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Rosalyn D'Mello: Skirting around burkha-clad truths

Updated on: 03 March,2017 07:36 AM IST  | 
Rosalyn D'Mello |

Something utterly glorious happens when women get together and talk and drink and cook and be, and how it frightens the patriarchy!

Rosalyn D'Mello: Skirting around burkha-clad truths

A still from Lipstick Under My Burkha. Pic courtesy film’s official page on twitter
A still from Lipstick Under My Burkha. Pic courtesy film’s official page on twitter


I outdid myself in the kitchen on Wednesday evening. I’m not the kind of person who usually pats herself on the back in public, but there really was something so oddly sublime about the way the mutton chops turned out. Perhaps it had something to do with the studied manner in which they had been marinated. Since I returned from Goa, I had one more weekend trip that kept me away from being “at home”, and was, therefore, lacking in foresight about my kitchen’s inventory. I didn’t realise I had run out of khus khus and peppercorns. I should also have ordered another packet of dahi beforehand. But since my best friend, Mandakini, who I’ve always called Mona, was coming home to dinner after aeons (we’ve otherwise been meeting at her place), and since I was using a self-cooked meal as the lure, I wanted the mutton chops I had bought from Mazzar, my butcher in CR Park’s Market Number 1, to be the star of the evening.


Between writing assignments I ventured into the kitchen to check on the chops, and decided, around 3 pm, to start on the marinade. I chose not to allow the missing ingredients to thwart the process, so I rubbed the beautifully frenched chops with turmeric powder, lime, salt, and coarsely crushed garlic. Then I pulverised dhania and mustard, and added the powdered mixture in so they could begin to tenderise the mutton. Two hours later, when the peppercorns, khus khus and dahi arrived, I ground them in too and let it all be for a couple of hours as I washed the baby potatoes I was planning to roast.


Mona arrived around 8 pm nursing stomach cramps, thanks to the monthlies, but we kicked off the evening with red wine (Grover’s La Reserve, which is quite decently bodied) my sister brought back from the wine shop and a platter of Corona’s smoked cheddar made in Satara by a Russian woman, some prosciutto, and gherkins. We sat in my living room with the fairy lights around my collection of precious empty alcohol bottles (I can tell you the secret history of each bottle’s consumption over the last four years) and spoke about so much that was on our minds - how, if menstruation was a male problem, the pharmaceutical nexus would have already devised a cure; how, despite our reservations, we were Girls loyalists, which led us to exchange notes on the latest episode of ‘American Bitch’, through which Lena Dunham had inextricably redeemed herself while simultaneously proving how she is indeed the voice of her generation; and everything else in between, including our most preferred topic, the reality of Mans­plaining. I told Mona and my sister about the time I went to a jam session at one of the few unpretentious burger joints in Anjuna, Goa - Rocket - and found a Scandinavian singer doing a version of one of Bob Dylan’s songs, and how, later, when I felt intoxicated enough to decide I was going to sing along too, asked him if he could play something by Rodriguez, aka Sugarman.

He obli­ged, saying he had come up with his own version of Establishment Bl­ues, which I had to admit was pretty good. When he was done, he expre­ssed surprise at my knowledge of Rodriguez. “If you like him, you should listen to Dylan,” he said with smug earnestness that left me stumped.

In other words, it was what the patriarchal and misogynist Indian censor board would have termed a very ‘lady-oriented’ evening, full of talk of sex, stomach cramps, misogyny, and fantasies. Like Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha, it would not have received their approval. I wonder if they would feel similarly uncertain about the way the three of us went at the mutton, which, after we fried on each side for a good 10-15 minutes, we decided to grill in the oven with the jus we concocted from leftover marinade, along with some refrigerated old dessert wine and a squeeze of an orange. The consequence: expertly charred chu­nks of meat that were still tethered to the bone but that came off it unrelentingly when we bit into them. There were 14 chops when we had laid dinner out on the candle-lit table, but three remained by the time we were done. The evening had been a meat fest indeed.

Two weeks ago, I happened to write this sentence on a piece of paper that I then blue-tacked to my wall: “To be audible is not the same as to have a voice.” The nuances that mark this piece of unintended wisdom are still revealing themselves to me. Something utterly glorious happens when women get together and talk and drink and cook and be — a quiet realignment of the constellations, a ‘lady-oriented’ exposition of truths with cosmic repercussions. How it frightens patriarchy!

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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