I remember the first time I watched The Great Indian Kitchen. It wasn’t just a film. It was an ache. A long, simmering ache that had been sitting inside my body, like steam trapped under a lid, waiting to rise. I am from Kerala, and I’ve seen these kitchens. I’ve smelled that morning filter coffee, heard the brisk chop of vegetables, the hiss of oil, and the weight of silence wrapped in duty. But I had never seen it so brutally, so tenderly, so hauntingly mirrored on screen until this movie.
There was nothing cinematic in the way the camera lingered on the dripping sink or the clinking of plates. And that’s precisely why it hit so hard. The film doesn’t scream for attention; it just observes. And that is its scream.
I could feel the weight of the protagonist’s routine in my bones—the rhythm of her work, the way her hands moved, constantly doing, constantly adjusting, constantly giving. The way she bent down to wipe a floor already clean, not out of necessity but because that’s what’s expected. That relentless need to erase herself to keep the space ‘pure’, to keep the house ‘respectable’. It was a kind of violence I recognised—not the kind with bruises and shouts, but the kind that builds slowly, methodically, with smiles and customs and centuries of silence.
And it’s not just about the kitchen. It’s about bodies. About control. About how even desire is colonized in the name of tradition. That moment—yes, that moment when her husband turns away from her during intimacy because of “impurity”—I had to pause the movie. Not because I was shocked, but because I wasn’t. Because I knew. We all know. Every woman who has been made to feel unclean for being alive in her own body knows.
The film’s genius lies in its normalcy. There are no villains, just people who have never questioned the way things are. There are no heroes either—only someone trying to breathe. What made it worse, what made it better, was how quiet it all was. There were no melodramas, just repetition. That repetition felt like a noose, getting tighter with each serving of rice, each word unsaid, each door closed quietly.
I sat with the ending long after the credits rolled. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even loud. But it was the loudest thing I’ve ever felt. A woman walking away from the kitchen shouldn’t feel like a revolution. And yet, it did.
Maybe that’s the power of this film. It tells us what we already know, but what we’ve buried under layers of rituals and respectability. It reminds us that a revolution can begin at the sink. That resistance can look like refusing to make tea.
Watching The Great Indian Kitchen wasn’t entertainment for me. It was like standing in front of a mirror and seeing my mother. My grandmother. Myself. But it also showed me what it looks like to step away from that reflection. To redefine it.
Sometimes, the most radical thing a woman can do is say “No.”
And then leave the door open behind her—not for an apology, but for fresh air.
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