Abstract:
‘A Kitchen in the Corner of the House’ is an outstanding story that concentrates on the experiences of women. It highlights diverse abstract themes such as liberation of women, position of women in the past and the present, symbols of freedom and renaissance of women. This paper is an attempt to highlight patriarchal culture portrayed in the story. It depicts the pathetic situation of the women in the society who had been kept under control for centuries together. It traces the shadowed existence of women, virtually living in a small, dark kitchen, unheeded by the patriarchal power, the father-in-law. It also offers an unabashed look at who women are, who they wish they were, and the selves of which some are only dimly aware and others not at all.
Key Words: Patriarchy, significance, spatial, freedom, confinement, authority.
Ambai is the pen name of C.S. Lakshmi, who was born in 1944. She became well known for her Tamil novel Andhi Maalai, which means Twilight, and it was published in 1966. It won her the Kalaimagal Narayanaswamy Aiyar Prize, and she also was critically praised for her Siragukal Muriyum short story, Wings will be broken, which was published in 1967. She is also well known for her feminist perspective in much of her writings. ‘A Kitchen in the corner of the house’ was one such story, published in 1988 Lakshmi Holmstrom, a well known translator expressed her opinion on Ambai's work with these words:
“Ambai uses examples of food and cooking to highlight certain themes in her work: frames and boundaries; order, control and power relations within boundaries, and pleasures outside them.”
This is indeed a very insightful commentary on Ambai's fiction. The food and the cooking aspect of life becomes a metaphor in her work. It becomes a kind of a conduit to highlight or, bring to the attention certain common themes in Ambai's work such as, frames or boundaries rules and regulations, order, discipline, and control within the human relationships in a domestic setup especially, and what are the other pleasures outside of them. Food and cooking become an integral part to focus on such complex themes.
Thinking about ‘A kitchen in the corner of the house’, there is third person narrator in this story. The story is almost episodic. We get to know about various events that happen in a big family in Rajasthan during a particular vacation in a year. Let us think about the significance of the title in this particular story. The narrator talks about a row of rooms which are like railway carriages and right at the end, the kitchen, stuck on in a careless manner. The metaphor of the train is here used to talk about the significance of the kitchen in a hierarchy of rooms, and she, the narrator says that the kitchen is just stuck on, carelessly it becomes a kind of an add on, an extra space that is added at the last minute.
Train carriages are used as symbols in lot of the fiction . They symbolize the hierarchies that are there in Indian society, it could be class hierarchy, economic hierarchy or gender hierarchy, and once again the kitchen becomes representative of the female gender who are relegated to the least important space in a home, and that is highlighted through Ambai's use of the simile of a train.
The except from the beginning of the story tells us incisively the importance of the kitchen through its spatiality. The setting is itself significant of its place in the family and in the larger social order. If we analyze, this is how the kitchen is described in the story:
kitchen has “two windows. Underneath one, the tap and basin. The latter was too small to place even a single plate in it. Underneath that, the drainage area, without any ledge. As soon as the taps above were opened, the feet standing beneath would begin to tingle. Within ten minutes there would be small flood underfoot. Soles and heels would start cracking from the constant wetness. Kishan's mother- called Jiji by everyone- would present a soothing ointment for chapped heals on the very first day one entered the kitchen, cooked a meal, and was given the transitional gold bangle.”
It is a fantastic description that talks about the confined or the very uncomfortable spatiality of the kitchen as well as the rewards for being inside that kitchen and be able to do cooking in it. It is a very make-shift kitchen in the sense that the basin is very small, too small to place even a single plate in it and then if we look at the drainage system, there was hardly any there because once the taps are opened, the flow would flood, and that would cause a lot of physical discomfort, pain, to the person who is standing in the flood and the narrator says that heels will be chapped, will be cracking because of constant exposure to the water and very interesting thing is that there is a reward for being there and that is the gold bangle, the traditional gold bangle would be offered to the person who has become newly initiated into the kitchen of this home.
While there is a lot of physical discomfort which is communicated through that description of the kitchen, there is also a sense of physical confinement, so, and that is caused by the restrictive view. Here there is a reference to two windows, and through one, there is a vision of the green mountains which one can see from the window, if there were no clothes drying on the nylon wires outside of the kitchen. So physically there is a lot of discomfort, and there is a lot of restriction, so one gets a sense of being confined in that dark space.
