Venba Brought Up Far Too Many Memories For Me
This one made me feel things
I started writing this article shortly after finishing this game. I just had to write about it, I was thinking about it too much. I love this game. Venba is a game based on the Tamil culture originating in India. It’s a game about a mother born in India who has moved to Canada in the 80s for a better life and the struggles she and her family faced there due to the cultural shock they experience when they want to be both proud of their heritage but respectful of the new culture they are exposed to.
Interspersed between these story pieces are gameplay segments that involve Venba cooking food for her family whilst trying to remember her mother’s recipes so she can cook authentic, traditional food because the recipe book she was given was damaged. I am Pakistani so aspects of our culture overlap with Tamil but there are differences with India being a neighbouring country to Pakistan. For example, some of the food is different to what I am used to and the religion is different too but many things are similar as well and it is these similarities that hit home for me. I think this game has the perfect length but I did want to play a little more.
When the game loads up there is a beautiful art style with a sort of crayon look with rough edges but still pretty clean. There are spoilers ahead for the entire game. I like how the opening scene is Venba and her husband arguing as she is ill but wants him to have a proper breakfast still but he says he will make do and tells her to rest. She asks him to cook instead but he says it takes too long and not to worry. She ends up cooking food however as she needs something for lunch whilst he is at work which leads to the first recipe. This scene instantly reminded me of my Mum. I like to cook but my mum is an expert. Venba thinks the food can be cooked so quickly and my mum is the same because she is so used to it. I always joke that she should prep my ingredients for me because she does it in seconds meanwhile it takes me tens of minutes. I am so glad mini-choppers exist. The cooking skills brown mothers have is impressive as they are very fast and fluid and meanwhile, I am just sitting there looking at what my mum has done and not being able to figure out how she did it so fast. The actual argument Venba and her husband have felt so true too. Mum has often just started cooking even when ill when I have said I will get us all takeout.
When cooking the first recipe there is some modern music playing in the background influenced by classic music that I heard when growing up. There is even a family video of me when I was 1 or 2 running around shaking my hands and trying to dance to music similar to what I could hear in this game. I always thought that in Asian music the vocals have a purity, an effortlessness to them especially when the vocals are from women and it’s nice to hear that represented in the first recipe of the game. All the food in this game looks lovely, heartwarming and charming.
It turns out the reason why Venba is ill is because she is having a child. The father Paavalan is worrying about having the money to raise him in Canada. The thing that is often forgotten or misrepresented by Hollywood, media or politicians is when people migrated from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh or any country really into the Western world, very few of them had a lot of money. This came with so many complications. A lot of these people lived in poverty for most of their lives, often trying to support their family in the country they have emigrated to as well as family members back in their original countries too. In my case, my father died when I was 2 so my mum raised me on her own, without going into specifics as I find it difficult to talk about still, Paavalan worrying about money reminded me so much of the issues my mother faced when trying to raise me.
Jumping ahead slightly I love how Kavan, Venba’s child, uses the word Amma when he talks to her. Anyone who has watched Ms Marvel or played the Avengers game will know it means mum.
There was a point in the game where Venba instructed Kavan to ensure he corrects his friends if they say his name wrong. I’m the same as him. I never bother correcting anyone and often say my name in a slightly shorter way just to make it easier on everyone. I am so bad at it that some of my friends from an old workplace still tease me about it when I still do it. Heck, it was after a year of working there that I even bothered to clarify how to say it properly and even then it was prompted because one of my friends asked. Therefore I understand where Kavan was coming from, although he did it from a perspective of fitting in whilst I do it more for convenience or because I am lazy.
My equivalent of Kavan being obsessed with Pizza was an obsession with chips when I was his age. It was interesting though how Venba tried to get him excited about traditional food by saying the cooking method was similar to a rocket. It honestly reminded me of myself these days with my nephews. The oldest nephew is so fussy with food but I am constantly pushing him to try new things. He won’t even try a different kind of chocolate bar than the one he is already used to. I need to learn from her tactics.
During the game, Venba talks about how she worries that Kavan isn’t getting sufficient exposure to their Asian heritage. Something I empathise with entirely. I am proud of my Asian heritage but there are also many aspects of being born and raised in Britain that I am proud of too. Both cultures mean the world to me, I try to take the best of both worlds where I can and have found it hugely beneficial to me and often find it is an undervalued skill too. I want my nephews to be exposed to both like me, I want them to learn Punjabi or Urdu like I did but also to gain those skills like I have. For example, my Pakistani background focuses on supporting each other and local communities meanwhile British culture focuses on the bigger picture and independence a lot more. A small example of this is shown when the father in Venba asks someone he knows but isn’t particularly fond of a favour to get a better job in Canada. However, most of his reservations were more about the feeling of owing someone.
