"The Challenges of Cleaning Up Cooking"

"MUSTAFABAD, India — Khushboo Kushwaha has a few years before she will have to squat in front of a filthy, smoking open stove three times a day to cook meals for her family, as her older sister and cousins do now.

Khushboo is 11, and the girls in her home usually take up cooking duties as teenagers. But the smoke that billows from the wood and dried dung they burn, stinging the older girls’ eyes and throats, already affects her.

The air in the semi-open courtyard of the Kushwaha family’s home is heavy and choking. The older girls patiently prepare food for as long as six hours a day, sifting flour, rolling dough and tending to the vegetable and lentil dishes that bubble atop rough-hewn clay stoves."

Beth Gardiner reports for the New York Times December 8, 2015 (Travel funded by SEJ's Fund for Environmental Journalism).