Godrej Vikhroli Cucina and Chef Anahita Dhondy Turn a Bowl of Food Into a Bedtime Story for the Dinner Table
Ask any young parent in India what dinner with a small child looks like these days, and the answer is rarely a conversation. It is a plate of food in one hand and a phone or remote in the other, the television already on before the first bite is taken. A 2025 AIIMS study on screen use among toddlers in Haryana found that letting a child use a device during meals was one of the two strongest predictors of excessive screen time in early childhood, and that one in ten parents admitted to using a screen simply to get their child to eat at all. The struggle isn't getting children to eat. It's getting them to look up while they do. It also happens to be the season when this matters most. Children across the city are settling back into school, trading stories about new classmates, new teachers, new friends made over the break, all the small collisions that come with starting a year afresh. It's exactly the stretch when they come home with the questions that are harder to answer ...