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Taste of life: True story about a chef, sexism and kitchen politics, all in Pune 90 years ago
Chef Narhar Shivram Gadre, who had been a cook in a couple of famous restaurants in Pune during the 1940s, faced sexism
I met Narhar Shivram Gadre in the summer of 2015. He was 92 then and lived with his unmarried grandson in a single room in an old wada near the erstwhile Prabhat Talkies. I was trying to trace the whereabouts of a gentleman who ran a small eatery in Appa Balwant chowk. This eatery exclusively sold misal and had shut down in the late 1970s. A shopkeeper who knew Gadre well directed me to him that evening.
Gadre had been a cook in a couple of famous restaurants in the 1940s. He did not remember anything about the joint which sold misal near his house, but he knew of a few others. Would you please tell me more about those restaurants, I had asked him. He asked me my surname, and satisfied, proceeded to tell me about them. I had heard about most of them earlier. Their owners, menus, and chairs – everything seemed familiar when Gadre narrated anecdotes of his visits to those places in his younger days.
What about the restaurants where you worked, I asked him. I do not remember much, he said.
A few weeks later, I visited him unannounced again. I requested him to tell me about his experience as a cook at the restaurants. He was hesitant this time too. I persisted. He asked me my surname, went silent for a minute, and then started to narrate the story of his life.
He was 12 when he came to Pune from Deolali near Nasik. His father had passed away, and he had to earn a living for his mother and two younger siblings. One of his father’s friends in Pune took him to a restaurant in Budhwar peth and requested the owner, Mr Deodhar, to employ him. Deodhar owned two restaurants in the city at the time that were famous for the misal they served.
Gadre started by washing plates and cleaning tables at the restaurant. He was a quick learner. He would observe the cook make chivda, ghavan (soft, thin pancakes made of rice flour), and usal (legume curry).
Deodhar had been observing the young boy. Impressed with Gadre’s honesty and intelligence, he decided to enrol him in a school. It was decided that Gadre would attend the school for five hours daily and spend the rest of his time working at the restaurant.
In a couple of years, Gadre started assisting the main cook, and by the time he was 19 and ready to enrol in a college, he had learned all the skills to be the chief cook. Deodhar promised him that he would start another branch of his restaurant and appoint him as the manager after he got a degree.
Gadre never went to college. On August 8, 1942, Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement in Bombay, and many students took to the streets after dropping out of schools and colleges. Gadre was arrested briefly after participating in a protest march on August 11 near SP College. He was released three months later.
He worked in Deodhar’s restaurants after that for another four years before they were shut down. He could have easily been employed in another restaurant, but decided not to be a cook anymore.
He enjoyed cooking, but also wanted to study further and earn a living as a clerk in a government office.
He wanted society to treat him with respect.
Being a cook meant that he had no social status. Gadre realised this when he could not find an educated girl to marry him. He was ridiculed for aspiring to marry a girl who could read and write.
Food and cooking is an area that has followed strict gendered patterns, markedly dependent on a division between professional and domestic spaces. Professional gastronomy has long been a man’s world, defined by great masculine figures and built upon “masculine” values of toughness, strength, and discipline. By defining domestic cooking as a feminine task, men strengthened their domination over women.
Conversely, in the public sphere, men used cooking to earn money. As breadwinners, men used cooking to control the participation of women in the public sphere as both customers and cooks.
The political and social discourse centering on nationalism in the early and mid-20th century Maharashtra strengthened gender stereotypes and gender hierarchies. Wielding a whisk, wok or spoon affected the social status of a male. Cooking for Maharashtrian men was a means of breadwinning rather than a calling or an artistic and creative occupation.
Men either cooked at weddings or during religious rituals, or in restaurants. Male cooks were looked down upon and followed a hierarchy where the ones employed in restaurants were given a lower status than those who cooked at weddings.
In Europe, the professional chef was associated with professionalism and pride of cooking as a masculine tradition with its great masters. The male chef was seen as antithetical to the female model concerning cooking: the housewife. She was associated with traditional values of domestic cooking, family, and food that oriented with a care-for-others role.
This dichotomy hardly existed in Maharashtra where male chefs who cooked to earn a living were considered “feminine”. Society saw food-related activities as a female pursuit because cooking, for men, did not come as a natural obligation. Hence, men who cooked for money were deemed unworthy to fit into the nationalist model of a strong, ruthless, patriotic male.
It was too early for society to consider that gender was a social construct, a continuum, and stereotypes were created. Men suffered social expectations to behave accordingly to the then male stereotype, which most of them chose to conform to.
Gadre taught himself to use a typewriter and worked with an insurance company for the rest of his life. He married a girl who could read and write and had four children. He helped his wife in the kitchen. The family rarely visited restaurants since it was looked at with disdain. Gadre instead cooked misal and sabudana wada at home.
He passed away last year due to Covid-19.
Chinmay Damle is a research scientist and food enthusiast. He writes here on Pune’s food culture. He can becontacted at chinmay.damle@gmail.com
