Contributor: Anushree Gupta
What is your idea of a conventional kitchen? The kitchen is an important aspect of every household. It makes a house complete. For me, I picture it as a place where the aroma of home-cooked meals blends with a homemaker’s effort to put the food on the table. A fairly small but well-lit space with a double burner placed above the kitchen slab, facing a window. An array of cookware and utensils are arranged systematically on the shelves and drawers. A well-organized spice rack on the side of the kitchen with a sink and washing area.
My perception of what a conventional kitchen looks like changed drastically after visiting the informal housing in this off-grid neighbourhood in Hyderabad. The kitchens in the houses of Singareni Colony were mostly cramped, congested, stuffy, tiny, and dark spaces with little to no ventilation. These characteristics directly impacted the indoor temperatures of the house, leading to thermal discomfort of the residents while cooking. It can be described as a space that is usually fashioned from a few makeshift items and materials to serve a specific purpose lacking clear boundaries or demarcations. Now, how do you comprehend thermal comfort or discomfort in a space where the boundaries are fluid?
In this blog, we try to familiarize our readers with such a space and jointly explore different narratives and perceptions of the comfort levels of our respondents while cooking in such spaces. Cooking becomes a compelling topic for our analysis because of two reasons: First, its nature of being an ‘everyday’ domestic pursuit that consumes a significant portion of time of people in our field site. Second, within the scope of the ‘Cool Infrastructures’ project, we believe ‘Cooking’ is an interesting line of inquiry that speaks centrally to the question of heat and its effects.
CONTEXT
Last summer, we handed over a set of phones to a few women in the neighbourhood asking them to document their personal experiences of heat in the most intimate spaces of their houses. The idea was to understand their thermal experiences in indoor spaces where they spend a significant portion of their time. With the help of a digital ethnography method called ‘Video Diaries’ we received a number of videos from our respondents that aptly documented their thermal experiences. One such video has been embedded to the left. This video records a conversation between a mother and daughter in their kitchen, a space that largely remains undocumented. This particular video intrigued me to probe further into cooking as an activity to understand its associated vulnerabilities in informal housing. It shows a poorly lit kitchen with an asbestos roof, an exposed cement brick-walled house with no windows or other ventilation options. It was shot by one of our respondents who captured her mother in the frame while she was preparing chapati (roti’s). The conversation went like:
Daughter: ‘Kya hua Mummy?’ (as she sees her mother wiping the sweat using the palloo of her saree)
Mother (in a tired voice): ‘Bohot garmi ho rahi. Din mein pakao toh garmi, raat mein pakao toh garmi’.
In light of this context, we were presented with some fundamental yet crucial questions.
Are the experiences of thermal distress and risks gendered?
Do these experiences vary across different housing typologies?
This blog aims to explore and provide insights into some of these inquiries with respect to cooking as an activity. We analyse the activity through the lens of gender, spatial considerations and time across the hottest months of the year, spanning from March to June. The data presented in this document was collected using the Perception Survey tool. This survey was initiated from February 25th, this year and has continued since. This tool captures the perception of comfort/discomfort of our respondents in Singareni while performing different activities throughout the day across different time slots.
Of the 178 responses recorded for cooking as an activity, while 157 of them were responses by females, only 21 of them were responses recorded from our male respondents. This data validates that the women in Singareni predominantly participate in the cooking activities. Conversations with the majority of our respondents reveal that they spend 2-3 hours daily in the kitchen while simultaneously being engaged in other sort of care work activities for their family. Some women partly undertake cooking as a remunerative work for other households and are forced to stay in such uncomfortable environments for longer hours.
This suggests that the kitchen is a key site in an informal neighborhood like Singareni, that manifests gendered forms of labor. The socio-cultural norms of our society bind women to the caregiving responsibility of food preparation, essential for survival of the household.
