“My mum cooks really well.” “My grandmother’s love language was cooking.”
We say these things easily, affectionately—without always thinking about what they mean. They’re part of the language we use to talk about food and memory, especially in South Asian homes, where so much of our culture is ladled out from the kitchen. I used to say them too. Until last year.
My naani was staying with me for a few days, and I asked her to make kadhi-chawal. It’s one of those dishes that has become almost sacred in our home—nobody else’s version quite measures up. I thought I’d record the process, preserve the recipe, and in some way, bottle the warmth and familiarity it always brings. As I filmed, I asked her, lightly, “When did you learn to make it?” She replied, without blinking: “I had to. I didn’t have a choice.”
Her answer stunned me. I had expected a story, maybe something about learning it at her mother’s side, or about her love for cooking. But instead, she gave me the truth.
She told me how she was married at sixteen. At the time, she had no real interest in domestic work. But marriage came with a silent syllabus—duties and roles she was expected to fulfil. Cooking was one of them. She learnt out of necessity. Over the years, she got better—not because she loved it, but because she had to.
And now, the kadhi we heap with nostalgia and reverence was born not out of love, but of obligation. A quiet, unquestioned, unchosen duty. That conversation stayed with me.
It made me realise how often we flatten the women in our lives into neat archetypes: the nurturing mother, the tireless grandmother, the dependable aunt. We talk about their food and fuss and sacrifice with fondness—but rarely ask what they gave up to become the people we now take comfort in.
We don’t always stop to ask: Did they ever really have a choice?
In contrast, I enjoy being in the kitchen. I cook because I like to. The process brings me a quiet joy—a rhythm, a space of my own. Cooking, for me, is neither expectation nor performance; it’s freedom. But even that sense of agency can be startlingly fragile.
I remember complaining about having to make endless cups of tea for someone at home, simply because I happened to be working from home. Suddenly, the kitchen didn’t feel like mine anymore—it felt like a cage. The same space that had offered comfort turned confining. Of course, the demand came from a man. A self-proclaimed progressive one.
This unspoken assumption—that the woman will serve, will step in, will not mind—is so deeply embedded in us that it slips by unnoticed. It’s in the casual requests, the invisible expectations, the unequal division of labour that masquerades as tradition.
Delhi-based writer Anantika Kapoor once shared a moment that hit home for me: “I never gave much thought to what it meant to have a seat at your own dining table. But when I saw my mother give up her chair for an unexpected guest, it hit me—how deeply women are conditioned, over generations, to surrender their seat, both literally and metaphorically. I told her to stay seated. We pulled in another chair. She didn’t need to shrink to make space for someone else.”
That story echoed something I’ve seen—and felt—many times. It’s never just about the chair. It’s in the way women take the smaller portion. How they eat last at family gatherings. How they perch on the edge of group photos, barely occupying space. How they let others speak, then clean up after.
These aren’t just habits. They’re the residue of generations of conditioning. And the sad truth is: the love we receive in the form of food, care, or sacrifice from the women in our lives often comes from a place where love had little to do with it. So when we say things like, “Her cooking was an act of love”—perhaps we need to pause and ask, whose love, whose labour, and whose choice?
Because sometimes, what we’re really tasting in those beloved family recipes isn’t just spice or memory. It's a sacrifice. Quiet. Enduring. And, all too often, invisible. And perhaps the most radical thing we can do—the most loving thing—is to finally see it. To name it. To make sure it doesn’t go unnoticed any longer.