What’s a memory of a collective ritual, inherited or invented, that was meaningful or formative to some part of your identity? Write about it. Who was there? What was the activity? What were the words that were used? What time of year was it? How did it make you feel? And years later, how might it have shaped you?
Dinners at home. With its unspoken conventions that my family and I tread lightly on, for we have never really thought ourselves to hold traditions particularly close but nonetheless, dinner, has come to be its own little mark in the day. The best kind is when Yeema's food is available that night, and we un-stack the tiers of the tiffin carrier to savoury and saucy wonders, pour the soup out into a bowl and settle in front of the TV. More often than not my sister and I hand the remote to our mother because she has adopted a (annoying) habit of disapproving things that we watch. That said, she does have a good taste in movies.
It is a nice congregation when we are usually all dispersed and doing our own thing. I think inherently my mother and I prefer to work on our own, coming together only for deep conversations or when my mum needs help with how to use Zoom or Powerpoint. My sister has a rich social life and she hangs out with her friends a lot. But at dinner we come together in a mutual unveiling of the veneer of indifference, and there is a collective sense of gratitude in being together.
I'm glad I'm home now more than usual to be present for dinner.
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