And the narrator says that somewhere on top of the mountains, there was a white dot of a temple, a temple of Ganesha. It is very interesting that it is just a dot, and there was a symbolic implication in that, in that representation of a temple as a dot, perhaps the women in the kitchen are not able to become closer to the spiritual entity due to various hurdles, therefore, the temple is somehow distance from them, and the distance also renders the temple almost invisible, and we can also stretch the interpretation to suggest that since the women are confined in the home, they are not able to have a lot of spiritual communion, or even communion with nature too.
The green mountains might have made one forget one's chapped heels, but since the clothes’ line was directly beyond this window - trousers, shirts, pajamas, saris, and petticoats spread out to obscure the view. These aspects of domesticity, the drying of the clothes, the washing of the dishes, the cooking of the various dishes for the family, kind of prevented these women from accessing at the green mountains, as well as accessing the spiritual entity that was on top of those green mountains. They have been at distance from all of these aspects of life which are really important. They could have alleviated the pain caused by the really uncomfortable kitchen spatiality but they have been denied to these women because they are far away, and restricted, literally and psychologically as well.
The notable thing here is nobody seemed to object to being in this restrictive kitchen space, restrictive on several levels of the flooding of the kitchen, and the curtain view of the outside, the confinement that they have to undergo while they are there, all the women who worked in the kitchen seemed not to object to its inconvenience. There seemed to be a quiet acceptance, and why did such an acceptance arise? Was it because they were rewarded for their slavishness in the form of gold's jewellery?
Now the family in question in the story is a large one, at least in the slice of the narrative that we see here, and a lot of members of this family have congregated in this ancestral home of the Papaji. He is the head of the family. Papaji and his wife is Jiji, and he has several sons - one of them is Kishan, and his wife is called Meenakshi and the other daughters, in-laws, other sons, and there is the step-mother of Papaji, so it is a big family, and this family loves to eat and drink.
They are great lovers of food, and even the women of this family enjoy their drink and the spirits, as is a common tradition among this family which lives in Rajasthan. So there is a constant preparation of a variety of dishes on the part of the family, and there are multiple references to cooking, throughout the story, from the beginning, the middle, the end.
It is one of the most important aspect of this family, which is the preparation of food, at least that is what the narrative suggests, because it gives a lot of importance to the details of the preparation of the food, the variety of food the spices that are added, the different kinds -the Mysore style, the Rajasthani style, chappatis, methi chappatis etc.. There are multiple references, to varieties of food.
And the most interesting thing is that every meal seems to be an elaborate meal, and there are elaborate snacks, different kinds of snacks which are consumed in the evening and during different parts of the day. This is a wealthy family, quiet comfortable economically and socially, and there are plenty of women in the story who help prepare the food, and there is one reference to a certain figure who helps in washing up the dishes the rest of the wok is shared by the women folk.
Now, the narrator spells out this facet of life of females of the house. The narrator says that “their style of life did encompass the kitchen” , it “was woven around the concept of the kitchen.” It is a very interesting phrase. Life was woven around the concept of the kitchen. Kitchen became the centre of life for this family. “The lineage had a reputation for its love of food and drink.” and even during weddings, and even during the evenings, they used to enjoy food and drink, hard spirits, both the men and the women, and the head of the family is also interested in the cuisine in the variety of dishes that has been cooked on a daily basis. So he is in touch with what is happening food-wise in the family and obviously this suggest that this family immensely enjoy the pleasures of life- food, and drinking are one of the most important pleasures.
And there is this idea of hospitality which is mentioned early on in the story, and the narrator suggests that in Papaji's family, the head of the family Papaji, is very very hospitable, and there is a reference to a guest who comes, and the narrator shows how keen Papaji is to, generously feed the guests. So there is admirable hospitality in feeding the guest in this particular household, and the women folk, his wife Jiji and all the other seem to endorse the view of the head of the family.They enthusiastically participate, "enthusiastically" is used because the readers do not know actually the thought process of these women while they are engaged in cooking all the various dishes. We just get the external details from the narrator about the various, aspects that go into the cooking of the meals.
Lakshmi Holmstrom looks at the role of hospitality in Ambai's fiction in this way. She says that,
“Ambai also sees food and cooking as ways of imposing control within the family, and maintaining boundaries between communities.”
