadu should recognise housework as labour and pay homemakers, the Malayalam film,
The Great Indian Kitchen, has hit our screens. Given the brisk debate the manifesto stirred, the film couldn’t have been timed better by listing in excruciating, exquisite minutiae everything a woman does at home, it seems to prove the case for payment many times over. Yet, that is hardly its intention. Its canvas is much larger, more elemental. It is arguably the most starkly ‘feminist’ Indian film of recent times, making its point with deadly stillness and accuracy.