The Family Meal

"Appa!  I have virtual lunch today!  Bread kodukkariya?"

"Lalit!  Can you feed the kids?  I have lunch meeting!"

"Happaaaa...?  Mum-mummm...?"

This was today at noon.  I had just come downstairs with Mira and had begun heating glass dabbas containing yesterday's dal and beans curry.  The IP was already at LO:112, indicating that Pavana had kept rice almost 2 hours ago.  Even the bottle of cranberry thokku was out on the counter.  Such perfect planning.  And yet, today's lunch ended up being one of those 'on-the-go' ones!

As I wedged a morsel of dal rice into Mira's mouth and simultaneously fed myself a spoonful of curd rice + thokku, I tried to recollect the last time we had all sat together for a meal.  Although I could call to mind a few occasions like Janmashtami, Ganesha Chaturthi etc., I realized that our standard operating procedure for meals is largely to eat when you can so you can be free to do other important stuff.  In Pavana's words: "Ondu kelasa mugiyali".  Notwithstanding all the blogs and research articles extolling the virtues of the family meal at the dining table, if someone were to create a video of a family meal in our house, they would have roam all over the house at indiscriminate times to capture footage of people sitting at miscellaneous spots facing arbitrary directions, inhaling food speedily so they can proceed to other tasks.

It is not like we don't own a dining table, in case you are wondering.  We do.  Unfortunately, number of times the table has served its actual intended purpose since we bought it is a laughable statistic.  Granted the table was semi-regularly used for family meals when my parents were here, but that was over a year ago.  The last time we used it for a family meal was on Thanksgiving Day this year, thanks to Medha's resolve to make everyone sit together and participate in the Thanksgiving activities she had organized.  On a normal day, however, the table is used less as a dining space and more as a horizontal surface to stockpile assorted objects.  For example, at the moment, the table, incidentally draped in a plastic table cloth with loud floral pattern that we thought was pretty at the time of purchase, is strewn with a healthy amount of randomness, viz. a dusty table fan, a nondescript white gift bag containing one purple bead, an opened humidifier box with no humidifier inside, a half filled box of Christmas ornaments, and exactly one plastic table mat.