I broke up with cooking, but life reunited us

My love-hate relationship with the kitchen

Growing up, I always observed my mom cooking and serving food with the utmost love and warmth. Every time we had guests over, she would prepare dal makhani, paneer sabzi, aloo, raita, jeera rice, and a hundred other dishes. And all the hard work seemed worth it when the guests left with their tummies full and hearts fulfilled. The rave reviews were icing on the cake, although that was never the purpose for her. I had cracked her code: food is the best way to connect with others (and to get compliments).

I loved being in the kitchen with her as an 11-year-old. I was the supporting actor, shelling peas (and eating them too), peeling cucumbers and chopping bhindi. Everyone who saw me helping in the kitchen would tell my parents that it was impressive for a kid my age to be doing all of this, and I would secretly blush, adding another activity to the list that the overachiever in me wanted to perfect. Thus began my desire and quest to become the master chef of my home.

Instead of starting off the journey by making Maggi like any normal millennial or Gen Z-er (including my elder sister), the first dish I made at the age of 14, was aloo ke pakore. While I did everything myself, including cutting the potatoes and preparing the besan mixture, my mom had to step in for the frying. But this time, she was the sous chef and I was the lead, telling her exactly when to take the fritters out of the oil. The end product turned out to be a little below average, but my parents employed all their acting talent to hype me up. It encouraged me to keep trying more dishes.

I eventually got better at it, preparing dishes like sandwiches and fried rice. And I also tried my hand at baking. While I didn’t step into the kitchen frequently, I knew I was gradually falling in love with cooking. Until, that is, I decided to stop.

Cooking seemed like a toxic relationship

At home, my mom would do most of the work in the kitchen. She had chosen to take a career break to look after me and my sister. My dad wasn’t taught how to cook growing up, and going to office five or six days a week left little time for him to learn. But there were times I saw him trying to change that. On some weekends, he would try to contribute by finding recipes for breakfast dishes like masala dahi toast or cheese jalapeno samosas, and helping mom prepare them.

It never felt like my mom was forced to cook; she truly enjoyed it. But as I grew older, I started noticing that for many women, cooking wasn’t a choice but an expectation. Once, at a social gathering, a group of family friends and relatives were discussing their favourite topic: marriage. The conversation drifted towards cooking, and one of them commented, “It is very important for women to know how to cook. How will they manage life after marriage otherwise?” And it didn’t stop there. “If a woman can’t cook, it reflects badly on her parents,” she went on to say.

As a 15-year-old who hadn’t witnessed casual misogyny like this at such close proximity before, I was angry. All the movie scenes where the guy’s family judges the girl and her upbringing based on the chai and samosa she makes and serves during the first meeting came rushing to my mind. I didn’t ever want to be a part of it.

Immediately, I wondered if all the compliments I received for my cooking skills were only because people thought I was playing my part well, as a girl. Had I unknowingly fallen into the trap of gender-based roles? The social norm that makes it a woman’s job to cook while men lie on the couch watching cricket highlights annoyed me. And the fact that people equated a woman’s worth to her proficiency in domestic chores—like she was born to do them—was beyond my understanding. It was also around this time that my stay-at-home mom began pursuing a diploma in nutrition, alongside an internship, but still needed to cook three meals a day. It bothered me that she had to bear the burden of domestic duties, beyond her equal share.

The more aware I grew of the world around me, the more my relationship with cooking became strained.

I decided to end the relationship

All this new awareness made me curious about my mom’s motivation to keep cooking and pushed me to ask her if she’d like to take a step back from being the only one responsible for feeding us. To my surprise, she refused. “Do you really like cooking? Or do you just do it because you have to,” I pressed her. She told me she loved to cook; in fact, it was her stress buster. She also grew up believing the kitchen is her sacred space and she didn’t like having an outsider in there, which is why hiring a cook wasn’t an option for her despite continual insistence from dad, didi and me.

I felt confused about my mother’s stance—how could she find solace in an activity that was so clearly gendered? But she simply didn’t see it that way. If anything, for her, cooking was about being independent and expressing her creativity through a blend of ingredients.