Food becomes a way of exercising control within the members of the family and as well as maintaining the difference between one family and the other, between different communities as well.
And Ambai also seems to “questions the value of hospitality, which merely reflects the status and importance of the patriarchal families.” So this is a very interesting point in the context of ‘A Kitchen in The Corner of the House’ because as it is discussed earlier there is a reference to the hospitable nature of Papaji, the head of the family and how he reacts when there is a guest in the house, and no guest apparently is allowed to leave without partaking in the generous food which, the food which he has been or she has been offered.
There is an incident which we need to look closely, to look at the relationship between hospitality and patriarchy and, by the patriarchal families means the male head of the family. There was a guest at the home of Papaji and the guest says that he is okay with just drinking water and Papaji says how can we allow you to drink plain water, at least have some Sharbat very well. Jiji would get up, just put a couple of kebabs for him on a plate to go with his cold drink, and this is the suggestion of the head of the family Papji, her husband. Even before Jiji reached the kitchen Papaji would remember the methi parathas which were made that morning. So she has not entered the kitchen, she is just about to enter and then Papaji remembers this detail from the morning about what exactly was cooked that day, and he says that cannot you just give him the methi parathas, you heat it up and butter them. Here he offers suggestions to improve on the food that was prepared in the morning. There is a very important set of ideas thrown in that speech of Papaji, and then Jiji, when she is entering the kitchen, she also thinks that she would also fry up some eggs just to make sure that there is enough food for this guest. she also, seems to think fast and endorse the husband's view in order to make sure that this guest gets a good meal while he or she is there in this household. So the point that I am trying to get it is this that on the surface it is very good hospitality, but if we explore this idea further, one thing becomes apparent. The hospitality that this family offers to the outsiders reflects on the status, on the quality of the family itself. So the male head of the family, Papaji, is very interested to make sure that his status is kind of strengthened, and that can be done through the generous and tasty food that he could offer for the guest. That is one thing. The other thing is that, good food and hospitality reflects on the nature of the head of the family, his economic status, his superior position in society. The important point to ponder here is that Papaji does not involve himself physically in the preparation of the various elements of the food, it is the onus of the women starting from Jiji and the other women who are in the kitchen who need to work really hard and quickly to make sure that this guest is given lots of variety of good food that would strengthen the status of the family.
There is physical labour in this kitchen, in this inconvenient kitchen, which gets flooded all the time when somebody washes the dishes. Variety of dishes from vegetarian to non-vegetarian, from Mysore style to Rajasthani style, all kinds of food are prepared and offered to the guest in order to impress them. Making an impression is very important for Papaji in terms of his status. Now, the narrative brings out the contrast, between the physical details of the space and its other associations. The narrator says that all the same, the actual details, the concrete facts of the kitchen, and its space did not seem to matter to them. It was almost as if such things did not actually exist in their family houses. one had to cross the wide stone-paved front courtyard and the main room before reaching the kitchen in a dark corner. A zero-watt light bulb hung there.The women appeared there like shadows, their heads covered, their deep-coloured skirts melting into the darkness of the room, slapping and kneading the chappati dough, or stirring the fragrant, spicy dal. The narrator here again suggests that the physical, actual concrete details of the kitchen did not seem to matter to them, and the question is who is them?
Does them refer to the women who work there? Didn’t they care about the physical inconvenience? Or is it a reference to the men, why did not they care about the physical discomfort of the women who work in that inconvenient kitchen? The labour of making food becomes almost immaterial to Papaji who reminds his wife about the methi chappatis and asks her to butter them up in order to feed the uncle who is there.
Why doesn’t it matter, why does not it strike him that is the question to ask and the answer is not spelled out in the story. And if we go back to that excerpt is says that it was almost as of such things did not actually exist. So the kitchen as a physical space did not seem to exist to the men folk. They did not seem to even realize the physical walls of the kitchen.
The kitchen is in a dark corner and the women in that space appeared like shadows not even like physical people, living breathe human beings they were like shadows you know not three-dimensional figures there and the heads were covered and the coloured skirts, the red and deep coloured skirts, just you know, merged into the darkness, the colour seem to merge into one another in order to become black- it’s very interesting description there.
