The Long Table

Our body acquires the present memory of the situation they are in due to repeated events of the same activity over time. Current activities overlap the past ones till you cause a sudden change. 

I usually don't sit on the dining table in the living room because it is a long table in a wide room with four chairs where no one sits. I have my meals in my room sitting on the floor with my folded legs and an open laptop. Meals yes, not lunch or dinner because if I think of lunch or dinner, the urge of a company to share that experience takes prominence. I remember certain lunches I’ve had because there was a collective effort towards decision making on choice of food, choice of place; now it is a matter of convenience, and pricing (in reverse order!).

These meals I have on the floor help me skip that video clip where I’m bowing down, staring at a soup bowl, in the backdrop of a white wall with a window behind me at the top, and the only audio is of the slurps of me eating. I don’t want to know that.

The other night was an anomaly however. I checked for the rice, turned the stove off, and let it cook on heat to reach the perfect boil. Chicken curry from the night before, and onion slices from half cut onion that had survived on the side shelf of the fridge for two weeks. My body felt the need for a chair to sit and rest my back while I ate. For once, I obliged. At the other end of the long table was the half-shut window that looked on to the street, dark and drizzly interspersed by speeding headlights that were trying to reach home. At this end was me below a yellow lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was the typical space arrangement to create the visual for a solitary evening! Who is setting the scene?

There and then, as I ate while thinking of work tomorrow, the long table’s heavy baritone came to life. A thespian of its time, it had been silenced by the metallic noises which rose to prominence and cluttered our kitchens. But that night, we both were alone and had time for each other. 

“Are you comfortable in that chair?” – the table spoke.

“Is it any different from the other three chairs? Oh, you wouldn’t know because nobody sits here!” – I snapped back at his rhetorical question.

“Well what would you know of comfort as well. You’ve never had an evening without worrying about tomorrow.” – the table was in the mood for banter, it seems.

“At least I’m not stuck in the same position day after day looking at every other thing pass by!” The moment I said this, I realized how hollow it sounded. The words were a mockery on myself, and I justified my inertia as means to remain calm, whereas there was always a loose wire inside.

“I was meant to be stationary. I like being in one position and not thinking about moving or fearing falling behind. This is what my life is and I know it to my bones! There would be no alternative and even if there was I’d choose to be a table because I’m that, forever.” – the table was embroiled in emotions and its voice growled from below. 

“I’m sorry. Those words were not for you. You don’t deserve to hear that. It is I who is stuck, not knowing how to move ahead. Everyday I wish something will happen that is not regular and will take me by surprise. Maybe the road to work will be blocked, maybe the bus gets canceled, maybe my office will collapse. But nothing changes. Even the wind blows in the same direction, with same force!” – I was exhausted, weak in my muscles by the end of the sentence. 

“Don’t you like routine? The sense of surety that this place, these walls, the colours, the window are in the same place everyday. I like waking up to see my chairs beside me.” – the table tried to reassure me that change was beneficial, always. But it didn’t help.

I wanted to end the night and shut my eyes but the long table was in the mood to listen. Customary to the requirement of such occasions, I got up and left, only to come back with a beer. Then I sat down to share the story with the table that has stayed since the day I saw it occur and took me by surprise.

“I was waiting at the bus stop one evening at the regular time and my bus was to arrive in another ten minutes, like every other day. Usually there would be one or two people more at that time, each one glued to their phones, just like me. I stand the whole waiting time because the sitting space is extremely small for a rounded body of mine. I have this complaint against whoever designs bus stops – can you make it more commuter friendly so that people can use it for what it’s meant to be and not stand outside the shelter! The shelter is so small, more than four makes it look like a queue for free food. But yesterday no one was sitting and I was the only one standing till a person came along and sat. He had a slight hunch for his age and looked down on the cement footpath all the time. By appearance he seemed to be progressing towards 30’s but he behaved older. His shirt was half tucked out, buttons were in improper order, and sleeves were rolled up in unequal length. A bag clenched to his side, and while he was sitting, his head jittered from side to side, and his palms were always looking for a new place to rest.

Five minutes till the bus arrives. I’m thinking of various possibilities to understand his unusual demeanour till a woman approaching caught my eye. Walking at a brisk pace, she came and sat down beside this man. She sits right beside him and places her hand on his shoulder as a sign of her arrival. Her hands started talking. Her hands moved in the air vigorously, and many sounds accompany her expressions. She touched him, tapped him, played with him, all with her hands. He responded in equal measure by making symbols in the air and then went on to hug her, play with her hair, touch her repeatedly to draw attention to what he had to say. They both were engrossed in their play of hands and expressed so much, without a single word being spoken. I stood there as an inconspicuous observer, trying to get a grasp of their conversation. I was caught in their story, and for a while, I forgot the bus, the frozen dinner waiting at home, the bills to pay, that office I left, the stores I shop at, that playlist I was making, the people I’ve spoken to, and the people who haven’t spoken with me; everything. I felt guilty of being an intruder in their story which I didn’t understand but I could not help but relish the third person view of their love story be played out in front of me. No Broadway musical would have been able to capture the sound of their silence and the music in their eyes. When I realized that I was being intruder in their story, I turned away and walked back home.”

“That was an endearing story of two souls that had found the inertia of each other in love, isn’t it” – the table responded as I was catching my breath.

“But why did it affect you in any manner?” – it asked.

My beer was almost over and I had used the remaining of my strength for that day to sit through the night in the company of the long table, under the yellow lights, surrounded by dust layered walls, a dried-up dinner plate waiting to rest in sink, and weary eyes waiting to shut for the day.

“’Because I felt the weakness, the scarcity of words to convey what I felt after that incident. I used all the words in my arsenal to make people stay forever and failed. Only if I had showed up in action, in my smile, in my cries, in my restlessness, in my desperation; maybe I would have done better. And that is why I’m stuck long table. Unlike you, I don’t have any chairs for company” – that is how I end.