The dining room waits in reverent silence as the afternoon light spills through the west-facing windows, illuminating dust specks that dance above the space’s centerpiece: a massive table that has served four generations of my family. The wood glows amber under the fading sun, its surface worn smooth by years of use. A series of curved indentations along one edge where pencils had pressed too hard during homework sessions, water rings from countless glasses, and in one corner, a small carved lettering that looks like initials, which is nearly polished away by years of cleaning.
The table dominates my grandma’s dining room, its presence unapologetic and rooted. Once ornately wood-crafted, its legs have softened at the edges from thousands of brushing knees and fidgeting feet. The golden wood has darkened over time, deepening to rich mahogany at the edges where countless hands have gripped while pulling chairs forward. At its center, the wood is slightly concave from the weight of eighty-seven years of platters, bowls, and elbows pressed in attention during lively discussions.
Six chairs surround the expanse, not the original set, which had deteriorated a while earlier, but replacements selected so many years ago that now themselves showed wear. The cushions, now covered in a faded burgundy fabric, have been reupholstered twice. One chair, at the head of the table, stands slightly taller than the others, with armrests worn smooth where fingers have drummed during conversations.
Against the far wall stood a matching hutch, its glass doors reflecting the warm light, and among the beautiful crystal and silverware displayed sat incongruous treasures: a lopsided clay bowl I made in elementary school art class, a disheveled snowman ornament, and a hand-drawn family portrait framed as though it were a masterpiece.
It was one of those Sundays where everyone showed up but no one wanted to be there. It was our weekly performance for the family, as usual. My grandma had been hosting them since she moved from India to help take care of my brother after he was born. I was surrounded by the same familiar faces, though they felt more like acquaintances than anything else. I try to engage with my aunts and uncles, but the dialogue never sticks. “How’s school?”
“Good,” I answer. “Busy.”
A nod, a tight smile. Silence.
The adults talked about the weather, their jobs, and whatever new restaurant they had just tried. My aunts smiled too hard. My uncles checked their watches. I offered to help set out the water glasses just to escape the small talk. My grandma handed me a tray wordlessly, her bangles clinking. Her silence was never empty: it was always packed with things she didn’t say out loud.
So I slip into the comfort of my routine for these gatherings. I set the table with my siblings. We know the drill. Steel plates with simple silver rims, stainless steel spoons and forks arranged neatly next to crisp cloth napkins folded with precision. My siblings and I exchange glances, a private language of raised eyebrows and suppressed sighs. A single raised eyebrow from my sister meant Do you see what she’s wearing?, A glance at the hallway clock meant how long are we staying this time?, and a hard side-eye from me, usually directed at the grown-ups mid-conversation, translated to something like help me, I’m dying.
Dinner is finally ready. We sit down in the same seats we always do, in the same silence.
And almost like clockwork, the questions start coming, slipping in with every bite.
Last week, I was the one under interrogation.
“How many hours a day do you even look at that?” my grandfather snapped, not bothering to disguise his annoyance.
“Probably eight,” my mom guessed, clearly enjoying the chance to chime in. “Screen time is out of control. I read this article that said—”
“Always with the articles,” I muttered under my breath.
They made me read my screen time report out loud like it was a confession.
Instagram: 2 hours. TikTok: 1.5. Messages: 2. Books app? A tragic 14 minutes.
“You said you were reading more,” my dad said, disappointed. “I was. Just… not on the app,” I tried. He wasn’t convinced. No one was. So this week, I left my phone in the car and pretended I didn’t care. I hoped that I escaped the scrutiny this week.
Like always, my grandma had the opening line.
“We spoke to Riya Auntie yesterday,” she said brightly. “Her daughter finally got married. Such a beautiful ceremony. Simple, but elegant.” Every adult at the table perked up slightly. My aunt, the one sitting diagonally across from me, shifted uncomfortably. We all knew what was coming.
“And you know,” my grandma continued, “she’s only 30. Same age as Dipika.” The table went still. No one said her name, but Dipika’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. She put it down gently. Her face was unreadable.
“In our time,” my grandpa adds, “you would be married by 25.”
I look at my sister. She rolls her eyes. I stifle a laugh. I want to say something, something brave.
“She’s doing really well at work,” I offered, trying to change the subject, but my voice came out too quiet.
No one acknowledged it. The silence that followed wasn’t dramatic, it was just dull. It was almost like the breath before a sneeze or the stillness in a room before a picture falls off the wall.
“She’s doing well,” my grandma repeated, smiling tightly. “But working is not the same as being settled.”
There it was.
