When one says roti, images of mothers and grandmothers rolling out smooth dough into perfect circles onto hot tawas come to mind. But roti has never been just bread. Its perfect circle has long mirrored the idea of the 'perfect' woman — expected to serve endlessly. But not every roti turns out well. Some burn, some remain pale at the edges, revealing the quiet pressure to meet an unspoken standard.
This tension becomes the centrepoint of Garam Roti, a solo performance by Bengaluru artist and theatre-maker Durga Venkatesan. The play, which premiered in Bengaluru in November 2024 and will be performed in Delhi this Sunday at OddBird Theatre, began with a discomfort that refused to leave her alone: not knowing how to make rotis.
“It is still the same thought,” she admits, “but with that, I started exploring the concept of what women fear and how it circles back to the kitchen, where women are supposed to belong.”
Kitchen dilemmas
In the 75-minute performance, the roti becomes what she calls “the elephant in the room”. Less about cooking, it becomes a metaphor for the emotional and social labour women are expected to perform within domestic spaces. “The larger conversation is about fears around womanhood,” she explains. “That’s what I wanted to explore for myself, and also open up as a shared conversation.”
Over several months, Venkatesan began speaking to women across India, asking a deceptively simple question: Do you fear making a roti? Through this, she began to see how deeply personal — and political — the kitchen can be.
These conversations form the Garam Roti Library, a growing sound archive central to the performance. Each woman’s story is edited into a five-minute audio tape. “The audience selects what they want to hear,” says Venkatesan. “So what gets played in Jaipur will be very different from what gets played in Delhi.”
The archive resists closure. The recordings began in January 2024 and continue even now. “Women’s stories are never complete. It’s a changing narrative — and that’s the beauty of it,” she says.
But onstage, Durga isn’t the one carrying these voices — that role belongs to Lakshmi, her sentient stereo player who functions as a companion in the performance. Lakshmi questions, interrupts, supports and sometimes destabilises her. More importantly, she becomes the vessel for other women’s voices. “I didn’t want to be the one speaking their words,” she says. “That wouldn’t be fair. Lakshmi amplifies them.”
Kneading questions
The kitchen in Garam Roti is a space of contradiction rather than oppression alone. “It’s a space of dilemma,” she says. “I love cooking, I love feeding, and I love hosting. The audience comes as guests into Durga’s home.” At the same time, it is where she confronts her deepest fear — the roti itself. The kitchen becomes a site where desire, tradition, love, heritage and gendered expectation collide, particularly the idea that women must always serve.
For Venkatesan, theatre is as much art and activism as it is a way of grappling with difficult questions. “I don’t think one gets into creating something with the purpose of activism,” she says. “I start with a question, and that leads to a conversation.” Yet she acknowledges that personal struggles are inherently political. “You can’t take activism out of theatre,” she adds. “It’s all at the intersections.”
Garam Roti will be performed at OddBird Theatre, Dhan Mill, on December 21, 7pm