Steam escaping sharply from a pressure cooker, was part of our morning memories. This steam carried with it the fragrance and the promise of our meals for the day.
It goes to Cindy's Black and White Wednesdays # 73 originally created by Susan and hosted this week by Zorra.
The unsung heroine's of our daily lives toiled within the cramped kitchen's, managing the patriarchal expectations of a 'complete Indian meal'. This 'complete Indian meal' had elastic boundaries, stretching to include festivals and fasts, snacks and guests, pampered children and fancies, grandchildren and treats, assorted neighbours and sweetmeats, friends and more family. It arranged the heroine's routine, from her first waking moments to when her work ended. But wait, perhaps it also inordinately occupied our heroine's sleep, dreams and thoughts. This fairly impossible task would have been herculean without the sturdy, Indian pressure cooker. Through this important role, the dependable contraption has moulded itself to our cuisine and social fabric.
This has been obliquely acknowledged by our patriarchal Indian guardians. In a cliched advertisement which caters to our notions of the ideal Indian woman and her doting husband... Jo Biwi Se Kare Pyaar / The one who loves his wife... the pressure cooker figures prominently. This was followed by parodies in popular culture, of an exploding pressure cooker for spouses who did not like their wives or for brides, who did not bring the expected dowry. The pressure cooker figured prominently among the common incidents, given for a dowry death. Exploding cooking gas cylinders were the other common one.
