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Families That Eat Together, Stay Together
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Meal times are a great way for the entire family to get together and touch base with the day's events. Families that share their meals generally end up knowing each other much better than those that don't. However, all is not rosy at the dinner table.
A nightmare at dinner...
A family of five would meet at the dinner table every night to bond and catch up on the happenings of the day. Dinners usually turned into a nightmare because the father had a rage problem. The distraught mother would hardly ever be able to cook a nutritious and delicious meal so over-burdened she was with her three small children and dealing with an abusive husband.
Sometimes the husband would snatch food from his daughters and wife's plates if he felt he hadn't got the best pieces of fish and chicken. The youngest child, a one-year-old baby would actually drink coca-cola instead of milk in a baby bottle during dinner and often started crying when the dinner table fights broke out. The middle child would start rocking her chair as she got more nervous as the fights escalated. Her chair would often crash with her on the hard floor.
Dinners frequently ended with the father flinging the pots and pans at his family and food lying all over the floor. He would then fetch a beer can from the unclean and cramped refrigerator and get drunk in an arm chair while he ordered his wife and children to clean the mess he had created and threatened to beat them up if the room wasn't spic and span soon.
One evening when the eldest daughter had politely requested her father for a doll he shouted, "I will kill you greedy girl." He grabbed the knife on the dinner table and ran after her. His daughter hid in a neighbour's house.
The family finally decided not to meet at the dinner table. They warmed up the food stored in the refrigerator as required or ordered out whenever they felt hungry and ate in their respective bedrooms.
Making dinner a time for bonding...
Contrast this to the Maner family who have an ancestral tradition of the joint family fondly bonding at the dinner table every evening. As it is a big joint family the Maners sit in traditional Indian style on the carpet for dinner as a Western table can't accommodate so many members. Says Asif Maner of the family, "I make it a point to reach home on time for dinner so that I can meet my entire family. If a family member is late we prefer to wait for him / her to come back rather than hurry up and finish the meal. We say a prayer to God before having our meal."
The Maners see to it that petty quarrels never ever ruin their dinner time. Asif's mother Khadija Usmangani Maner says, "Saas bahu wars over dinner are not seen in my house. Why should the mother-in-law accuse her daughter-in-law if the meal she prepared wasn't great? Instead of debating on the dinner table in front of everyone over the quality of the dish, the mother-in-law can just take the daughter-in-law aside after dinner and politely explain how the dish can be made better. And whenever she cooks well she should be praised."
The Maners never make it a big issue if someone has accidentally eaten someone else's share. "I make it a point that everybody's share of expensive food items is kept in separate containers in the fridge. Yet if someone has accidentally eaten another person's share it is not the end of the world. After all the same food item can be bought again for the person who has missed out on it."
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