Family Dinners Where No One Speaks

Polite performances, the real stories stay silent, the cost of silence.

The invite for the family gathering was like dozens before it. But it didn’t feel like family or a gathering. Not really.

Not the kind where you bask in the warmth of family security, shared stories, the love of elders, and the joy and excitement of the young adults in the family. And, talk about the stuff that matters. Aspirations, accomplishments, failures, learnings, anxieties. With people who love you and care for you deeply.

It was held on a terrace in an almost-upper-class home, one of those increasingly expensive Indian urban enclaves that have installed gates to keep out everyone except those who work in their homes. Soft, inviting lighting. Music that hovered just loud enough to make meaningful conversation inconvenient. People were eating off small plates, balancing drinks in their hands, floating between chairs and clusters of family and guests. The hors d'oeuvres were served by bewildered and tired-looking uniformed staff (I said almost-upper-class, didn’t I?).

The cocktails and whiskey flowed predictably.

How would you like that? Soda? Ice?

Everyone looked happy to see each other. But I wasn’t sure anyone truly was, except maybe the oblivious outsiders

Yes, there were outsiders at the family gathering. Not too many, but just enough. People who knew the family or some of the family well, but did not know the family code or its fault lines. People you couldn’t speak freely in front of. And that, of course, was the point.

Their presence gave everyone a reason to stay surface-level. To talk about summer travel plans, exercise and diet, and the new business ventures we should consider. Someone decided we need to discuss how macroeconomics works (not a bad topic for the current world order, I suppose).

I overheard someone praising the weather (news flash, Delhi is hot in April, the kind that melts willpower). Someone else passed around phone photos - children, celebrations, curated smiles.

We laughed on cue. Took polite bites. Swallowed our truths.

There were stories beneath the stories. A sister’s silence shaped like a hurt and a bewildered unspoken question mark. A mother’s absence from the gathering, so loud it felt like an accusation. An old hurt buried under a decade of fragile eye contact and brittle smiles. But no one asked. No one dared to say, "What’s really happening in your life?" Not even me.

I remember standing near the snack table, pretending to eat chips just to avoid walking into a silence I didn’t know how to carry. Someone who never calls or talks to me laughed a little too loudly in the distance. I saw an older relative light a cigarette and stare into the dark, away from the cluster of conversation. I watched a young girl get a compliment about her dress and smile too quickly.

I recognized that smile. It looked like mine.

At one point, I looked around for my cousin. Then I remembered, they hadn’t shown up. Something about a big deliverable, deadlines, heartfelt regrets. I knew what that meant. I imagined them at home, watching something forgettable on Netflix, breathing easier without the weight of this gathering. For a moment, I envied them.

I fantasized about leaving, too. Just quietly walking out, getting an Uber, pretending I forgot something important. But I didn’t. I stayed. I smiled. I turned away.

Because that’s what we do, right? We turn away and put on a smile. We manage. We perform. We avoid.

We were all in the same space, breathing the same air, carrying decades of shared family history, but we weren’t really together anymore. There are fractures. The kind that seem the same every few months but are rapidly spreading like cracks. There is a rot and an apathy in the relationships

We were upholding an image. Protecting a myth.

What does it mean to be family if you can’t speak freely? If the stories that shaped you are edited for public consumption? If every sentence is checked twice before being spoken, every question translated into something less volatile?

I saw someone being asked how work was going. They answered with a smile, then quickly excused themselves to take a call that never rang. Another relative spent twenty minutes talking about renovation plans. Not the people who lived in the house, just the flooring and the tiles. We avoid what matters with efficiency. With flair.

When I got home that night, I couldn’t sleep. There was a question echoing somewhere inside me. A kind of ache.

Why do we keep doing this?

Why do we keep choosing the performance over the possibility of connection?

Maybe because the performance feels safer. Maybe because the truth, once spoken, can’t be unsaid. Maybe because we don’t know if the other person is ready to hear it.

I wish I could tell you I disrupted the pattern. That I stood up mid-gathering and said, "Enough. Let’s be honest for once."

But I didn’t.

I stayed polite. I said thank you. I wished people goodbye. I told them it was lovely.

And it was. In a way.

But it also wasn’t. It was full of almosts and nevers. Almost said. Never dared. Almost asked. Never did. Almost felt. Never held.

We don’t talk about what these kinds of gatherings do to us. How they whisper into the next generation’s ear: this is how we do it. We smile when we want to scream. We nod when we want to run. We offer refills when what we need is reality.

And they learn. They learn quickly.

The saddest part is, we do this out of love. We think we’re protecting each other. Shielding them from the burden of our truth. But in doing so, we build a family culture that confuses silence with safety. That treats connection like a risk.

I think about that night and many like it more than I want to. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was so painfully normal. So perfectly ordinary. The kind of evening that drifts by unnoticed but leaves a mark on the way you love, the way you speak, the way you stay silent.

And maybe that’s the real lesson. Not a grand insight. Just a soft ache that says: if we want something different, we have to choose differently.

Even if it starts with one honest question. Even if it starts with showing up without the mask. Even if it starts small.

Like standing next to your brother and saying, "Hey. We love each other. Can we talk for real?"

None of us has done it yet.

But maybe we will.

If they show up.

No moat of friends. Mom is sitting in the middle of three generations of excited, emotional, authentic conversation buzzing around her as she basks in the joy of the family she has built over 70+ years. Completing her.

If we find the courage to walk across it anyway.

My wish for you is, “May your Sunday be filled with family love and no regrets.”

Until next Sunday.

Adi