Eating out with friends

By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam

Ah, nostalgia. It is that magic masala that makes the past look better than it probably was. Yesterday’s pav bhaji, eaten on a steel plate with questionable hygiene, somehow tastes better in memory than today’s overpriced avocado toast in a cafe that charges extra for water.

Through its rose-tinted lens, the past looks like a Doordarshan Sunday movie — grainy, slow, but strangely comforting. Let us talk about the mythical age of “eating out with friends.” Restaurants were just restaurants, not Instagram studios. The only influencer in the group was the one who convinced everyone to split the bill equally.

I still remember how it was in the mid-eighties. A group of us with little money used to gather at a modest family restaurant. Depending on our budget, it was Madhu Nivas, Dasaprakash or Udupi Bhavan. It could also be some generic “Darshini” that popped up on some street corner. The menu was familiar. Vegetable palav, Chow chow bath, butter naan, palak paneer and gulab jamuns for dessert. Exotic cuisine meant Chinese — well, “Indian Chinese,” which was basically fried noodles, red chutney and enough ajinomoto to keep you thirsty till next week.

The hottest debate of the evening? Not about whether the chef has used Himalayan pink salt or sea salt. It was whether to order one masala papad for the table or be reckless and order two. Back then, we did not analyse food; we demolished it. Paneer butter masala looked like paneer butter masala. No filters, no garnish sprigs, no drizzle of anything. Just bright red gravy, a floating cube of butter amidst paneer and happiness.

Phones? Oh, they existed. Only in the STD phone booths where we stood in long lines. Parents in those days demanded regular updates. “Where are you? Who is with you? Why is it so noisy? Are you studying or wasting time again?” If boredom struck, the only “entertainment” was a movie in an actual old theatre. Social media was passing handwritten notes in class or exchanging diaries during summer holidays. Influencers? That was your uncle, who could influence your parents into letting you stay out past 9 pm.

The ‘community’ was real. We laughed out loud — not LOL’d. “Like” meant a genuine chuckle across the table, not a polite double tap. “Sharing” meant passing the naan basket, not oversharing with hashtags. And “commenting” meant someone telling you, “Boss, raita is on your shirt.” The privacy we gave up was not to Mark Zuckerberg, but to that one friend who would later tell the whole class about how you spilled Coke on your jeans and looked like you had embarrassed yourself.

And the bill! Oh, the drama. Splitting a Rs. 300 bill among six people was a mathematics problem tougher than any IIT entrance exam. One guy would only have a Rs. 100 note. Another would claim he “hardly ate anything” except two rotis and some gravy. Meanwhile, the eternal freeloader would vanish to “make a call” just as the waiter arrived. No UPI, no “scan and pay.” Just piles of coins, torn notes and an outraged cashier wondering if you were buying groceries instead of paying for a meal.

Fast-forward to today. Eating out is no longer just eating — it is a public performance. The first thing served is not water, but the collective instruction, “Arre, don’t touch the food! Let me click first!” Every thali becomes a photoshoot set. Everyone jockeys for the best angle, as if the samosa were auditioning for a Filmfare cover. Someone will tilt the plate, someone else will adjust the lighting with their phone torch, while the poor dish sits there, slowly getting cold. By the time the photography ends, you do not want to eat it — you want to frame it.

And then there is privacy or the concept of it. Middle-class India guards its OTPs with the intensity of Z-plus security. Yet they willingly upload 4K videos of butter naan with geotag, filter and hashtags like #Foodie #Blessed #NaanStopFun. Friends who would never reveal their salary will casually broadcast to the world that they had “authentic Burmese Khow Suey” last night. We are fiercely protective of our data (at least believe so), yet we happily volunteer our entire dinner menu to strangers.

The economics of it all have also changed. In the 80s, eating out was a rare treat — birthday dinners, exam results (good ones), or that annual family outing to “treat ourselves.” Today, the middle-class urban millennial eats out more in a week than their parents did in a year. Swiggy, Zomato and food courts in malls have normalised eating out to the point where dal-chawal at home feels like punishment. It is no longer about affordability; it is about lifestyle.

And yet — something is missing.

Because here is the truth. Back then, eating out was an event. You dressed up, you waited for it, you relished it. Today, it is just another Instagram story that vanishes in 24 hours. Back then, the memory lived in your stomach and in your laughter. Today, the memory lives in the cloud, measured by views and likes.

Yes, we have gained a lot. Wider choices, cooler restaurants, cuisines we cannot pronounce but happily pay for, and the ability to split bills with one tap instead of mental arithmetic. We have gained convenience, variety and an endless archive of digital proof that we have “a life.”

But in the process, we have lost the magic of simplicity. The thrill of saving up for that one meal. The joy of sharing food without worrying if it looked photogenic. The warmth of conversations uninterrupted by notifications. And the greatest loss of all — of being fully there.

So here is to the good old days, when the scariest thing about eating out was food poisoning from roadside gobi manchurian. And here is to today, when the scarier thing is an unflattering tag on social media. Maybe the paneer tikka was better back then — or maybe it is just that we actually ate it hot, together, without waiting for the likes to come in.