There is a kind of a physical and cultural chasm between the aspects of domesticity, and the wide stone- paved courtyard and the other rooms seem to be on a higher level compared to the kitchen. There is discrimination in terms of the spaces within the home itself while there is gender discrimination, the accepted gender discrimination, there is also a spatial discrimination with the courtyard and other rooms getting a priority, while the kitchen does not seem to. The kitchen is simply a corner, it is not even a space that is confined between walls, it is a corner and the corner is an indefinite space, it could be a corner anywhere.
So that indefinite space in a location, tells as a lot about the nature of the identity of the kitchen space, and the nature of the identity of the women folk who work in the kitchen. They almost become identity-less. One woman is the same as the other women. Their distinctive dress does not matter. A red colour is similar to a black or similar to a green or similar to a brown colour. All the colours become one- the dark colour and again what does it suggest?
Is it the darkness in the Indian society, or is it the darkness at the heart of the women, is it darkness of the heart of the men, what exactly is darkness there? These are some of the questions that we need to ask in terms of this particular idea of kitchen spatiality which is beautifully described in the story by Ambai.
One important point to mention here is that this story is very episodic. It is not a neatly structured story along the lines of Khushwant Singh with a very structured beginning, middle and end. This is a story with a sort of a conclusion, with an epiphany at the end of the story but it is very episodic and, and in the first episode, there is a minor crisis. Papaji, the head of the family, the father-in-law, is building a new room above the garage, and the daughter-in-law, Minakshi, Kishan’s wife who is from the south - Mysore, asks for an extension of the veranda outside the kitchen, and she says that it will be great if they have a new basin for washing the dishes to the left and then perhaps a new set of aluminium wires for drying the clothes, you know, behind that and, and that is the crisis. Her request becomes the crisis.
It is important to note that she, requests a restructuring of the house. Here we have a woman who is suggesting some kind of changes to the way this home has been laid out, and it is already said she is a native of Mysore and this space in which the story unfolds is in Rajasthan. So she is an outsider, an other in this particular family, as well as in that region, and the father-in-law asks why do you want this extension, what is wrong with the present, set of, present structure in, in the kitchen.she says that the basin in the kitchen is extremely small and the drainage is poor. If the servant women wash the vessels there, the whole kitchen gets flooded and, if clothes are hung outside the window, the mountain is hidden. So she offers two good reasons as to why instead of a room above the garage, an extension of the veranda outside the kitchen is ideal for a smooth functioning of the family. As it is discussed earlier nobody seemed to mind the inconvenience of the kitchen till now , but suddenly there is this, a woman, this new, this daughter-in-law called Minakshi, who seems to mind the discomfort. When her husband, Kishan, who is a skilled architect, endorses her view, Papaji asks quite archly, “when did you go near the kitchen?” and Jiji says that “When she cooked us that Mysore-style meal, it was he who sliced the onions and, and chillies for her.” It seems as if it is a grave mistake, a misstep on the part of this man to help his wife in cooking a Mysore-style meal. Papaji is almost scandalized after hearing this and he says it, “ it seems we might as well present you with a gold bangle and be done with it.” it is very interesting, the way he insults his son because gold bangles associated with femininity . Here the idea seems to be that cooking or being in a kitchen or assisting in the cooking process is seen as effeminate, unmanly behaviour according to the ideology of this particular man, Papaji, in this story. Minakshi’s request for spatial and wishful freedom fails and the battle is lost by Minakshi. In fact, there is no change in the state of the kitchen and two more nylon lines were added for drying clothes, making sure that the women of this home do not get to see the green mountains or the temple of Lord Ganesha when they are inside the kitchen, and it reveals the meanness of this figure Papaji, , the narrow-mindedness, the bitterness that he has for the request of these women, who dare to voice out their needs and his behaviour is an assertion of a patriarchy. Patriarchy is fighting its way back. It is making sure that his, its space is not eroded, and that the status quo is maintained.
The older authoritative figure who is at the head of this family is deeply, resentful of this female outsider, Minakshi and he has a grievance against her for all these things, preferring a view of the mountains, her desire to interact with nature, which seems to take her out of this female identity- a female is not supposed to enjoy all these things, she is supposed to just be in the kitchen and cook food whenever she is asked to. So how dare she has , a desire for all, to look at the mountains, to enjoy the greenery and, Papaji also nurses a grievance against her for refusing to follow the rituals of Rajasthani customs such as covering her head with her dress, with her outfit, and then, he is also resentful against her for her complexion. That’s is a very remarkable thought there on his part. This incident is a very powerful one that reveals or highlights the various fractures of the male psyche, in terms of a female who has a power over her husband.
