And that’s when he said, ‘You’ had to do it, I wouldn’t have, which got me thinking. What is it about housework that even the most liberated of us women continue to willing wear it around our necks like a millstone that we are proud of?

Now, Mr. B is that rare Indian male who is quite feminist as far as his actions go – he doesn’t talk much about it, he doesn’t know that much about it, but instinctively, he is fair – and that means he doesn’t think housework is ‘my job’ nor does he encourage me to think so. Most of the time, we divide up chores fairly although cooking is one thing I handle (and there are other things like car cleaning, maintaining the yard, dog care and bathroom cleaning which I absolutely leave to him!) On a given day one person may do more but overall, it evens out, and more importantly, he doesn’t see it as ‘my job’ that he is helping me with.

And yet, he is far more objective about housework than I am. While he is good with most of it, he doesn’t see a messy house as reflecting on him in some way. If he feels unwell or even simply lazy, he doesn’t feel obliged to clean up (given that we don’t have kids, its not yet an absolute necessity for us). If he is too tired, he simply plonks down on the sofa to watch TV. Me, on the other hand – I don’t hate housework, I am reasonably hard-working – but at times, I do feel pressurized to pick up or do stuff even if I am tired or unwell. Given that there is no one else pressurizing me, it is really not needed.

Somewhere deep inside, perhaps because its mostly women I’ve seen working around the house, perhaps because others still expect the division to be that way, I do internalize it as ‘my job’, in the sense that I feel a poorly kept house says something about me (I’m lazy, I didn’t learn enough when younger etc). And at times, I feel a ridiculous sense of gratitude to Mr.B simply for doing his share of stuff at home, ridiculous both because my beliefs are that men aren’t doing anything extra-ordinary when they do housework and because he doesn’t expect any thanks for it. Still, somewhere there must be a feeling that he is ‘helping me’, which is why I feel that way.

I don’t know how much everyone else’s expectations influence this. Interestingly, many visitors to our home have praised me for the way the house is decorated and kept, when the fact is that Mr. B is much more artistic than me and I usually defer to him on choosing accessories and colours. Still, people assume that it’s me; in fact, people who knew poor Mr. B from his bachelor days have depressed him no end by claiming that ‘a woman’s touch’ has made the house beautiful when much of it is his handiwork.

Sometimes I wonder if the kind of gendered upbringing we have (and I say this as someone born to fairly liberal parents) has completely messed us up as far as this kind of thing is concerned. My beliefs are feminist, but deep down, I carry more regressive baggage than I’d like to admit. But. Perhaps that awareness is a step towards working on it and moving away.

P.S. A piece over at Savadati, another interesting Indian feminist website, on a recent CNN-IBN poll that actually asked whether women were neglecting ‘their’ housework. Even if I carry some regressive baggage, I reserve the right to feel outraged at the assumptions inherent in that poll!

I started thinking about how this notion has impacted me. In our culture, food has a role to play not just as nourishment for the body. It is also believed to have an impact on behaviour, which is why we categorise food as sattvik, rajasik and tamasik. Beyond this, food is also believed to be an important form of charity — feeding the poor is a key activity for many religious organizations. Hindus revere the goddess Annapoorani, considered the giver of food. With the importance accorded to food, cooking naturally cannot be a casual affair.

Today, many of us eat out frequently — but there is always an underlying consciousness that food cooked outside cannot be as healthy as home-made food. Processed food/ready-to-cook meals are still a rung lower on the…er…food chain. This venerated ‘delicious, healthy, home-made’ food has always primarily been made by women. Even today, when many women work outside the home, it continues to be so.

For many women, perhaps, this deep-rooted belief in the importance of healthy, home cooked food clashes with the time and energy left after working long hours. Still, one’s role as provider of food is so deeply ingrained that it is difficult for even an educated, young woman like me to view it objectively. I’ve seen my mother waking up at 5 in the morning to get the meals ready and prepare lunch boxes for three demanding children. Life seems so much more convenient today with the appliances we have; it seems somehow shameful not to cook.

When this relative ribbed me, I caught myself hastening to assure him that I managed the kitchen myself. While I explained to him that my husband is a fairly poor cook, I was also quick to reassure myself that I wasn’t just taking on prescribed roles (“after all, my husband does many of the chores at home that would usually be done by women”). If I sound confused in my attitude to cooking, it’s because I am.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I avoided learning any cooking at all. In the days when I was first forming my own feminist ideas, my logic was very simple. Men often overrode women’s decisions. Men worked outside and earned money. Most women didn’t. What most women did was cook and keep house. Women couldn’t work outside if they got caught in this role. Ergo, I didn’t want any of it! It seemed to me that only the food was really valued, not the cook herself. Through my early twenties, I was often the butt of jokes as someone whose repertoire consisted of maggi and toast. Gradually, as I began living on my own, and got bored of eating out, I started trying my hand at cooking. And realized (gasp!) I enjoyed it!

But even when I realized that cooking could be an interesting and creative affair, I always felt a little embarrassed about it. Especially when I got married, I was afraid that I would become ‘just a housewife’, the state I’d always dreaded. I was so afraid of falling into traditional roles prescribed for women that I tried hard to keep myself away from them. (Though I’m using the past tense here, many of these fears still persist.)

In reality of course, traditional women’s roles, including cooking, bring in tremendous social wealth, even if they cannot be measured in monetary terms. In earlier generations, most old people, even those without children, could be assured of some care and support from extended family. This was possible, mainly because of the presence of at least one woman staying at home. Home makers spend an enormous amount of time with children, besides doing many other chores which would otherwise be outsourced. Similarly, home cooking has a lot of benefits in terms of health as well as cost savings. It is a pity that I (and perhaps other women like me) feel embarrassed to don these roles.

Am I advocating that women should take up all the traditional roles again? Not at all. For one, our horizons have broadened — we have any number of choices when it comes to career and work. Full time caregiving will not be feasible, or interesting, for many of us. The best situation of course would be for men to enter (traditionally) female bastions as much as women have entered male ones. When men cook and feed a family as commonly as women do, I bet that cooking will be seen for what it really is — a time consuming, high-involvement activity requiring skill, patience and love.