EFFECT OF HOUSING MATERIALS AND DESIGN ON LEVELS OF COMFORT WHILE COOKING
This graph clearly answers one of our fundamental questions. It suggests that houses built with different materials have varied influence on how people experience heat while cooking, especially during summers. We observed three housing typologies being commonly found in Singareni. They are: Kutcha (asbestos/tin sheet roof and wall), Semi-pukka (asbestos/tin sheet roof with brick or exposed cement wall) and pukka houses (cemented brick roof and wall) houses. While kutcha and semi-pukka houses are prevalent in Zone 1(ST Colony) and Zone 2 (DWC Area), Zone 3 (Government Housing) exclusively consists of only pukka houses.
Data indicates, respondents residing in Kutcha houses (68.18%) find cooking the most uncomfortable. This is closely followed by people in a semi-pukka House (64.56%) who also reported feeling uncomfortable while cooking. Conversely, the data highlights that among the three housing typologies, respondents felt the most comfortable while cooking in a pukka house.
From our qualitative interviews we see another set of patterns emerging from houses in Zone 3 (government housings). Residents residing in the ground and the first-floor houses of these blocks expresses greater comfort while cooking compared to the residents residing on the topmost floor below the terrace. According to them, the terrace absorbs heat throughout the day which then transfers the accumulated heat downwards causing the third floor to become exceptionally hot while cooking, especially during the nights. Based on our understanding of the settlement we feel this pattern can be attributed to the materiality, the spatial layout and design of these houses.
MEN BUILD HOUSES, WOMEN CREATE KITCHENS
From conversations with our respondents, we could gather that the houses in Singareni are non-engineered and usually self-planned. Typically, it’s the men within the household who are the key decision makers in deciding how these houses should look like. Its primarily because of them having complete authority over the budget and finance of the house. Without proper planning, these houses are usually designed in a manner overlooking the usage and need of a space. This fairly explains what the kitchens in these houses look like.
The image shows a kitchen in a kutcha house with no ventilation
In order to fairly understand their kitchen environments, its essential to first understand the nature of their dwelling and the reasons behind their preferences. Economic considerations, lack of adequate space and fear of evictions due to the absence of formal land rights limit their capacities to make long-term investments on a heat resilient housing structure. Typical houses in the neighborhood are one room dwellings spread over an average area of 27 square metres. The asbestos walled houses limit the scope of cutting out windows or other ventilation options trapping smoke and heat inside these houses. Most houses have no designated kitchen.
One would enter such a house and mostly notice the kitchen been created in a makeshift manner. They usually use curtains/tin sheets or sarees as a divider to separate the kitchen from the rest of the house. This prompted us to conclude that while men are primarily responsible for building houses, women in the household play a crucial role in adapting these spaces for practical use. In resource constrained environments like these, they are the master of improvisations who bridge gaps or complete any unfinished element in their house, essential for daily use. Further, the concerning rat infestation problem in the neighborhood urges the residents to shut any openings especially in the kitchen further aggravating the issue of heat.
The Image above shows a one-roomed house, with a makeshift kitchen created using a bedsheet that separates the narrow tiny space from the rest of the house being used as living room and the bedroom.
One of our respondents narrates that her husband had recently undertaken a significant reconfiguration of her home layout due to space constraints, relocating the kitchen to the extreme corner that lacks proper ventilation. This woman who was in her early thirties remarked,
‘Yahaan pe zyada garmi lagti hain, par kya kare’.
It’s important to note here, the lack of agency that women exercise in household planning decisions. We clearly notice the lack of attention to the design of these houses that expose the women in the household to thermal vulnerabilities. This greatly impedes their ability to adapt to heat conditions.
PERCEPTION OF COMFORT LEVELS WHILE COOKING
Rightly described by one of our respondents, the kitchen turns into an ‘oven’ during summers. This brings us to a concerning question of how they feel while cooking inside such heated spaces. We spoke to several women in the neighborhood who complained of excessive sweating and suffocation along with feeling irritable while cooking during the peak summer periods over particular time slots. We have repeatedly come across the word ‘Thakaan’ (translates to fatigue) while they described how they felt while cooking during the summers. These spaces often become intolerably overheated because of the smoke that is emitted while cooking/seasoning (that they refer to as ‘tadka’ or ‘bagaara’). Absence of proper ventilations trap the smoke inside the house making it hot, humid and extremely uncomfortable. According to one of our respondents, she cannot switch on the fan while cooking to ensure the stove doesn’t go off.
