Juice, a short film directed by Neeraj Ghaywan forces our focus onto the patriarchy within households. The film is set at a dinner get-together that the Singh’s are hosting for Mr. Singh’s colleagues. While the men take stage in the living room over drinks and snacks discussing female bosses, emails and politics,
Mrs. Singh plays the host, ensuring the men are having a good time.
It takes a few minutes to discover that there are indeed other women in the house, invisible and out of the way as they are taught to be are the wives of all the men, taking refuge in the kitchen. They talk jobs and kids.
We see Manju (Mrs. Singh) filling water into the air cooler before she returns to the sweltering heat of the kitchen. We see that her husband is too caught up to give her a hand with an ancient fan. We catch a glimpse of the kitchen that has no provision for a fan connection and we realise women’s comfort isn’t something we think about.
The women make no fuss as they go about cutting and frying often wiping away sweat with their pallu’s and dupattas, and the men who shout in horror to find children running about in their midst. We see the women darting in and out to refill plates and take orders, as the men remain seated making their demands. There’s the young girl who’s refused the video game, as it doesn’t belong to her; the same one whose playtime is interrupted to serve the boys.
While the wives are trying to up the experience for the men, we see one woman — the household’s help — whose duty it is to ease the life of her employer. Manju is ready to burst before dinner is ready. What she does that stuns the men into uncomfortable silence is done again as is expected of women, no tantrum and no tears. She does it with a glass of juice and a lot of confidence.
If all that we see in the film is applicable to today’s homes, that too in the same veracity is debatable but we cannot deny the fact that we have all seen different versions of this transpire in our lives. Who gets more sleep for instance? Whose labour is seen as work, while whose is seen as duty? Who is expected to prepare the food and who is paying for it? Who buys the AC and who sees through its repair? Who decides on the washing machine and whose job is it to load the clothes in? Who takes decisions about finances? Who is every child’s permission query directed to?
We don’t hear of the 4-3-2-1 roti count for the father-mother-son-daughter so much anymore, but which child is not pressured to learn cooking while which one is pulled up for not knowing how to? Which parts of the households do women generally gather in? Do women eat after the menfolk have? Who clears the dishes?
And while we’re on the topic of ‘equal’ households where women seem to have it all, let’s ask if the balance will be tipped if the granny or the nanny is taken out of the equation — modern households and career-chasing women are, in several cases, the result of passing on the woman’s house and childcare burden to another woman of a different age, class or race.
To neutralise this normalised patriarchy, we need to think about these questions, and then work toward ensuring that men share responsibilities and women share privileges. Let’s also talk about the mental load of household chores, the emotional labour that is invested in thinking about how and when to get it done, and men viewing the woman as the manager of the household and hope someday that they will stop saying, “But you should’ve asked!”
Until we get there though, we need women to ask and then share work without qualms. And we need the men to step in promptly, especially when they’re asked.
Archanaa Seker
seker.archanaa@gmail.com
The writer is a city-based activist, in-your-face feminist and a media glutton