I want to talk about kitchens. Not the fancy kitchens with the gleaming counter tops and the latest mixer and the blender and the slicer. I want to talk about kitchens that warm the heart, kitchens where conversations begin, kitchens where dancing happens, kitchens where love happens. I want to talk about kitchens of my childhood, and kitchens I’ve found as of late. Kitchens, it’s struck me of late, the best of life happens.
The kitchen of my childhood was my mother’s kitchen. There was a kitchen where the cooking happened, and a “pantry” that was largely kept pretty for the sake of visitors. The pantry demanded good behaviour. The kitchen was made for the earnest self. The kitchen is where my brother and I would congregate to update Amma about our day. Ayya sitting on the gas cylinder, me on the coconut scraper. Amma would bustle about getting things done while we took turns to speak our minds. Hot mugs of tea, sneaking a papadam that’s being fried for dinner. The kitchen is a safe space. It is a sacred space. It is where heart’s desires could bubble like the dhal; could spice up like the best pol sambol. It is where I vent and where family truly comes together.
The other kitchen of my childhood is my grandmother’s. One that smelled of that unique combination of spices; the aroma that made you feel that everything will be okay. It was a space for tradition, but for challenging tradition. It was a place where a radio would find its way, and play Mohideen Beg or Amaradeva as my grandmother praised my skills in making the perfect dough. It was the place where Avurudu truly took place – not the dining table. It was a place of comfort; it was a place with roots.
I’m not sure when I forgot the power of the kitchen. But at some point between deadlines and socialising, the kitchen became merely a functional space to put together a meal. Sure, I would chat with my friends in the kitchen, but potluck was more common; or we would order in. I didn’t realize how important a place the kitchen was to me until I was brought into a kitchen like the one I had as a child.
This kitchen, is a place where experiments happen. A kitchen that invites conversation, invites confidence. It’s a kitchen that is worn from use, but has character because of it. It’s a kitchen with roots, multi-layered, and walking into that space brings a sense of home. It’s a kitchen made for sharing, a kitchen where one dances. It’s a kitchen with the ability to make terrible culinary disasters into humorous memories. It’s a kitchen that welcomes you with open arms, twirls you while the cookies are baking, and dips you for a grand kiss just as the oven timer goes off.
The importance of a kitchen to a home has to be one of the most well-documented topics. The fundamental role of food in our lives, the source of sustenance, and the fact that it would be the place where a person is likely to spend the most amount of time (outside the bed) are strong points. What I find interesting is the way the kitchen and its social role blur geographical and cultural boundaries. It is a truth universally acknowledged, it seems, that a good home must be in possession of a good kitchen.
However, in this day and age where we spend most of our time eating out or ordering in, it feels like this role is transforming. If it is transitioning out, and what impact it would then have on our psycho-social well-being remains to be seen.
If you want to explore this topic more, and in a more comprehensive way than my random musings*: this article is about a group of immigrant women in Australia and the ways in which they constructed a sense of home through the kitchen space; this article is about establishing kitchens in Senior Residential Homes in order to ground and help Alzheimer’s patients feel a sense of home. Of course, I am not discussing gender politics in this blog post, although “generally people, and women in particular, remember their childhood kitchens more clearly than any other spaces in their lives”. The politics of kitchen as a space, as a double-edged sword of domestic power as well as isolation is discussed in this chapter. If you are more interested in the cultural geographies of home, and the role of the kitchen within it, Blunt’s article would be a good read.
- I have not fully read all these articles and chapters. They seem to be interesting articles, and have made it to my to-read list, is all.
Minoli Wijetunga 