The automatic roti maker: A symbol of emancipation?
Sisters of the world, rejoice! Your freedom is nigh! Your struggles are over and finally your long and arduous years of toil are set to come to a befitting end! For last week saw the launch of the ultimate tool of liberation – THE FULLY AUTOMATIC ROTI-MAKER!!! (Thunderous applause and many tears of joy please.)
The launch of this wondrous device unsurprisingly set the social media world all a-flutter. On last count the demo video on YouTube had generated 7.95 lac views, almost competing with the trailers of Ramleela and Lady Gaga’s latest release! Such is the excitement with which it has been greeted by an adoring public, comprising largely I am sure of hard-working women who took a two minute break from all the dough –rolling to see the demo, with a bit of flour artistically placed in their hair a la Dimple in Bobby!
I too ended up watching it along with a few colleagues (albeit without any flour in my hair since I was in office. Not to say it would have been any different if at home, since I don’t recollect when I last made rotis) and I must confess the ease with which fluffy and hot rotis came out of the machine @ of 1 per minute as claimed, was quite enchanting!
As we all know nothing epitomizes the subjugation of the middle class Indian woman as much as the process of roti–making. So if you aim to be a good bahu you just have to know how to make good rotis. It is one of the non-negotiables in the “Hamaari Acchi Bahu Alka” list! And not only do you need to have the knowledge but also the willingness to make hot and fresh rotis for your assorted in-laws at whatever time, and in whichever quantity they deem fit.
“OMG!!!! You are offering your distant aunt and her seven offspring pre-cooked chapatis? How can you even think of doing that? Your parents didn’t teach you anything?” “So what if you have come home at 10 PM from work? Hamare ghar ki pratha hai ki ghar ki bahu hee roti banake sab ko khilaygi!”
Not only is it one of the KRAs on which young bahus are measured; it is also a very tedious and repetitive task, neither a thing of beauty nor a joy forever. While making sabzis and meat dishes and pickle is an art form; often learnt and refined over generations of recipes being handed over from grandmom to granddaughter, roti-making is mind-numbingly boring!
It has in its own way become both symptomatic of, and a cause of the drudgery, which is part and parcel of the routine of many housewives.
No wonder if there is one thing most women detest about cooking it is the roti-making! The gooey feeling associated with the flour making, then the effort to beat it into a cohesive whole (I wonder if women often imagine their husbands/ in-laws instead of the dough when beating it into shape – a home version of the punching bag perhaps?) Then the process of making perfectly round chapatis which are neither too thin nor too thick and finally the correct way of roasting, so they fluff up like little balls of happiness unlike their lives post the honeymoon?
And thus if the manufacturers of the roti maker are proudly presenting it as a symbol of emancipation and yet another step in the unbinding of the shackles women have worn for centuries, they may sound pompous and self-aggrandizing but they aren’t very far from the truth are they?
Image courtesy: © Thinkstock photos/ Getty Images
More On >> Work & Life