I was both surprised and pleased that the game covered the difficulties the parents found when finding a stable job in Canada. This is because the parents are deemed unskilled despite their having professional jobs back in India. Sometimes this is down to racism but a lot of the time it is because it wasn’t clear what skills someone had or how much education they had because of different terminologies meaning it was unclear what the equivalent of a UK degree is for example. This was again a problem my mother faced but also many others I know. When I was at university for example I did a year-long placement and a fellow IT worker who is white mentioned to me how he was helping a brown security guard there who was originally from Pakistan with getting work experience because they were constantly being rejected from jobs. This is even though from a technical perspective both the Pakistani and British men had the same skillsets. I didn’t realise how much kindness and empathy the British man had shown at the time. He understood the problem entirely and was trying to ensure the security guard would get a job in the field he was trained for one day. He even lied to HR because they only wanted the security guard to do it for a week or two and so he said the work experience had stopped when it hadn’t. The security guard got a job a few months later and so when Venba says to her husband that sometimes it is about who you know rather than what you know it reminded me of that security guard.
The game even tried to tackle hate crimes and racism in a semi-subtle way. Paavalan got attacked/mugged on the way back from work one day and whilst it isn’t addressed directly how or why, it came across as racism to me. I was fortunate growing up because I didn’t face too much racism in general, the schools I went to were fantastic for stamping it out quickly with effective training for their staff members too. For example one of the school’s logos was a brown and white hand shaking hands to show how they work hard to unite everyone. Another school openly said they would sit the students next to someone of a different race and sex to ensure people mix and integrate. I hugely respect the work both schools did and for the most part, it works amazingly. However, I inevitably did experience some racism in the outside world, the worst of which was when I was around 13, walking around near the local cinema and someone threw hot KFC beans at me from their van and called me a “fucking fat Paki bastard” whilst driving away. I didn’t know who this person was, nor did I ever see them again, they were an adult and I was a child. These random attacks do happen and I appreciate how the game didn’t try to downplay this because the news, at least in the UK all too often does.
Venba at one point makes Chicken Biryani. My mum just happened to be in the room at the time when this section popped up on the screen and she isn’t a gamer in the slightest. The recipe is also damaged in the game and some of the spices are different to how my mum makes it but I asked her to tell me what she reckoned the correct method was and she was right the whole time. It was nice to see this additional layer of authenticity in this game. The recipes ultimately aren’t for show, they may be watered down slightly to make the gameplay more fun but they are real.
I also got a little bit annoyed with Kavan while playing this game. Venba slaves away in the kitchen for ages making so many different kinds of food for him to take to college with him and the ungrateful swine rejects the whole lot. It looks delicious, I want to eat those bits and bytes.
Kavan is facing an awkward situation when he is older and is working on some kind of play with his friend. His friend innocently wants to represent Kavan’s culture by asking for traditional food to be placed on the stage. Kavan however remembers his own life and thought it would be more appropriate not to have food on stage to more accurately reflect his own experiences but he eventually backed down as it goes against his friend’s vision. Therefore he decides to make the most authentic food he can to at least represent it effectively. The thing is I don’t think either of them meant to cause friction or be rude to each other, it was more out of ignorance or carelessness that led to this difference of opinion but for me, it reminded me how the media in general tries to put different cultures into a stereotypical box. For example, Kavan here is complaining that his life experiences are more than just spicy food. I have seen Mexican people for example complain that their culture isn’t just sombreros and maracas. There are many equivalent examples of this scattered across film, TV and games and some of these stereotypes have been created for nasty reasons but sometimes it is just carelessness or not enough research and this scene reminded me of how stereotypes can easily be formed.
In the final scene of the game, Kavan puts his head on his mum's lap for a brief moment. He is well into his 20s by this point but is still doing this. This again really took me back, it’s sort of the idea that the safest place for a child, no matter how old they get is in their mother's lap and it often results in deep/open conversations just like the mother and child have in this game. I guess it’s sort of like lying down on a sofa in a therapist's office as seen in film a lot of the time.
I love this game, it hit me more than I expected but at the same time, I shouldn’t be surprised as it’s people from similar backgrounds to me sharing their experiences. I have seen some discourse online that argues this game isn’t for them as they can’t relate to it. I don’t think that is entirely fair, even if I can understand where this stems from because the game is ultimately about showing how people can feel alone sometimes because they don’t fit in and we have all felt that at some point in our life. Even if all the themes don’t directly apply to you, I urge you to still give it a try, especially if you have Xbox Game Pass already because it’s a chance to learn something new. I believe we are students up until the day we die after all. There are many aspects of modern movies and films that I wouldn’t understand based on my background for example addiction to alcohol or even comedies with funny scenes of drunk or stoned people because these aren’t things allowed in my religion but I have been able to learn and enjoy the scenes from time to time. I remember for example when I was a child, watching Ready, Steady, Cook which was a TV cooking show with a live audience that I watched on an old CRT TV being excited that I could see a woman wearing a hijab sitting in the audience and calling my mum over to see the same thing. That’s how surprised we were to see someone like us on the TV and she wasn’t even participating in the show. Between this, Midnight Mass, Ms Marvel recently and people like Nadiya Hussain winning the Great British Bake Off a few years ago and fast becoming a bit of a national treasure, it finally feels like I am being seen. I hope and believe that by the time my nephews are my current age, they won’t even realise that there used to be a lack of representation.
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