Kitchen poem by Vimala -summary

Kakatiya University English Semester- 3. 

The Kitchen:  Vimala

I remember the kitchen’s ,

Flavor upon flavor,

 A mouthwatering  treasury,

Pungence of seasonings,

And the aroma of incense

From the prayer room

Next door. Each morning the kitchen awoke

To the swish of churning butter

The scraping of scoured pots.

And in the center, the stove,

Fresh washed with mud, painted

And bedecked, all set to burn.

 

We saved secret money in the

 seasoning box, hid sweets too,

and played at cooking with lentils and

We played Mother and Father,

In the magic world of kitchen

That wrapped childhood in its spell.

No longer playground for the grown up girl

Now trained into  kitchenhood.

Like all the mothers and mothers’ mothers

Before her, in the kitchen

She becomes woman right here.

Our kitchen is a mortuary,

Pans, tins, gunny bags

Crowd it like cadavers

That hang amid clouds of damp wood smoke.

Mother floats, a ghost here,

 A floating kitchen herself, her eyes melted in tears,

Her hands worn to spoons,

Her arms spatulas that turn

Into long frying pans, and

Other kitchen tools.

Sometimes Mother glows

Like a blazing furnace,

And burns through the kitchen ,

Pacing, restless, a caged tiger,

Banging pots and pans,

How easy, they say,

The flick of a ladle and the cooking ‘s done

No one visits now.

No one comes to the kitchen except to eat.

My mother was queen of the kitchen,

But the name engraved on the pots and pans is Father’s

Luck, they say, landed me in my great kitchen,

Gas stove, grinder, sink, and tiles.

I make cakes and puddings,

Not old-fashioned snacks as my mother did.

But the name engraved on the pots and pans is my husband’s

My kitchen wakes

To the whistle of the pressure cooker,

The whirr of the electric grinder.

 I am a well-appointed kitchen myself,

Turning round like a mechanical doll.

My Kitchen is a workshop,  a clattering,

Busy, butcher stall, where I cook

And serve, and clean and cook again.

In dreams, my kitchen haunts me,

My artistic kitchen dreams,

The smell of seasonings even in the jasmine.

 

Damn all kitchens, May they burn to cinders,

Our lives, eat out days- like some enormous vulture

Let us destroy those kitches

That  turned us into serving spoons.

Let us remove the names engraved on the pots and pans.

Come, let us tear out these private stoves,

Before our daughters must step

Solitary  into these kitchens.

For our children’s sakes,

Let us destroy three lonely kitchens.

englishlanguage-lit.blogspot.com 

 "The Kitchen" వంటిల్లు poem originally written in Telugu by Vimala. BBVL Narayana Rao translated it into English. The poem portrays the sufferings of housewives in the kitchen and their household responsibilities. Housewives have endured confinement and imprisonment in the kitchen for ages. The poet brings out the plight of women in ordinary homes in India. The poet is not talking just for herself but for the women's community.

    The poet recalls her childhood association with the kitchen. It was a mouth-watering treasury, filled with a sharp, bitter smell and decorated with well-washed utensils, pans, and tins.

    In stanza 2, "We saved secret money..." the poet used the first-person plural ‘we’ to apply this phenomenon to all the girls in India. They save their money on seasoning boxes, a practice that is prevalent in every Indian household. For grownups, the kitchen is no longer a playground but a training center where girls are trained to cook a variety of recipes.

    The poet calls the kitchen a mortuary and her mother a ghost, as all the pans, tins, and gunny bags crowd like corpses that hang amid clouds of smoke. The poet’s mother sometimes glows like a blazing furnace and works restlessly and at a great pace in a caged kitchen. The writer laments that no one in the family visits the kitchen except to eat, and expresses her anguish over not giving due recognition to their work. Though her mother was the queen of the kitchen, her father’s name was engraved on the pots. The same thing has been repeated in her case as well.

    The writer shows the change in kitchen gadgets and compares her modern recipe with her mother’s old-fashioned snacks. She calls the womenfolk to remove the names engraved on pots and tins and destroy the lonely kitchens.

    At last, the writer fervently appeals to establish a new kitchen, which was shared equally by all the members of the family, and warns not to step alone into the kitchen

click below given link to read

   వంటిల్లు. telugu version of the poem kitchen

Vantillu poem read by vimala (On YouTube

From 3.16)

S.Rajesh kumarenglishlanguage-lit.blogspot.com