Now I would like to discuss another episode about Bari-Jiji and Jiji. Jiji is the wife of Papaji, and Bari-Jiji is Papaji's stepmother, whom Papaji's father married when she was just a 17-year- old girl . If we look at the relationship these two women, the stepmother and , the daughter-in-law. The excerpt of the text states,
“When grandfather was alive, Bari-Jiji ruled absolutely and tyrannically. Jiji kneaded mountains of chapatti dough. She sliced baskets of onion, and kilos of meat. She roasted pappads in the evening while Bari-Jiji drank her Kesar Kasturi. She made the pakoras. Then grandfather died. Within 10 days, Jiji was sworn into power.”
When Bari-Jiji's husband was alive, she was the queen of the kitchen but once her husband died, within ten days, Jiji was sworn into power. Kitchen got a new ruler, the daughter-in-law has become powerful there and the mother-in-law loses her power because her husband is no more. This brings a question, Why does Bari- Jii lose power on her husband's death? And the answer is the power that Bari-Jiji has is not her own power. It is the power that she derives from her husband and once he is not around, once he is dead, she loses power. And the women who has the living husband, becomes the next big power center in the household because her husband is around. With her losing power, Bari-Jiji lost her rights to kumkum, betel leaves, meat and spirits. She enjoyed all this while her husband was alive and she does not get to enjoy these when he is dead and gone. The understanding is that it is the unwritten rule of the family. So if you become a widow, you are supposed to give up the pleasures of life.
Bari jiji takes revenge of her losing power in her unique way. Every once in six months, apparently she is possessed by Goddess Amba, especially when the rest of the family, specially Papaji and Jiji are enjoying their meal and enjoying their drink. She commands everyone to give her lots of burfi, lots of meat and drink, Kesar Kasturi, and then shoos them away and says leave me alone and then she locks herself up in the room and enjoys all the variety of dishes that she gets as Goddess Amba, and she makes a lot of celebratory noises. It is important the way Bari-Jiji, the woman who had lost her power, resorts to the higher authority of the Goddess Amba in order to take a revenge against Jiji and enjoys the pleasures of life that she had lost after the death of her husband. The point to understand here is that the men of the house are speechless and powerless when it comes to Goddess but the same men are proud to treat the ladies of the house as inferiors.
This hierarchy in the kitchen is a kind of a false hierarchy constructed by the patriarchal figures in this home and in the society, and Bari-Jiji is the victim now. She is the victim now but she was the perpetrator of horrors previously when her husband was alive. There is a kind of a cycle of oppression that keeps going on and on with regards to the women in the space of the kitchen in homes. Again, we can see a fantastic psychological understanding, sociological understanding of the dynamics of the kitchen on the part of Ambai. And she makes her narrator say that
“From that dimly lit, narrow windowed kitchen, there were hands reaching out to control, like the eight tentacles of the octopus which lives in the sea. They reached out to bind them tightly, tightly, and the women accepted their bonds with joy.”
If their waists were bound, they called them jewelled belts; if their feet were held back, they called them anklets; if they touched their foreheads, they called them crowns. The women entered a world that was enclosed by a wire on all four sides and reigned.! Kitchen was their kingdom and they “reigned there proudly”. They made, earth-shaking decisions – “Today, we will have mutton pulao; tomorrow let it be puri-masala.”!!
The jewellery became their elements of incarceration and imprisonment, and the women enjoyed these various aspects of imprisonment. In fact, the entire women folk seem to be within a fence, a fence of four walls, a really horrible wire fence and they seem to think that a space is their kingdom and they are the queens, the rulers of that kingdom, and they make these big decisions as to what they are going to cook today.