My dad coughed and reached for the food uncomfortably. My uncle leaned back in his chair, folded his arms. Dipika didn’t flinch. My parents look away. I pick at my food.
Then: “What is your number one college right now, Arya?”
I freeze.
“We are still discussing,” my mom cuts in.
“Let’s discuss now,” my grandma insists.
“How is your SAT?” asks my grandpa.
My stomach drops. I mumble, “I’m retaking it.”
“You must study harder,” he says.
My dad joins in. “No more wasting time with friends. You need to focus. I studied for two months and got a 1600. Just read that one book, remember? It changed everything for me.”
I know the book. I’ve read it. Twice. It did not change anything.
Maybe, I want to say, I’m just not you. But I say nothing. My mouth stays shut. My throat tightens. My sister glances at me, her eyes saying: Hang in there. I nod, barely.
They keep talking. Talking at me. I hear myself agreeing, promising to try harder, to cut the distractions, and to make everyone proud. Then suddenly, without warning, my eyes well up. I stare down at the table, the beautiful table, and blink fast. I can’t cry at dinner. I excuse myself quietly, push back the chair, and walk to the bathroom. I shut the door and let the tears fall. Quietly and with no drama. When I return, the conversation has shifted to clothing.
“You wore that outside?” my grandma says while staring at a picture on my mom’s phone. “You should be careful,” she adds. “You don’t want people getting the wrong idea.”
I bite my tongue. The wrong idea? Because I wore jeans and a slightly cropped shirt? Because I don’t live in 1985?
They start saying things in Telugu that they think I won’t understand. I have understood since I was seven years old, and I understand more than enough. The word “Murkhudu” floats by. Complaining. That’s me. The complainer.
They don’t look at me when they say it, but they don’t have to. I keep eating, pretending not to hear, pretending that the lemon rice isn’t turning bitter in my mouth.
My eyes drift to the table, its surface worn by years of use. It is easier to focus on the table than their piercing words.
The table got there before they did.
My grandfather had gotten into a PhD program in California, and my grandmother sent the essentials ahead. A few suitcases, some cookware, and, oddly enough, one enormous wooden dining table. It made no logical sense, but she insisted.
“We’ll need a proper table,” she told him. “We’re not eating on folding chairs like students. We have two children.”
He didn’t argue.
When they landed in California weeks later, jet-lagged in the California sun, the apartment was bare except for the table. It sat in the center of the living room, its carved legs slightly uneven on the floor.
My grandfather dropped his bags and looked at them, then at my grandmother.
“It’s huge.”
“It’s stable,” she said, patting one of its carved legs. “It’ll be good for studying. You’ll get your degree in half the time.”
He ended up writing most of his dissertation on that table. His notes were sprawled out across it for hours, the fan turning overhead, half-drunk cups of coffee growing cold next to stacks of paper. The table was covered in books cracked open with pens stuck inside, and research articles stapled and annotated in red pens.
My mom used to study at the same table. She and her friends would work through their AP physics and geometry problem sets. College brochures curled at the edges under the stacks of yellow notepads. They always had snacks, steel bowls of Kurkure, and peanuts that were casually passed around for everyone to share.
When she was sixteen something snapped: A B+ in chemistry. Her first B ever. The moment she walked through the door, the air shifted. Not with yelling, never with yelling, but with something quieter: disappointment. She set her backpack down beside the table, the straps falling limply to the floor. The house was heavy with the smell of cumin and jasmine rice. Her notebooks jostled with every step she took, the corner of a graded lab slipping out just enough for the red ink to show: 87.
My grandmother stood at the stove, stirring something in slow, even circles. She didn’t turn around.
“You’re smarter than this,” she said.
My mom paused.
“It’s just one grade,” she finally replied. It was careful, but she could hear her voice catching.
My grandmother didn’t sigh or raise her voice; that wasn’t how things worked in their house.
“It is always just one grade. Then just one missed opportunity. Then just one life that isn’t what it should have been.”
She turned down the heat on the stove, still not facing my mom. “We didn’t come here for B-pluses.”
It wasn’t about the grade. It never was. It was about the weight she carried that wasn’t entirely hers. It was about growing up in a house where ambition wasn’t a choice but a responsibility.
A B+ felt like a betrayal.
My mom didn’t respond. She just walked to the table, pulled out the chair she always sat in, the left one, and sat. Her hands were motionless on her lap. Her eyes stung, but she wouldn’t cry. She didn’t want to give in to the silence. Behind her, the spoon clinked against the side of the pot.
“Next time, study more,” my grandmother said. Still gentle. Still devastated.
