Peer Webinar: Chapter 12

The Department of English, The Bhawanipur Education Society College organised a Peer Webinar: Chapter 12 on 31st October, 2022 at 7 pm. The speaker was Mr. Gaurav Singh; his paper was entitled “Food, Identity, Intimacy, and Agency: A Study of Select Hindi Films. The webinar was held on Google Meet; it was attended by faculty members and the PG Semester III students of the Department of English. 

The Peer Webinars are a unique monthly endeavour by the Department of English, the Bhawanipur Education Society College that has facilitated an amiable atmosphere for the exchange of research ideas. In the twelfth session of the series of webinars, Mr. Singh spoke about the intersections and interactions between the political discourses of food, identity, intimacy, and agency through the portrayal of “new Indian” middle-class housewives in select popular Hindi films. The films under evaluation through the lens of Feminist Food Studies were selected through a method of purposive sampling and include Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish (2012), Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox (2013) and Jasmeet K Reen’s Darlings (2022). The paper aimed at exploring familiar (familial) and unfamiliar networks of intimacies, friendships, and solidarities that the protagonists of these films end up establishing through the medium of food which is quite often personified as a major character in the films mentioned. 

Mr. Singh began his presentation by highlighting the dynamic changes in the portrayal of women on celluloid post 1990s in a post-liberal, democratic, global capital Indian economy. He mentioned how the Hindi films produced after 2010 in Bollywood have successfully represented women characters as openly opposing and nullifying patriarchal ideologies and defying social orders and conditions (Mihika Sengupta, Maithili Ganjoo). He further attempted an in-depth analysis of all three films and subsequently shared his findings. He perceived kitchen as a secondary heterotopian, “woman’s space” of othering and marginalisation that has always been used to restrict, confine and discipline women. Shashi’s (English Vinglish) prevalent alienation in kitchen and the surrounding tablescape (Sobal and Wansik, 2007), Ila’s (The Lunchbox) desperate attempts at restoring familial and conjugal intimacy through her cooked food, and Badru’s (Darlings) acts of cooking food and then being assaulted both in the kitchen and on the tablescape, all could be construed as their individually inhabited heterotopias. 

Shashi negotiates a newer cosmopolitan neoliberal feminine identity transgressing her temporal and domestic heterotopia. She advocates the cause of a radical reassessment of traditional womanhood (Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora) through her portrayal of the new woman identity by unlearning and relearning only to return to her hegemonic familial patriarchal setup prioritising familial intimacy over that of unconventional and unfamiliar intimacies in compliance with an emblematic liberalised bharatiya nari trope. Ila advances a step further by sending across her cooked food through her domestic heterotopia to an unknown stranger, winning his heart over through an unconventional flow of food and letters through the eponymous lunchboxes initiating a platonic epistolary romance which subsequently enables her to undergo a major self-transformation, acquiring agency and a renewed sense of identity that enables her to envision a future as a single mother in another country. However, Badru and Shamshu’s subversion and destabilisation of their respective cis-heteropatriarchal domestic heterotopias, defiance and dismissal of emphasised femininity (Connell) is most revolutionary and extremely praiseworthy. As a domestic violence survivor, Badru, inspired by her mother, not only manages to avenge herself, but also renegotiates her confidence, self-identity, agency thereby discarding all her heteronormative associations, with no future possibilities, to lead a self-partnered (Emma Watson) and suggestively a financially independent life on her own terms.. Her journey is clearly the most radical one inflicted with trauma and survival, and her awakening undoubtedly the most self-sufficient, self-sustaining and fulfilling compared to that of Shashi and Ila.

The paper was rounded off with intriguing deliberations on successful depiction of women in their traditional connotative heterotopias of kitchen and food echoing the words of Barbara Parker in her seminal work Feminist Food Studies: Intersectional Perspectives, “…we embody our relationships with food and our food practices define who we are. Food speaks to the core of our identities and to our relationships with each other and to the world around us”. The food does not necessarily restrict or confine their personhood but rather empowers, emancipates and liberates them in certain ways through their well-established networks of solidarities and intimacies. 

Peer webinar continues to be a unique endeavour by the Department of English in order to encourage a promising atmosphere for research and the exchange of scholarly ideas. It serves to enrich faculty members and students alike through the facilitation of critical thinking and dialogue.