Still, I knew that there were days when she was too tired to cook, or just didn’t want to be in the kitchen. But she couldn’t do anything about it because she felt responsible for our food. I wouldn’t let it go and eventually, she did admit that she would like to have the choice to not cook daily. By that time, I had made my choice to do it never.

I started avoiding the kitchen in rebellion because cooking was not going to be the sole purpose of my life as a woman. Every time my mom expressed concern about how I would manage in the future if I didn’t know how to cook, I would say, “I won’t have to. Someone else will do it for me.” ​

Now, years later, when I reflect on that statement, it hits me how naive I sounded: not only was I boldly saying that I planned to be entirely dependent on someone else for something as basic as my sustenance, but I was also disrespecting those who cooked for me, including my mom, somehow implying that they belonged in the kitchen.

Life brought us back together

While I continued to enjoy a self-righteous life of not having to fix my relationship with cooking but also coming home to the best meals cooked by my mom, in October 2023, when I was 21, I had another epiphany.

My parents were away from home for almost a month due to a family emergency, leaving me and my sister to look after the house and ourselves. In the initial days, our meals were limited to Maggi and sandwiches, which required minimum effort. Once in a while, my sister would make pasta or dal-rice (yes, her cooking skills now surpassed mine). Some days, we would order from a restaurant. But isn’t it an established fact that the more you consume outside food, the more you start craving ghar ka khana? We experienced that yearning too, and the only way we could fulfil it was to cook something ourselves. Very hesitantly, I agreed.

When it was my turn in the kitchen, I made dry aloo sabzi after getting thorough instructions (and some ‘I told you so’s) from my mom on call. Rotis? My sister had to step in because that required expertise I didn’t have. With a few overcooked potatoes and a dash of burnt masala, and her perfectly round rotis, we managed to cobble together a meal. We kept whipping up our own meals over the next few days— sprouts salad, bhindi roti and pulao, among others. The flush of satisfaction and feeling of independence that even those imperfect dishes brought me, made me wonder if it was time to patch up with cooking. But still I resisted.

Then a few months later, in January last year, I was home alone for a week again and fell sick. I didn’t want to order take out, and decided to step back into the kitchen. My mom gave me detailed instructions and I was able to prepare a delicious dal khichdi. It made me feel elated to get it right, which reminded me of the joy I’d felt as a child, assisting my mom in the kitchen.

And that was it. I listened to my heart and decided to give cooking another chance.

Taking things slow

Since then, every time I have been at home on my own, I have cooked for myself. Khichdi, fried rice, and pulao have become my go-to dishes. I refer to my mom’s voice recordings every time I am stuck for the right quantity of salt, or whether to cook on low or high flame. When my mother falls sick or doesn’t want to cook, she knows she can rely on me.

While I am still not an expert in the kitchen, I increasingly try not to bother my mom for detailed step-by-step tutorials. Instead, I’ve been turning to YouTube for recipes. The first dish I made without her directions was kanda poha, by referring to a recipe video by Ranveer Brar (he has helped many amateurs like me learn cooking). It looked, smelled and tasted great, giving me an instant confidence boost. Sometimes, I also make my family’s favourite dish, Tehri (a version of veg pulao) by following Dassana Amit’s recipe. My sister, who is a picky eater, loves it, and that is the best validation for me.

I’m beginning to fall back in love with cooking again. There, I said it. But now I’m aware enough to understand that it’s because I am doing it by choice. I am not expected to do it every day. It is not a part of my womanly KRAs. I step into the kitchen when I feel like it, and this freedom is keeping the charm of it alive for me. Being a working professional, I wouldn’t want to bear the responsibility of cooking for the entire family, every day. I just want to know that I can do it if ever I need to, and whenever I wish to.

When I was disillusioned with cooking, it seemed to me like a chore, a trap that my gender couldn’t escape. But now I have come to realise that it is one of the most important survival skills one can have, irrespective of gender. Now, I envision myself as a strong, independent woman, who can cook to sustain herself. And I like this version better.