Random guest at dinner: Which ones did you cook, bhabi?
Woman: None, husband cooks better than me. This is his spread.
Guest: Oh (in a forlorn tone, because the world cannot be saved now).
On a camping trip not too long ago, as I was plucking tent pegs off the ground while my husband cooked eggs on a little electrical stove, a male friend made a snide remark about how it was apparent who wore the pants in the relationship.
It took me a while to properly register why there was so much spite in how he said it.
Despite all the big talk and bigger empowerment projects, it is still almost criminally punishable for Bengali men to venture outside the strict gender roles of society.
As if men cooking and women doing physical work are things that shake the very base of all that is good, and must always be rebuked and snarled at and stopped at any cost.
God forbid men and women interchange roles to the point that society as a whole cannot find its way back to its precious roots -- men will find themselves aimlessly walking the streets of their beloved society wishing women had just stayed inside and had kept it simple. Oh, what horror.
Regardless of how “forward thinking” you are, or how “free” the women in your household are, there always is that faint line in the middle that you are not allowed to cross.
Women are free to work, as long as they are great cooks. After all, how else will you impress your friends and convince them you have chosen an excellent life partner and built a great home, if not by throwing a feast cooked by your wife. Somehow, such skill is now the measure of your marriage.
Sadly, in our quest to bring the woman outside her white-chalked walls, all we seem to have done is stretch her very thin across the threshold.
Women have been granted the freedom to work and be outside, but still seem to be stuck with their age-old roles of home-making. Just as in our mothers’ time it was common to see women as only home-makers, now, it is common to see women walk tightropes between work and home, and live an impossible life of exhaustion and quite often burnout.
While women help men bring in the bread, men in return do not seem to be too inclined to help them bake it. I once had a colleague who woke up at five in the morning to cook for the day, before heading out to work because her husband did not like stale food. It’s preposterous to say the least.
Just as in our mothers’ time it was common to see women as only home-makers, now, it is common to see women walk tightropes between work and home, and live an impossible life of exhaustion
Women are not born with hidden magic that enables them to cook better, nor are they more resilient to the heat in the kitchen. If cooking can be taught to girls, it can be taught to boys as well.
There are exceptions of course, but too many times it is the woman who needs to rush home and get dinner ready after an equally demanding day at work, while her counterpart is allowed to properly relax, watch TV, and do “his thing.” Because, well, men need their time to unwind.
Too many times, it is only the woman who is expected to be responsible of taking care of children or sick parents, or cook at dinners. Something as basic as changing a baby’s diaper or making his own tea is an impossible task to most Bengali men.
This notion that working the same 40 hours at a similar desk job is somehow harder for men, and that they “need” to unwind more than a woman, is as ridiculous as it sounds here.
On the optimistic side, we can hope that this tendency to give men the “waive-all” card for house chores is beginning to fade. As nuclear families with both primaries working become more common, so does the need for men to step up their home game.
As women become more aware of their needs and wants, they are beginning to realise they don’t have to compromise till their backs hurt any more, and that men can be treated as functioning adults in a house.
There, thankfully, are some households where men help cook and clean and attend to a baby, where women fix busted appliances and build IKEA furniture.
Gender roles of the 50s no longer apply to today’s world, and some households are beginning to realise the potential benefit in moving away from predefined gender roles. These households are not impossible to find, they are simply very, very rare. But the mere existence of such households is a sign of better balanced days coming.
So, here’s to getting those kitchen shackles off women and throwing the kitchen doors open to all members of the family. Maybe instead of buying your mother flowers on the next Mother’s Day, help her cook a meal. Maybe instead of simply expecting your wife to cook for 50 people, show some respect and help her.
Come on men, we all know you can do more than make toast. Let’s begin changing the world by getting one dirty sock off the floor at a time.
Nudrat Lohani Nabi is a freelance contributor, writing from Sydney.