I was watching Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak the other night and was stuck by how the women in it were so subservient, submissive, so pushed into the background that they only way they could bringing attention to themselves was by being the focus of a man's drama.

I have been thinking about this a LOT since I have house guests from India - a friend's father and elder brother.
Whenever I imagine their life at home, I think of the QSQT women hovering around them, attending to their every physical/culinary need.
Housguests are so used to women running the kitchen that they don't even realize that dishes and utensils don't get put away by themselves.

I honestly don't think either of them have ever had to even get themselves a glass of water in India.
The times when they are left on their own (and this just means, they have to heat the rotis and dal and rajma the boy and I have made for them) ends up with every single dish being open, all the utensils being out , it's like little children were in there, trying to make themselves a meal.
It was kind of heartrending when the elder brother tried boiling water and looked at me with 'i am doing good, yes?' expression.
The Boy has been doing a speedy gonzales kind of thing of whipping kitchen clean before I have to enter it. I think, in his head, he is afraid I am going to explode all over houseguests one day.
But honestly, I am just slightly bemused by the whole hardcore traditional roles the women play in their lives.