The Great Indian Kitchen

This is not  a movie review but my own thoughts

A friend suggested I see this Malayalam movie, The Great Indian Kitchen.  To put it mildly I was shocked and stunned.  Having lived my entire adult life in USA, I could not believe this was happening in an educated family in India.

Nimisha Sanjayan is a dancer and brought up in Bahrain.  She gets into an arranged marriage with a teacher in Kerala.  Her in law home is a patriarchal family.  She tries very hard to adjust and be submissive.  But they test her patience.

Don’t want to give the end of the story.

The movie is directed by Jeo Baby.

The actress Nimisha Sanjayan did not just act.  She becomes a real submissive housewife.  She tries to adjust to their whims and fancies.  But she can tolerate only so much.

She tolerates some of the disgusting things:

The husband and father in law eat and spit the waste all over the dining table.  She has to eat there after men finished eating.  But when they go to a restaurant, the husband shows good table manners.  The wife asks him about it.  The husband gets made and ask her to apologize.

The father in law is a cunning character.  He asks her not to cook rice in a gas stove.  He wants his rice cooked only in fire.  He does not like his clothes washed in a washing machine.  He asks the daughter in law to wash his clothes by hand.

I don’t even want to go about her sufferings during her monthly period time.  She should be away from everyone else.  In fact, it was suggested she should not sleep in a bed.  She should sleep on the floor.

The movie is not about the “great” Indian kitchen.  It is about the Indian domestic slavery.  It is about a wife who is a cook, cleaner, and a sex slave.

Excellent movie.  Everyone should watch this.  Orthodox patriarchal families should learn a lesson.

Sad Story

I was reading about Jagdish Chandra Bose.  He was a biologist, physicist, and botanist.  He had so many discoveries.  But was disinterested in patenting and commercializing.  Therefore Mr. Bose never patented any of his discoveries.

I then remembered a very sad story.   Here it is.

Robert William Kearns (1927 to 2005).  He invented the intermittent wiper systems (popularly known as delayed wiper) for automobiles.  He filed for patent in December 1964.

Mr. Kearns approached the Big Three automakers, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler for licensing his technology.  All 3 rejected his proposal.  Yet, they started to install this delayed wiper system in their automobiles beginning 1969.

He filed a lawsuit against these 3 companies.  He was a poor man with no money to pay lawyers.  So, he acted as his own attorney.  Automobile companies had big name attorneys.  They dragged this case for many years.

Case against Ford Motor company lasted from 1978 to 1990.  He asked for $395 million.  Court awarded him $10.2 million.  Chrysler case lasted from 1982 to 1992.  Court awarded him $18.7 million.

Kearns filed lawsuits against Ford, Porsche, Volkswagen, Ferrari, Volvo, Alfa Romeo, Lotus, Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Peugeot, Renault, Rolls Royce Motors, Saab, Toyota, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz.   Several cases were dismissed after Kearns missed deadlines in other filing papers. 

In fighting these cases, almost all his money was spent on legal fees.

Kearns died in 2005 as a poor man living in a one bed room flat.

His life was made into a movie Flash of Genius.

Let us assume if these automobile manufacturers were honest and paid him at least $1.00 per wiper.  Think for a minute how many cars were sold in this world from 1969 to date.  At an average of 50 million cars in a year, he would have earned $2.6 Billion.

Napalm Girl

When I wrote last week about Heart-Wrenching Photos, I purposely did not include this tragedy.  I wanted to write  a separate blog post.

On June 8, 1972, South Vietnamese Airforce dropped the flaming napalm bomb on civilians.  9 year old girl,  Phan Thi Kim Phuc, who was playing with her cousins in the street was caught in that. Her clothes were burnt.  She had to rip her burning clothes off and run naked for safety.

This was the most iconic image of Vietnam War.

This picture was taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut,  He won a Pulitzer Prize for this. 

When this photo was published in the New York Times, the whole U.S. population shook.

Later Phan Thi Kim Phuc defected to Canada and she now lives there.

Want to know the effect of napalm bomb attack?  Major portion of a city will be burnt and destroyed.  When a napalm bomb is dropped, this is how the place looks like.

Here is a photo of that girl and the photographer on June 8, 2012 on the 40th anniversary of that incident.