tonight's question — one nobody at the table can answer

Tonight the table collects questions instead of answers. Everyone brings one — the rule is that nobody present should be able to answer it.

Why do we dream what we dream? How does the koel know its song without being taught? Where does the flame go when the diya is blown out?

The second rule is the whole game: the questions stay unanswered tonight. No phones are fetched. The family simply owns its questions jointly for one evening, the way you might own a mango tree — not for tonight's fruit, but for the standing of it.

Watch what this does to the younger ones especially. A child who learns that a question can be kept — displayed, admired, slept on — has learnt something school timetables rarely leave room for: that the asking is itself a possession, and the finding-out will still be there tomorrow, improved by the wait.

If someone breaks the rule at breakfast and arrives with the answer researched, well. That is not disobedience; that is kutūhala doing exactly what it does with a night to work in.