PORTIONS OF INEQUALITY

What and how much is served on one's plate has a greater connotation - it talks loud about food as a tool of dominance

- DIYA MARIA GEORGE

FOR Lakshmi*, every morsel of rasam rice is seasoned with a bitter truth: her place at the table. Her portion is always smaller. "Amma always served Appa first, then my brothers, and finally me. I knew which plate was mine - it was always the one with the smallest portion," she recalls. Burdened by tradition and expectations, her mother upheld this norm without question. "I hated some mornings," Lakshmi says. "I was sent to school with nothing but watered-down buttermilk. Amma would say, 'Why waste food in the morning when you can eat at school?'"

UNICEF highlights how "the nutrition crisis in South Asia is deeply connected to gender inequality. Malnutrition starts in the womb and is passed down through generations."

Across generations and regions, women have been served less - not just in their lives, but on their plates, too. For many, like Lakshmi, the kitchen becomes the first battleground where patriarchy is quietly enforced. "Women are conditioned to eat leftovers, eat less, eat after men and children have finished eating, and in some cases, even eat on the very same used, and unwashed plate that their respective husbands have left behind. These are not stereotypes; these are gender-based rules that follow the laws of casteism and patriarchy," shares The Big Fat Bao, an illustrator. For them, these practices are far from arbitrary - they are structural and systemic that see women as subservient and secondary to men, even in matters as basic as food consumption.

A cycle of sacrifice