Mitali Saran: How to cook a woman’s goose
Since everyone is into kitchen tips, here’s an old Indian specialty. Nobody cooks a woman’s goose like Indian men. Over the years they have added barbaric tweaks, because anyone can robotically follow a formula, but it’s in the personal touch that you really express yourself. Its name is euphemistic, since few Indians like to call a spade a spade (see ‘eve-teasing’ and ‘outraging a woman’s modesty’) .
This recipe is so popular that you can be sure that on
average 90 times every day—that we know of—some Indian man, somewhere, is
cooking a woman’s goose.. The basic dish is simple: Take a woman against her
will, dominate her, and pierce her flesh with whatever is at hand—a penis is a
convenient favourite, but it could be anything, really. She will release a mix
of fear, pain, misery, humiliation, rage, and grief. Check your humanity
thermometer—when it hits zero, she’s done. Cover up the whole thing and
let the heat subside, and serve up to your friends, or show it off on
social media.
It is a household staple in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, but
a favourite all over India. Ingredients are commonplace and usable at any stage
of development. A sexually mature woman is fine, but almost a third of men use
children (some as young as a few weeks old); and a woman in her 90s has served
equally well (Delhi, Sept 2020). About 94% of men know their ingredient
personally so Babu’s your uncle! Often literally.
There is a preparation for every occasion. Woman’s goose is
cooked as a complement to communal killings, like in Noakhali in 1946, or
Gujarat in 2002. It is a favourite of hostile army personnel, as it was in the
Kunan Poshpora (Kashmir) in 1991. It can be a midnight snack, or a post-drink
nightcap, like in Delhi in 2012. Women’s goose is cooked as vengeance, like
Bhanwari Devi’s in Rajasthan in 1992, after she opposed a child marriage, or
the 8-year-old in Kathua. It is cooked to commemorate spurned love, though acid
is a popular alternative. It can be cooked because you’re mad at a man or, like
smoking, it can just kill time. It is 100% cooked to establish that men can
cook it, and women shouldn’t forget it.
Penises are a favourite prop, friends’ and
families’ welcome. But men have also used a dog chain to choke the victim
(Aruna Shaunbag remained in a vegetative state for 42 years) or an iron rod
(which eviscerated Nirbhaya). People have presented their work variously: hung
two teenage rape victims from the trees in Badaun in 2014; chopped a
19-year-old daughter into two in Gorakhpur, 2019, for resisting her rapist
father who (get this) doubted her character; shot Thangjam Manorama in the
genitals, post-rape and torture, in Manipur, 2004; stabbed and burnt alive the
Unnao victim in 2019.
Most men who cook a woman’s goose just get on with their lives.
Women who object usually have to appeal to other men, most of whom don’t see
what the fuss is about. But these days women are getting louder, so now the
police just burn the body along with due process on the same pyre, ignited with
petrol, in a field, in the middle of the night, while the family is threatened
and locked up, the press barricaded with their phones tapped, and opposition
leaders manhandled and arrested; then they deny rape, via a public relations
firm. All to protect the upper caste cooks of a Dalit woman’s goose (Hathras,
2020).
Those who call this barbaric, revolting, heinous—you don’t
understand the power of tradition, or the traditions of power. Just stick to
pasta.
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Criminality
writ large; or the elephant in India's drawing room