“I studied,” my mom said. But not loud enough for anyone to believe her. Maybe not even herself.
No one mentioned her honor roll. Or how she stayed up past midnight the night before, reviewing her notes in the dining room. Or that she skipped lunch that day to retake a quiz for extra credit. None of that mattered. And sitting at that table, with the wood pressing against her palms, she realized that at the end of the day, to her family, it wasn’t about effort, it was about the result.
Later that night, when the house was quiet, my mom sat at the table alone. Her books were still open, though she wasn’t reading. Her hands were shaking, not in rage but something closer to exhaustion. She opened the junk drawer and pulled out a small craft knife. She rested her hand on the table and stared at the grain. Then, carefully, she carved one letter: A.
Not for her name. Not for the grade she didn’t get. Not even out of anger.
She carved it to remind herself that she existed outside of expectations— or at least she wanted to.
But the next day, she went to school. She studied harder. She retook the exam and got the A. She went to a good college. Majored in something practical. Came home on time. Wore the right clothes. Got the right job. Got married. She became the perfect daughter her parents had always wanted.
The table stayed in the house. Dishes were cleared, new laptops replaced old textbooks, but the table remained. Every time she sat at it, she remembered that night. The letter.
Years later, when she had children of her own, she never talked about the letter. The table was in the center of my grandma’s house like it always had been. Her children did their homework there. She circled their spelling errors with red pens, corrected their grammar mid-sentence, and told them to never settle.
“Smart girls don’t get lazy,” she’d say, as she had once been told.
She pressed the same expectations onto them that she had once pushed against: not because she didn’t remember what it felt like, but because she did. Because the pressure had worked. She had gone to college. She had succeeded. She had become the version of herself her mother always imagined. A version that looked impressive on paper.
There were some moments when she’d sit alone at the table, sorting mail or checking school portals, and her fingers would drift over the wood. The indentation was still there. She never spoke of it. Maybe because it embarrassed her. Maybe because if she acknowledged it, she’d have to admit that the version of life she chose, the one built on rules and grades, wasn’t the one she wanted after all.
I run my fingers over the table now. Same spot. Same wood. The A is still there, faint, but visible if you know where to look. My mom pretends not to see when my eyes settle on it during dinner. Maybe she hopes I will never know the story of it.
By the end of dinner, we are all exhausted. Not from the food, but from surviving the meal. I help clear the plates. My aunt offers to dry. We share a look— one of those unspoken acknowledgements. You okay? Me too.
The table remains. Solid. Watching. Absorbing. I wipe down the surface slowly. My grandmother stands in the doorway, arms crossed loosely, her eyes soft but calculating.
“This will be your table one day,” she says.
She means it as a blessing.
I don’t respond at first. The cloth is still in my hand, the fabric damp and warm. My fingers are curled tightly around it. I nod because it is easier than saying no.
Because inside, I know: I don’t want this table. Not because it isn’t beautiful. Not because it hasn’t held generations of meals, assignments, and lives. But because I don’t want what comes with it. I don’t want a table that makes people small. A table that asks for straight A’s, perfect scores, and quiet obedience. A table that knows how to praise results and forget effort. A table where silence means disappointment. I don’t want to inherit the weight of that expectation. I don’t want to build a life on fear of disappointing the people who raised me.
My grandmother’s eyes meet mine from the doorway, her gaze softening just a little. I think she sees the hesitation, my unspoken resistance. Maybe she recognizes it—because once, she must’ve felt it too. Maybe she knows I don’t want the table as it is now. Not with its silence and expectations still heavy in the woodgrain. Maybe she hopes I’ll come to understand it the way she does. But I won’t.
My table will be different.
It will be a round table, made of a light, honey-colored wood. The wood grain will flow in waves beneath the matte finish, catching the light softly rather than reflecting it harshly. The legs will be simple and solid. No fancy details or decorative elements, just 4 sturdy supports. The chairs around it look like they were collected over time rather than bought as a set. Some are painted, their colors faded and edges worn down; others are bare wood with mismatched finishes and heights that make the whole arrangement feel accidental.
People will come to my Sunday dinner because they want, not because they feel obligated. No one will be performing. The chairs will never feel like interrogation seats. There will be no rehearsed small talk and no awkward silences heavy with expectation. No one will define their worth in grades or resumes. No one will sit quietly rehearsing answers to questions they never wanted to be asked. I won’t ask about test scores or college applications. I’ll ask better questions. Questions that don’t have a right answer. The conversations will flow without pauses of discomfort. I want my family to feel safe here. No pressure, no judgment. Just us. This is the table I want.
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