If you want to understand how to become better allies to people with disabilities, then join us at Embracing All Abilities: Including People with Disabilities at Work.
A husband able to cook well is a blessing. And whom do we thank? His mother, of course, who was so farsighted on your account!
Ruchika Thukral writes in her heart-felt, hilarious piece here about how stressful it is to cook with her husband. She says, “My husband likes to think he can cook, but to be very frank, his culinary skills hit rock bottom when Maggi was banned”, and asks why mothers don’t teach their sons to cook.
Well, try this for size and stress: 1. what if your husband knew not only to cook, 2. but cook to international chef standards, 3. can whip up a mean german chocolate cake with 3 or 4 delectable layers, 4. and his own lasagna from scratch, (no shop-bought dough sheets for him, no sirree!) 5. and turn out a feast of a 5-course South Indian meal for some 20 people, 6. all on his own, no less! 7. while you are a functional, because-its-necessary cook, simply intent on putting out a nutritious, basic meal that keeps stomachs filled and the family well-fed.
BUTTTT… and as you can see it’s a big but here (mine of course,), he is the primary income earner and I am the primary ‘cooker’. I’ve also started to earn, and he also pitches in with housekeeping and cooking.
However having a husband who knows his creative way around the kitchen and is a better cook than oneself, means one gets to hear this pointed out much of the time by most people in hidden ways.
My Kitchen Counter – Vegetables for Sambhar
I don’t think people mean real harm, but the stereotyping and the assumption of gender-based roles seems to be so deeply conditioned, that anything different is a disturbance. It takes us all out of our comfort zones.
So when guests come visiting, and they find that the husband is at the stove (he cooks better for larger numbers, remember?!), and the wife has cleaned and spruced up the house and is shepherding the kid, or even that she has gone out to get bread and eggs, it is prime time content for teasing comments and commentary that border on a little bit of accusation.
Let’s say all this is manageable and I just shrug to any such comment, and he retorts to any witticisms. And perhaps with time, stereotypes and comfort zones are changing too.
BUTTTT… an even bigger but this time, still mine; imagine the tragicomedy when,
(He may be right, but she wants to do and learn it her way, but of course!) There are way too many buts in this kitchen, methinks.
And she has to give continuous reminders, that advice and solutions are best received and accepted when solicited.
According to season and state of equanimity, these reminders take on different flavours – patient or impatient, angry, tender, peaceful, irritated, wry, humourous, ironical, satirical, sarcastic, accepting…. Spices of life and all that!
As I write, I realise one major inner shift that has happened for me over years of practice and self-examination – that I have given myself permission to be a functional cook.
I have given myself permission to be the woman who will happily outsource this activity whenever possible, but also do it with sincerity when it is my responsibility.
I have given myself permission to relate to every event in the kitchen – (every sizzle that I hear, every squish / every firmness that I feel, every colour that I see, every seasoning that I taste, saltiness that I smell every time),
With my whole being and my truest intention, and not just as something I am obliged to do.
And recently, this inner permission that I gave myself has started to manifest outside as well, as lesser expectations and more acceptance! Thank the lord above that this cooking trigger for stress has reduced considerably in size.
Plus I deeply thank my mother-in-law for teaching her son right along with her daughters, to be super self reliant and efficient (even excellent) with cooking and all housekeeping skills!
Image source: shutterstock
Yoga therapist in the Krishnamacharya tradition who also adapts Reiki, chanting, life coaching & Ayurvedic practices in her healing spaces. She is committed to building collectives and communities that have the praxis of Yoga at their read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
As parents, we put a piece of our hearts out into this world and into the custody of the teachers at school and tuition and can only hope and pray that they treat them well.
Trigger Warning: This speaks of physical and emotional violence by teachers, caste based abuse, and contains some graphic details, and may be triggering for survivors.
When I was in Grade 10, I flunked my first preliminary examination in Mathematics. My mother was in a panic. An aunt recommended the Maths classes conducted by the Maths sir she knew personally. It was a much sought-after class, one of those classes that you signed up for when you were in the ninth grade itself back then, all those decades ago. My aunt kindly requested him to take me on in the middle of the term, despite my marks in the subject, and he did so as a favour.
Math had always been a nightmare. In retrospect, I wonder why I was always so terrified of math. I’ve concluded it is because I am a head in the cloud person and the rigor of the step by step process in math made me lose track of what needed to be done before I was halfway through. In today’s world, I would have most probably been diagnosed as attention deficit. Back then we had no such definitions, no such categorisations. Back then we were just bright sparks or dim.
'Sania denied fairy-tale ending: suffers loss in AUS open final' says a news headline. Is this the best we can do? Is it a fitting tribute to one of the finest athletes we have in our country?
Sania Mirza bid an emotional and tearful farewell to her Grand Slam journey as a runner up in the mixed doubles final. Headlines read –
“Sania Mirza breaks down in tears while recalling glorious career after defeat in Grand Slam’
“Sania denied fairy-tale ending: suffers loss in AUS open final”
Please enter your email address