An important character in the story is Veena Mausi . She is a widow and her character is introduced in context of liberty which is not available to the women in Papaji's big household. They cannot look at the green mountains from the space of the kitchen, and that is a big drawback in terms of this spiritual aspect, and in terms of their idea of freedom, spiritual freedom. And here we this widowed woman enjoying her life amidst nature, We are given a study in contrast in relation to this particular character. It is mentioned that the children of the neighbourhood visit her in the evenings, and if the children do not come, there is the song of the koel, the bird, which gives her company. So we have this figure, who is almost cradled in the lap of nature, and that gives her a sensation of liberty which the other women of Papaji's house do not have the luxury of. Here Ambai just offers a female character who is at liberty to enjoy the beauty of nature, who enjoys the company of the creatures in nature, who teaches young children who can walk freely and that is because she is a widow with no male control over her movements, or over her lifestyle.
The final crisis in this short story occurs when Jiji, who has been unwell for quite a while with high blood pressure and asthma, suffers a kind of a serious point of illness towards close of the story and everybody attends to her - that is all the women. when Jiji collapses, the daughters-in-law rally around, and it is also a pretty significant to notice the absence of men. In fact, we see a doctor coming up hastily and offering her an injection that will put her to sleep and not be disturbed with anxieties about who is going to take over the kitchen. Apart from that, we do not see lot of male presence around this sick woman. We have a conversation between Minakshi and Jiji when the daughter-in-law help her change the clothes and settle on the bed.
There is nobody else around them. They are almost as if in a cocoon, these two women, and in fact, the metaphor of how Maha Vishnu is very apt to describe the isolation of these two women in a darkened room with curtains drawn and having a chat. So the narrator says that they were as alone as Maha Vishnu on his serpent bed floating in the widespread sea.
It is almost as if they were cut-off from the rest of humanity. They were in these vast waters and in fact, the bed is comparable to the serpent bed of Maha Vishnu himself, and there is this significant conversation in the entire story when Minakshi lays bare, all the fault lines that kind of deconstruct the lives of women, not only in this family but also in the rest of the society. Jiji for the first time reveals her really brutal past to Minakshi, and she begins her past from her wedding day and tells Minakshi about the colour of her dress that she wore on that day, the red dress. And in fact, she also remembers the details the exact kind of jewellery that she wore and most importantly, she tells Minakshi about the advice of her mother. It is a very important moment in the story and that advice is this.
“Take control over the kitchen. Never forget to make yourself attractive. Those two rules will give you all the strength and authority you will need.”
The girl is advised since she is sensible that she should be concerned about her physical beauty and she carries through her entire life even when she suffers a stroke, the first thing she worries about, is to change into attractive clothes, neat clothes, wear her jewellery, wear tassels in her plaited hair and all those things.
The other golden rule was take over the kitchen. The lady should be the mistress of the kitchen and cuisine that she would prepare and serve to the family. That is, taken to her heart by Jiji and she took control over the kitchen. And this advice is also the reason behind all the fights that she had, all the food wars that she had with her predecessor, Bari-Jiji.
These words are very important and, and they need to be, understood in greater detail Women make themselves attractive for the benefit of their men. So they, they almost become objects in some sense. And, and again the control over kitchen, and food prepared is also associated with controlling the physical pleasure, managing the physical pleasure of the men, So it is all about pleasure and, being mistresses of these pleasure.
Jiji reveals the biggest tragedy of her life when she lost her child. a one-year-old son of Jiji and Papaji died tragically in an accident. she was about to put a puri into the hot oil, when she heard the scream of the child and the child fell off the wall. The skull was split and the baby died, and the men returned after doing all the rites and, meanwhile she fried, she carried on, with the frying of the rest of puris and that is the most tragic moment of the story.
What becomes clear in this narration is that the child is the responsibility of the mother. The mothers should see to it that the child is protected and the kitchen is also the responsibility of the mother, the women. She should see to it that the food is cooked, , the necessary dishes are cooked and served without any trouble. So how could this one woman manage everything at the same time and, and that is a question that nobody asks and nobody talks about it.
It becomes very clear that the men or nobody else is deputed to look after the child, this young child who somehow slips up the stairs and falls tragically. And the other interesting thing is that she is not allowed to mourn the death of her son. In fact, she has to carry on with that kitchen chore of frying the puris. Why is she not, allowed to spend some time on her own to mourn the death of her beloved child and, and why does not some other women take over this job of frying the puris?
