Dining Tables

and what they signify. do they signify things? let's find out

Dining tables are full of drama. Or atleast can be. When I visited friend’s homes - in the before times - I was always fascinated by the things on the table. OR even more interesting - if there were no things. Because that meant their family were freaks just like us.

My parents have this weird thing where they don’t like anything on the dining table. “It is meant for food” my mother would shout every time I would leave my bag on the table after school. Well it is the only large flat surface in the home MOM. The bag can not be on my bed because the bag has been outside (as if you ever got sick from the outside). The bag can not be on the table because where would I put my books, the bag can not be on the floor because someone might trip over it (there were only three of us - who is going to trip). But we are getting distracted.

Like I said - dining tables can be full of drama. That’s why there are so many dining table scenes in films. But those are more character driven, dialogue heavy and tend to feature much better clothes.

My favourite scenes are where there is a palpable tension, people don’t want to be there but are forced by convention and societal mores to stay sitting.

Like this one in Shrek 2 or this one in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD) or this one in Fleabag, except a smoking break offers a respite in that last one.

Much has been written about how blocking, camera work and props can reveal character, etc. Who sits where, how is food served, how much food, what kind of food, and most importantly what is said on the table.

If someone were to show you a picture of my grandparents eating food on the kitchen table - you could deduce several things about their lives. You can see several shells and coral rocks under the glass top. My grandfather was a zoology professor and had collected these rocks on research trips and class excursions. One edge of the glass is uneven. The glass had to be cut a little bit because my grandpa accidentally left the clothes-iron flat on the table. He irons clothes, after the breakfast is cleared. He does it after laying an old bedsheets folded up to protect the glass. But this one time I guess he mad a mistake, and laid the iron on the glass instead of the cloth - long enough for the glass to crack. You can also tell that they love plastic and glass jars. There are an inexplicable number of odd jars on the table. Always. Most of them empty. You will also notice my grandmother sitting with the chair not parallel with the table. She always sits with her chair slightly tilted, so that she can get up and go to the kitchen quickly, if something needs to be brought in. A habit that she has carried over from her younger days when she was the primary caregiver at home. It is just the two of them now, and with a reduced diet because of their old age, there is never a need to get up in the middle of a meal. But she still sits slightly askew, never fully comfortable.

When I tried thinking of dining room scenes in Hindi films, two came to mind immediately.

This scene from Sarkar is quite good. We are shown earlier in the film that the boundary of work and personal life is fairly porous. A lot of the work is done from home, with the women and children exposed to a lot of these conversations. The scene sets up the differences between Kay Kay Menon’s Vishnu and Abhishek Bachchan’s Shankar very well. They are discussing some local thug, who has done something - I can’t remember. But it has some interesting details. Shankar eats with a fork - he has just returned from the USA; Vishnu the elder brother - the sleazy film producer - eats with his hand. Amitabh Bachchan’s character - Sarkar - is the head of the family, and sits at the head of the table; and the two women of the family hover around serving food, only interrupting to interrupt a fight between Sarkar and Vishnu.

This scene from Dil Dhadakne Do - a film directed by Zoya Akhtar (who also directed the previously mentioned - ZNMD), also comes to mind. Anil Kapoor’s character is clearly a rich dude - who else is as fussy about oily foods; and is seated as far as possible from his wife - played by Shefali Shah. Quite fitting given that they are arguing. The curt dismissal about “… your money? You have money because I make the money” makes us dislike Kapoor’s character. It is brilliant. In the middle of this verbal warfare, there is Ranveer Singh’s character. Literally in the middle of these two. Trying to broker peace. The scene is composed of standard shots. A wide - when all three characters are on screen, Ranveer symmetrically in the middle. Cutting to over-the-shoulder shots of the two people directly involved in the argument. This is nothing groundbreaking. Just competent filmmaking.

In the Indian context, the very presence of a dining table puts the characters in the film in a certain socio-economic bracket. Not only do they have space for a dining room, their habits are … for lack of a better word - modern and westernised.

Please share your favourite dining table scenes. Share links to books/articles etc about how food is consumed in India.

Also read this rather personal piece by film critic Rahul Desai.

Ok. Bye.

Also please completely ignore the use of Rockwell’s Freedom from Want as a cover image. I just needed something as a preview image.