During the survey, we observed two interesting patterns in our respondent’s cooking behaviour. First, their comfort levels in cooking varied starkly across the summer months from March to June. Second, they preferred cooking only across specific time slots. We try to analyse some of these trends in this section.
The graph above suggests that the respondents felt the most uncomfortable while cooking during the month of May, followed by April and then March. Whereas they felt the most comfortable cooking during the month of June. This explains that while June has been a relatively cooler month, the months of May and April have exhibited higher temperatures.
Interestingly, both men and women show a similar preference for cooking during the early morning hours (4 AM to 8 AM) and evening hours (4PM to 8PM). One of our respondents expressed her preference of cooking in the evening hours saying,
“Cooking at 5:30 PM is better than cooking at 7:30 AM. During the morning hours, the sunlight falls on the walls of the kitchen. Hence, there is a lot of heat inside the kitchen.“
However, delving deeper into their daily routines helped us realize that their preference for cooking during these two time slots is also driven by other factors. Women preferred cooking in the morning to ensure that they can provide meals for their husband and children who leave for work and school respectively. Similarly, their preference to cook in the evening hours aligns with the time that they return from work. We see a similar pattern among women both engaging in paid and unpaid work inside or outside the house.
Both men and women showed restraint in cooking in the afternoon hours (12PM TO 4PM). Some respondents who stayed at home said they felt ‘extremely hot’ while cooking during the afternoon hours, given that this time slot corresponds to the period of the day with the highest temperatures. While others responded saying, that they are usually not available during the particular time slot.
HOW DO WOMEN ADAPT?
However, time and again, women in our fieldsite have shown how they have used the local knowledge that have been passed down to them over generations to not only cool themselves but also cool their houses using different practices, makeshift arrangements and tactics. We enquired if they undertake or resort to any behavioral actions or measures while cooking for bodily cooling. This brought to the forefront some interesting tactics, daily practices they use to stay cool. For instance: Frequent consumption of water and other forms of local beverages made at home such as ‘sabja-drink’, ‘jawa pani’, ‘nimbu pani’ that prevents them from getting dehydrated and helps them get through the hottest day by keeping their bodies cool. They splash water on their face at regular intervals and wet the curtains of their house to allow cool air to come in while engaging in the activity. They take small breaks while cooking and prefer taking a bath every time they cook. From our field, we have also noticed how women disseminate this knowledge among other women and help in increasing the overall adaptive capacity of the community.
CONCLUSION
Women in Singareni find themselves constrained by social mobility and societal expectations, that demand them to fulfill both domestic and care work needs of the family. Consequently, they end up spending longer hours in their houses. These houses get so heated up, that during the hottest afternoons, they feel that the outdoors is better, cooler and way more comfortable than indoors. Under such circumstances, cooking adds to their burden. The discomfort of women while performing some of these chores often go unnoticed. It’s viewed as just another task they are expected to undertake.
The weight of these expectations compels them to compromise with their own comfort to meet the cooling needs of their families. Nonetheless, even in the face of these challenges, women employ various strategies to adapt to heat. Some choose to cook at the break of the dawn or the early morning hours when its relatively cooler, while others undertake other adaptation measures such as increasing their water intake. Therefore, its crucial to recognise that women should not be solely viewed as victims to Climate Change. They are also the custodians of valuable local and tacit knowledge that is extremely powerful in building resilience against Heat in a neighborhood like Singareni.
Research supporting this post was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC), UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) for the project, Cool Infrastructures: Life with Heat in the Off-Grid City (Award No: ES/T008091/1).