Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.
Through stark imagery and unadorned language, Ambuj exposes how the kitchen becomes a prison, where women’s bodies, dreams, and consciousness are consumed in the fire of duty.
The Poem’s Core Imagery
Ambuj traces a woman’s life from childhood to old age, showing how every stage is tethered to cooking. As “bulbuls” or “branches of flowers,” they knead dreams alongside dough, only to hear “the sound of a plate being flung.” Whether praised as beautiful or condemned as witches, whether pregnant or exhausted, women continue to cook. Even their subconscious is colonized: “in the sleep of sleep they cooked food.” This haunting line suggests that patriarchy has so deeply conditioned women that even rest is denied; their labour becomes instinctive, mechanical, and endless.
Images like “grinding chutney on the rock of exhaustion” and “rolling rotis on the climb of the night” transform fatigue into physical landscapes. Exhaustion is no longer fleeting—it hardens into a rock, a permanent burden. Night, meant for rest, becomes a mountain to be scaled. Sweat dripping down calves, bent spines, and arthritis knocking at knees reveal the bodily toll of this labour. The poem closes with women cooking while sitting, too frail to stand, yet still compelled to serve. This is not maternal love but compulsory servitude.
Feminist Critique: The Double Burden
Ambuj’s realism strikes at the hypocrisy of a society that worships women as goddesses yet flings plates when food displeases. The poem highlights the “double burden”: even when women become clerks, officers, or artists, their ultimate test remains the hot roti at home. Tears falling into plates symbolize the invisibility of their suffering. Praise from guests or a rare meal eaten without shouting becomes their only happiness, underscoring how patriarchal validation is tied to service, not selfhood.
From a feminist lens, the kitchen is not a natural space but a site of confinement. Domestic labour is framed as “womanly,” naturalized through cultural beliefs, and enforced through violence—“many times by showing your eyes / many times by kicking.” Ambuj unmasks this false consciousness, revealing how oppression is disguised as duty.
Comparative Reading: Ambuj and Anamika
Placed alongside Anamika’s “Bejagah” (Placeless), Ambuj’s poem gains further resonance. While Ambuj depicts the destruction of women’s bodies through relentless labour, Anamika emphasizes existential exile: women have no place in home, society, or history. Ambuj’s “rock of exhaustion” mirrors Anamika’s “placelessness.” Both poets converge on the truth that the kitchen is not liberation but prison. Ambuj views exploitation from outside, composing an elegy; Anamika, writing from within, frames it as existential crisis. Together, they reveal that women’s oppression is both material and spiritual, both bodily and spatial.
Domestic Labour as Institution
From a sociological perspective, Ambuj’s poem exposes the gendered division of labour. Society assigns men to the public sphere and women to the private, reproductive sphere. Even when women succeed professionally, their identity remains tied to cooking. This reflects Sylvia Walby’s theory of patriarchy as a structure of control, where violence and cultural beliefs enforce subordination. The “sound of a plate being flung” and “Ugh, so much salt” exemplify how women’s labour is consumed but their pain ignored.
The poem also illustrates the “double burden”: women contribute economically outside yet remain bound to unpaid domestic labour inside. Old age brings no reprieve; bent spines and arthritis only mark the utilitarian cruelty of a system that extracts labour until collapse. Thus, the kitchen emerges as a political site of power and exploitation, not a neutral domestic space.
Domestic Labour as Class Struggle
Ambuj’s poem resonates deeply with Marxist feminism, which argues that capitalism rests on women’s unpaid domestic labour. The kitchen becomes a factory: raw materials like potatoes and onions are combined with patience and tears to produce food. Yet this labour has no exchange value, rendering it invisible in capitalist terms. Margaret Benston’s insight that domestic labour sustains capitalism is vividly illustrated here.
Alienation is central. Just as factory workers are estranged from their products, women are alienated from the food they create. Men consume and evaluate it—“Ugh, so much salt”—while women’s sweat and tears remain unseen. The poem also depicts class struggle within the home: men as owners, women as workers. The kitchen is the site of exploitation, discipline, and violence. False consciousness—calling cooking “womanly”—ensures women accept servitude as destiny.
The final image of cooking while sitting epitomizes patriarchal profiteering. Unlike machines replaced when worn out, women are squeezed until their bodies collapse. Their labour is treated as fixed capital, consumed without concern for health. This is not maternal love but systemic exploitation.
Craft and Language: Tools of Ideology
Ambuj’s craft is unadorned, direct, and stark. His choice of verbs—kneading, rolling, grinding—reduces women’s existence to activity, not being. The repetition of “sleep” creates exhausting continuity, evoking the endless cycle of domestic work. Tender images like “bulbul” and “branch of flowers” are juxtaposed with violent realities like “plate being flung” and “kicking,” exposing patriarchal false consciousness. This dialectical method mirrors Marxist critique, showing contradiction between idealized femininity and lived oppression.
The simplicity of language intensifies horror. Everyday words—roti, chutney, sweat—become ideological tools, stripping away sanctity and revealing exploitation. Ambuj’s realism aligns with Marxist aesthetics, where art is inseparable from politics and economics.
Global Context: Known and Unknown Women
Ambuj’s reference to “known and unknown women” elevates the poem beyond individual experience to collective history. It acknowledges the millions whose invisible labour nourished civilizations yet remained unrecorded. This aligns with theories of the care economy, which highlight how women’s unpaid work sustains global economies. Simone de Beauvoir’s notion of woman as “the other” resonates here: across cultures, from huts to penthouses, cooking has been imposed as universal fate.
This duality also critiques ethnography, where women’s oppression becomes an “example” for others. Mothers and mothers-in-law perpetuate chains by training daughters to endure. Thus, patriarchy reproduces itself through women’s own conditioning. Philosophically, the “unknown” reflects existential dissolution: women’s identities dissolve into collective anonymity, their labour erased from history.
The Kitchen as Graveyard
Ambuj’s “Women Who Cook” is not simply a poem about food; it is a charge sheet against patriarchal capitalism. It reveals how domestic labour, framed as love or duty, is in fact exploitation, alienation, and class struggle. The kitchen, far from being a site of nourishment, becomes a graveyard where women’s health, dreams, and dignity are buried daily. Sweat dripping to calves, bent spines, arthritis, and cooking in the “sleep of sleep” testify to a slavery so deep it colonizes the subconscious.
By stripping away sanctity and exposing the political economy of labour, Ambuj forces readers into guilt and awareness. His realism compels us to confront the cost of every “hot roti”: a woman’s cold, lifeless body. Until domestic labour is recognized as political, valued economically, and freed from compulsory womanly duty, every claim to women’s liberation will remain incomplete. The kitchen, Ambuj shows, is not a natural space but a prison—an endless cycle of exploitation that demands feminist resistance.
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*Professor, Centre for Indian Languages, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, JNU, New Delhi. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper
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