Savita smiled. Then she remembered. “Did anyone water the tulsi plant?”

At 1:30 PM, she ate her lunch alone—leftover roti and the previous night’s aloo gobi , standing at the kitchen counter. She never ate sitting down during the day. That was for family dinners. The house came alive again. Priya returned, throwing her shoes in four directions. “History was a disaster. I wrote the wrong date for the Revolt of 1857.” Akash emerged from his room, finally showered. Ramesh returned from the market with a bag of fresh samosas and news that the corner chaat wallah had raised his prices by five rupees.

Akash was now on a Zoom call, muting and unmuting, pretending his background wasn’t a cluttered mandir shelf. “Yes, ma’am, the sprint is on track,” he said into his laptop, while frantically mouthing to Savita, “ Paratha ? With extra butter?”

Silence. Ramesh got up, groaning, and went outside with a small copper lota.

Savita raised an eyebrow. “You ate three jalebis at 11 PM last night.”

Later, as Savita locked the front door—sliding the old iron latch that had been there since her wedding—she looked back at the dimly lit living room. Akash was working again. Priya was texting. Ramesh was already snoring on the couch, newspaper on his chest.

She turned off the last light, whispered a small prayer for her family, and listened to the final sound of the day: the soft, collective sigh of a home that was tired, loved, and utterly, chaotically full.

“Mumma! My history notebook is gone! Rohit borrowed it last week and now he’s ‘not feeling well’ and won’t come downstairs!” she wailed from her room.

At 8:15 AM, the family performed a miracle: they assembled at the dining table. For exactly nine minutes, no one looked at a screen. Akash slurped his paratha with pickle. Priya complained about the cucumbers. Ramesh lectured about the petrol prices. Savita sat last, eating the broken paratha pieces, refilling everyone’s water glass, and secretly checking that Priya had actually packed her geometry box.

“That was… emotional eating. The server crashed.”

Their son, 34-year-old Akash, was a software engineer working from home. He stumbled into the kitchen, hair a bird’s nest, phone already glued to his hand. “Morning, Ma. Just a black coffee today. No sugar. I’m on a health kick.”