Kishore Singh: Food for thought

PEOPLE LIKE US

I have always been fascinated by other people's dining table conversations "" families that eat together but, more importantly, talk together about all things important and intellectual. "All our childhood, I remember my father discussing current affairs on the dining table with us," somebody would say. Or: "We'd sit around the dining table drinking tea and discussing from Chekov to Vietnam and the Beatles to global warming," another might pipe in.

Ours was never a dining table family, so I was determined when my wife and I had children, we would make the dining table the hub of our home. I imagined my wife sitting with a book while I tried to explain the metaphysics of pseudo-secularism to the children, and neighbours walking in to join in the conversation, leading to lively, stimulating debates on the state of the nation and the world.

The everyday tone at the dining table, alas, was a little more prosaic. A cerebral ambience was difficult to recreate when mealtimes would begin with my wife admonishing the cook about too much (or too little) salt in the curry. "You don't like it, you don't eat it," the cook would riposte in a very uncommunicative way, leading to an altercation that would cast a pall over conversations, intelligent or otherwise. In any case, it was proving difficult to explain to the children the downside of globalisation when they were throwing crayons at each other, or throwing up on the table.

So, okay, I was willing to wait a bit until they grew up a little to appreciate their father's salon. But as the years rolled by, the dining table conversation drifted from accusations of homework not supervised to counter-accusations of mounting telephone bills. "You never do anything around the house," my wife would rave, or: "The teacher caught me cheating from my friend's notebook and asked me to stand outside the classroom," my daughter would contribute to the proceedings. The atmosphere around the dining table was electric alright, but not in the way I'd imagined.

But I was determined to have my debate. I'd mention an author's brilliant debut but the children would appear keen to go see a film with their friends. I'd suggest a discussion on gender disparity, but my wife would say she had a headache so could I shut up and pass the dessert, please? If I mentioned the US's tyranny, I'd be overwhelmed with a "No politics" mandate.

It wasn't long before the children gave up eating at the dining table altogether to sit gawping before the TV, and my wife went on a permanent diet, so the dining table looked more forbidding than friendly. "Come join me for dinner and we can discuss the origin of Indian words in the English language," I'd try and cajole the kids to the dining table, but they'd flee to the study to chat with e-friends on the net. Taking pity on me, my wife would join me occasionally, but such conversations would veer more in the direction of what her friend Sarla wore to a formal party, or how a bronze lipstick looked better than an orange one on an Indian skin, rather than on the polemics of installation art.

Now that the children are grown up "" almost "" you'd think they'd want to be part of an ideas fraternity, but my son seems to want to spend most of his time eating out with his friends ("Girl friends!" insists my daughter scandalously), while my daughter seems to spend much of her day pouting, "I'm bored!"

And so if they won't have it, I suppose I'll just have to have my own intellectual round table, even though it might mean talking to myself.