Man From Matunga

“Break­fast like a king, lunch like a prince and din­ner like a pau­per”, is a pop­u­lar say­ing in the West­ern World. In India, it should read, “break­fast like a prince, lunch like an emperor and din­ner like a king”.
Our obses­sion with lunch man­i­fests itself in many ways, one being the Six-Sigma acknowl­edged “dabba” sys­tem, which deliv­ers tiffin-boxes across the length and breadth of Mum­bai, along with a large num­ber of pri­vate car­ri­ers and peons who carry warmer “dab­bas” for those who don’t want their food cold.
Our “emperor” lunches have many con­se­quences, the most impor­tant per­haps being the sig­nif­i­cant diver­sion of blood from our brains to our stom­achs, which in turn induces an almost instan­ta­neous post-prandial, soporific state, the effect of which becomes quite evi­dent in the gen­eral slow-down in most of our work-places in the after­noons. The worst hit is usu­ally the first post-lunch speaker dur­ing a con­fer­ence, who keeps won­der­ing why he is lec­tur­ing a bunch of droop­ing heads and closed eye­lids.
This “lunch” obses­sion of ours also finds an echo in our schools, with many par­ents falling over them­selves to pre­pare the most elab­o­rate of meals for their chil­dren. Some of these par­ents also land up in school to hand-feed their wards, a few even lay­ing down mats and cut­lery, “pic­nic” style.
Last week, at a PTA meet­ing in one of Matunga’s pre­mier schools, the new Prin­ci­pal laid down the law in no uncer­tain terms, show­ing off a strict­ness that may not be out of place when deal­ing with Matunga/Sion/Wadala par­ents. Among other issues, he dis­cussed the lunch hour and said that the school hence­forth would not allow par­ents and guardians unlim­ited and free access to their chil­dren and that they would have to stay in a spe­cific, enclosed area from where the kids could come and pick up their dab­bas, lunches, etc.
The moment the floor opened for ques­tions and the first cou­ple of com­ments related to learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and “authen­tic” and “non-authentic” doc­tors were swept out of the way, the dis­cus­sion became com­pletely focused on the “lunch” issue, each ques­tion­ing and com­ment­ing par­ent claim­ing to rep­re­sent many oth­ers, in the hope of adding more valid­ity to his/her com­ments and views.
The uni­fy­ing thread was that par­ents had to be allowed to feed their chil­dren. Some needed to do this so that their chil­dren could be given nec­es­sary med­i­cines, which appar­ently only they and no one else could admin­is­ter. Some oth­ers wanted to be around to make sure that their pre­cious off­spring were not injured dur­ing the remain­der of the lunch hour while play­ing; one par­ent appar­ently had been recently bit by a ball while stand­ing on the side­lines and wanted the kids’ play to be bet­ter super­vised, not under­stand­ing that this was just the kind of excuse the school needed to restrict parental encroach­ment.
The best com­ment, which was imme­di­ately endorsed by another par­ent, came towards the end. “Why don’t we change the tim­ings so that school starts one hour ear­lier, and ends by 2.30PM, so that all the kids can come home for lunch and then rest and sleep? This way every­one is happy.” I guess this is one more way to train our kids to believe that the end of a work­ing day should be a large, sump­tu­ous lunch.
As we were all leav­ing, I over­head a par­ent, who like me must have found the pro­ceed­ings quite “inter­est­ing”. “I guess, school for many is just another ‘lunch’ place, with inci­den­tal teach­ing peri­ods before and after”. That made my day!