I wonder how many of us have truly wrestled with the question of why we cook the way we do. How our style of caring for our appetites and our bodily needs have been shaped by the environments in which we have been raised or by our exposure to cooking as children? Many of my friends in Delhi who lived alone almost always hired cooks. I’ve written before about this, how such a service feels more like an essential, rather than a luxury, given how pressed we all are for time. Never being financially stable enough to afford such a service meant I was always solely responsible for taking care of myself. I had to nurture my relationships with my vegetable and fruit vendors, the butcher, the fish sellers. Maintaining my own kitchen involved a large social network. Cooking for myself meant planning menus different from those I was used to at my parents’ home, because I didn’t want to be stuck eating the same thing for two days straight. I learned to be inventive with leftovers. I learned to infuse food with flavours my tongue held dear. Most importantly, I allowed myself to shop for lovely ingredients. This was not always easy on my income. But I realised that cooking for myself didn’t have to mean depriving myself of lavishness. I always got the good smoked bacon, the best cuts of meat, rocket leaves, cherry tomatoes, avocados, figs, balsamic vinegar and good-quality olive oil. Having these items in my pantry fuelled in me an excitement around cooking.

In the podcast, Bee Wilson talked about another aspect of cooking that tends to put people off it—washing up after. Maybe because in our house this was considered such a natural extension of the cooking process, I never thought twice about it. In fact, when I’d invite friends over for dinner, it was my favourite part of the evening. I’d wait until the last guest had left to begin clearing the house. I’d pour myself a glass of wine or whiskey, listen to a podcast or a playlist and methodically clean up. It was always such a high. There were one or two times when I hired someone to do it, but I always regretted it later because I felt I had taken away from myself some kind of hidden joy.

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All of this is to say that we rarely think about what it means to be resilient in a kitchen, to take the task of feeding oneself in one’s own hands. To wake up in the morning and soak a cup of rice while you make your coffee or to plan weekly menus and prep accordingly. Cooking is the first thing we are content to outsource to someone else, forgetting how crucial it can be towards nursing our sense of agency and looking after our bodies. Because they are worthy of such care and attunement.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.