“We switch off television at mealtime -- for decades now. No TV, no mobiles. Each mobile set is consciously kept away as all of us sit down for both meals. We are fortunate that even in morning, we are able to have our meal together. The atmosphere during that time-- say 30-40 minutes -- is truly heavenly. For, in those minutes, we are with one another in the family”. THIS is certainly not a story-book description. This is a real-life description of how one family treats its mealtimes as precious, even sacrosanct. There must be many such families that have at least one meal together every day -- morning or evening. And the loud-thinker has found most such families as happy ones. The reason is not far to seek.

 

 

 

Any home where familial conversation is a regular feature, is a happy place. Thanks to the invasion of television onto the family time, and thanks also to the addiction to digital apps and gadgets the average experience of the overall familial conversation has been on the wane for the past few years. When books were more in vogue, family conversation, too, was good enough since the books became focus of conversational exchange among members. Now also, the homes where books-on-paper are read regularly, the quality of family dialogue is better and finer and deeper and more frequent. Homes where books-on-paper are not read as part of collective culture, family dialogue is only tentative or perfunctory -- and mostly need-based. These observations may not be always accurate. There may be exceptions -- negative and positive. Yet, a keen observer can notice the difference between families that have a healthy conversation going on, and those where such a dialogue is missing and the communication is only need-based and perfunctory. Unfortunately, the families without much internal dialogue are in bigger numbers than those that have a healthy familial communication. Many families also witness arguments on absolutely silly matters, all right. In most cases, the arguments actually have no reason to come up.

 

Yet, on more occasions than not, the arguments become loud enough to be noticed by everybody not just in the house but also in the neighbourhood. So, when somebody stresses that his family switches off television at mealtime and mobile phones are kept off and at a distance, one knows that one is looking at a home where prospects of happiness are better and finer. Dinner-time get-togethers in families was a universal institution until a few years ago -- on which the loud-thinker has written on countless occasions, welcoming the practice. Yet, over the past few years, dinner-time get-togethers have lessened and more people in more numbers of families prefer to eat their meals in their respective rooms -- so to say -- rather than together. And in such places, each member eating his/her meal separately often has his/her mobile phone in the hand -- engaging his/her complete attention. This is not just the description of what may be happening in families with different habits. Keen readers would not miss the tinge of sadness in these words -- about the loss of family conversation as a healthy cultural practice. In the short run, nobody may feel that there is anything amiss. Yet, in the long run, our average families will start noticing a thinning of family bonds. This is not a prediction; this is, at the worst, a sense of loss expressed in advance.