Ladies Study Group’s event ‘Food For Thought’, hosted recently at JW Marriott’s Indus Banquet, was a discussion on women and their relationship with food, health and nutrition. Featuring the feisty and fun mother-daughter duo Rekha Diwekar and Rujuta Diwekar, the session was moderated by Chiki Sarkar, founder of Juggernaut Books, and Richa Agarwal, president of Ladies Study Group. While celebrity nutritionist and health expert Rujuta had a humorous and easy solution to all queries, myths and doubts, heritage food expert Rekha made the conversation engaging with her wisdom based on the traditional ways.
Relationship with Food
Talking about her relationship with food, Rujuta explained how food unites people. It is the centre of every celebration and is an intrinsic part of traditional beliefs, too. “I think of food as something which lets people get out of the bed and even go for a morning walk. My grandfather would go for his morning walk and every day he and his group would either eat a vada pav or a peda celebrating some occasion or the other…. I think food is something that also keeps us alive. I think my early and continual memories about food are basically about love and people,” said Rujuta.
Working Women and Cooking
Growing up in a family of four generations of working women, starting with Rujuta’s great grandmother, cooking has never been a thing that scared the working women nor did it take a backseat because of career priorities. Reflecting on her childhood memories, Rujuta shared: “My mother’s mother was a good cook and she comes from a joint family of seven brothers and their wives and many cousins. And in the family they would rate the best cook of all dishes. My sense of food and nurture came from there. Food is for competition, cooperation and collaboration. My mother was working all her life and food was not secondary. That is also something empowering. You can also continue to have good food only if there is adequate finance in the house. In our family men helped in the kitchen very genuinely, and also there was a lot of appreciation for every meal that was cooked… in the world of dieting, our ability to receive has gone down. I think if you have an enabling environment to cook, you love cooking, eating and feeding together.”
Expanding on the thought, Rekha added: “I was never scared of being a working woman and still having to cook. Not only my mother but my grandmother was also working. So it was very natural for me to work and cook. For every occasion we had one special food. Now everything is available round the year. There’s no novelty. For Baishak and Chaitra, we had so much to make with mango, for Holi it was puran poli. So, every month there was some new food to enjoy.”
LSG event with Rekha Diwekar and Rujuta Diwekar
Good Gut Health
Before sharing tips on good gut health, Rujuta, with her sassy sense of humour, rejected the word ‘gut’. To her it is a fancy way of talking about digestion. Her simple mantra for good digestion is, “Ayu, bayu and payu. Ayu is the length of our life, bayu is the breath or the vital life that keeps us alive, and payu are our feet. The understanding of the Upanishads is that if you keep using your feet properly then the vayu gives you a long life. Next time you are stuck in a bus, in traffic, get off and start walking! Don’t wait for an European holiday to walk. (Laughs) Using our feet often is the best thing we can do for our gut and mental health.”
Rekha believes in including all basic home-cooked food in everyday diet, starting from ghee to chutney. “If you eat everything then your pre and pro-biotic bacteria will flourish. Our food has sources of both. But unfortunately, what we are doing is having soups and salads,” she said.
The Weight Gain-Weight Loss Circus
Talking about weight loss and weight gain, Rujuta outright suggested getting rid of the obsession. “I am working since ’99. We don’t have a weighing scale in office. We don’t weigh anyone and we are still in the business. People want to be noticed for everything that they bring to the table and not get reduced to their body weight. After 40, why are we obsessed with looking thin? Because as women we are told that we are not allowed to get old. Whether we are 16 or 46, what brings value is our character, our strength and what we are able to do with our life on a daily basis and not how we look at a random person’s wedding.”
She further connected the obsession to patriarchy and said: “Shrinking in our size so that we are not a burden on others and not seen... and over a period of time, we begin to shrink in our views and voice, too. So, never shrink in your body size, and if you want your rightful place, the least you should do is be seen.”
She also spoke about the concept of happy weight, the weight that lets us do all our daily activities seamlessly. “There will be a time when we will be around but we won’t be able to eat everything we like. So, we can’t be bothered about our weight. Till the time you are alive, just see if you feel light when you are standing on your two feet,” she shared.
Eating Local
After Rekha shared her wisdom on the goodness of home-cooked meal, including culturally traditional choices, Rujuta highlighted the importance of choosing local food. “Eat and only eat food that has a local name. So, local, seasonal and traditional is the food that we should be eating because when we meet people, we will have something to exchange, something to offer and something to talk about. Every time you’re eating, think about it as a legacy that you are leaving behind. Everyone talks about how we made them feel by feeding them and the food that they exchanged with us. No one talks about your bikini body when you are gone. Much more than a particular food to get rid of brain fog or anything, women need to give themselves permission to eat. They are always self-censoring. If we keep under-eating all our life, then we keep blaming menopause and our husbands! Eat peanuts, cashews, jhaalmuri. And it is the mango season, which comes once a year. Food has to bring joy. Why suffer with food? Is marriage not enough?” quipped Rujuta.
Menopause and Motherhood
When questioned on menopause, Rekha’s quick response was to worry less and stay busy. “Depending on your age, genetics and lifestyle, your menopause affects you. For some it is easy, for some it is trouble. If you keep thinking about it, it becomes a problem. I had no time to think because I was working and had two daughters at home.”
Rujuta took the opportunity to talk about how traditionally women ignored their health. Men having a slight fever would get the whole family’s attention, but her mother incessantly bleeding during menopause was not a concern to the family because of unawareness. “Women of her generation were almost taught to make light of any bodily suffering. Now people are more conscious. And that is also thanks to her generation, which has kind of figured out that this was probably not the best route forward… she (Rekha) and I may differ here, she’s saying just get your life together and don’t think about anything. Partly, you need that, but partly, you also need to step back. If you take the time to unwind and relax, then maybe you have the strength, the resilience, and the capacity to take on everything that will come the next day. So, it’s really about maintaining that fine balance of not ignoring oneself, making the time to exercise, to rest, and also including things like nuts or laddoos in one’s diet because menopause is also the time where there is sugar craving. We eat all the junk but not the laddoos and barfis.”
Delving into motherhood, the mother-daughter duo had a similar take. While Rekha shared how she always supported her daughters’ choices and thus empowered them to become strong and independent individuals, Rujuta pointed out the pressure of motherhood that can hamper the mother-daughter relationship and suggested: “I think just celebrate, love and accept every woman, and start with yourself. That’s the best way to raise your daughter.”