Jiji has related her past to Minakshi, her sufferings as a new bride, her tragedy in terms of the death of her young child and her rise to glory as the new queen of the kitchen. She has narrated the past and now we have Minakshi offering advice to her elderly, sick mother-in-law, Jiji She speaks to her in her ear and she says very powerful words in this story and she says no strength comes to you from the kitchen, nor from that necklace, nor bangle nor headband nor forehead jewel. Authority cannot come to you from these things, these material things. These are the most powerful lines in the story and she says that please do not worry about all these various kinds of jewellery. You do not get any kind of power from these things, these material stuff. Minakshi says that kitchen space is a powerless space in some sense and the ornaments do not offer power any kind of real power. In fact, there is no liberty of thought that is embedded in all these duties that are there in the kitchen. So kitchen space and, and the glory of the ornaments should be given up by these women.And she says that the authority that she derives through the kitchen, the authority that she derives through the ornaments are part of the authority of Papaji. That authority is Papaji's, not Jiji’s. He is the one who endows these powers on her and she seems to use that power to, further imprison herself and trample down or imprison other women who are beneath her in that particular space.
So these spaces, though they are useful in the sense that they provide food for the rest of the family, in terms of the symbolic value, they do not have any kind of real power for the women who are employed there without pay. And Jiji's response to Minakshi is very interesting too. And she says that if I renounce my jewellery, my kitchen, my husband and children, what is left for me? Who am I? And Minakshi says that you are just a Dularibai, and it is very interesting that this name of Jiji is mentioned for the first time at the end of the story. We see her as an individual, as a real personality, hiding within that stereotype of a mother-in-law.
Minakshi says that you need to find out the relationship between Dularibai and rest of the world, to connect yourself to the rest of the world and see what is your place in this particular world rather than attaching yourself to all these things, kitchen, husband, children and jewellery.She continues and says that dip, into your own inner well, in your own inner waters, in your own spiritual self and, all these constant cares about children, mutton pulao, puris, kitchen stove, pickles, drainage, periods, and preserving the rice form the insects, all these things suffocate and burry the real identity of Dularibai. If you are worried about these, how can you think about other things.? at this moment, Jiji becomes a kind of a representative figure of much of the women in society who are, obsessed or who are lost in all these details, in all these constant cares of the domestic set up. If women become obsessed or lost in this world, where will be the time for them to become an adventurer? Where will be the time to become a poet, a painter, an observer of nature, a pilot? They would not have the time to engage in all these pursuits outside of the home and she says that if women did have the time, if women were given the time, they would have a made a world without wards, prisons, gallows and chemical warfare. Perhaps the contribution of women would have made a big change in this unequal world. Perhaps the women would have helped contribute to make the society fairer and more beautiful.
Minakshi says that the real strength of women is not in the food that was given in the appropriate measure and jewellery that weighs down ears and neck and forehead. Her strength will become visible when she connects herself with the world that surrounds her, and she says that a lady should not be trapped or diminished by gender, the identity, the female identity should not trap you or limit you or diminish you or tarnish you in any sense but it should free you from your body and make you think about the other things - Other beautiful and curious things about this world.
The ultimate message of Ambai in this particular story comes towards the end of the story, when she spells out, what should be the ideal destination for women. She says that biological identities are not the only essential identity for a woman. A womb and a set of breasts do not define a woman. There are other identities for women that they can aspire to and fulfil in their life, in their lives on this world and a woman is not merely a reproductive device, a biological device that reproduces, nor is she the definitive slave in the kitchen.
She is not there to slave away for the benefit of the family and she is not born just to cook and feed the husband and children. In fact, she has other roles to perform. She can be a creator. She can be a discoverer. She can be an adventurer. She can be an innovator and the women of the Indian society and other societies can aspire to these, the greater, more satisfying identities.
Works Cited:
- Ambai. A Purple Sea. Trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom. Chennai: Affiliated East -West Press, 1992.
- Anantharaman, Latha. Rev. of A Purple Sea, by Ambai. The India Magazine of Her People and Culture Dec. 1997: 66.
- Ashokamitran. “Thinking Changes too”. Indian Review of Books Sept. – Oct. 1997: 35.
- Nandakumar, Prema. “A Soul on Fire”. Rev. of A Purple Sea, by Ambai. Indian Book Chronicle 4 May. 1995: 46.
- Bailey Trela. :No Extra ordinary Space: On Ambai’s ‘Kitchen in the corner of the House’. 3:AM Magazine October 2nd, 2019