INDIA: Rahul Bedi went to Lokur in the southern Indian state of Karnataka to have dinner with the Narsinganna family - an all-day affair with food for 178 people
Dining with the world's largest family in India's southern Karnataka state is a crowded, hospitable, but hurried affair.
As one shift of between 25 and 30 of the Narsinganna family's 178 members finish eating - seated cross-legged on the floor in their large ancestral home in Lokur village, 420 km north of the state capital Bangalore - another hungry batch replaces them.
And so it continues for most of the day, which is largely taken up with the midday and the evening meal till the entire family is fed by the household women, who take turns at cooking in shifts of two hours each.
Squatting before the row of wood-stoked fires in the smoky, cramped kitchen, this army of women cooks and their female helpers daily prepare an average of 1,600 millet rotis or flat unleavened bread and vast quantities of vegetables and lentils in massive steel buckets that are consumed within minutes by their family.
From 6 a.m. they labour in the kitchen till til about 8 p.m., with a short break in between taken up with other household chores like washing mountainous piles of clothing, peeling vegetables and kneading the ubiquitous millet, readying it for baking.
"Cooking and housework is all that we know," Saraswati, the family's oldest woman, says. Feeding so many people is tough, the 80-year old, who now has an advisory role, declares resignedly.
The younger girls, who graduate to cooking at between 10 and 12 years, serve the menfolk, who eat first.
Dozens of infants crawl unselfconsciously in and out of the laps of their elders, helping themselves to the food that is served in large steel thalis or trays that are lined up along the cavernous corridors on the ground floor of the main family house, which doubles as the dining area.
Above them, suspended from the ceiling, hang a row of cradles in which newborn babies are rocked to sleep by their mothers and other female family members, when not on cooking detail or deployed on other domestic chores.
"It is compulsory for all family members to eat together twice a day in the main house," says Bhimanna, the 71-year old family patriarch. The family that eats together stays together, adds the impressively moustached former wrestler prosaically.
Five generations of Narsingannas, or about 130 out of 178 members, live in the old ancestral home and a cluster of six other houses nearby, living off 180 acres of collectively owned farmland and the large family dairy. They are Hindus and migrated to Lokur 350 years ago from further north.
The remaining 50-odd family members, mostly schoolgoing children and a handful of adults, live together under one roof in nearby Dharwar town, duplicating the modus vivendi of their family in the village.
"We consume what we produce and share everything," says Thiranandra (37), in charge of the family dairy. There is no room for individual wants, he adds.
The Narsingannas' yearly household budget is about Rs1.2 million ($266,666 ) while another Rs300,000 ($6666 ) - large amounts in India - is spent on clothing, medicines and farm labour. Annually they consume about 1.32 million lb of millet and 33,000 lb of wheat in addition to vegetables produced exclusively from 15 acres of land. They also drink 12 gallons of milk every day and burn some 200 kg of firewood.
About 20 bales of varied cloth bought each year around the autumn Hindu festival of Dusherra, which the Narsingannas celebrate with gusto, dress the entire family.
"No concessions are made to individual requirements and vanities, as pandering to that only leads to trouble and divisions," a family member says.
Weddings are a festive affair, celebrated every eight or 10 years on a grand scale with several couples being married collectively, after which they settle down to live in or around the ancestral home.
Whenever there is a wedding, the state road transport corporation runs special buses.
The family's only entertainment is watching television after they were presented with a set by the BBC, which featured them in a documentary four years ago.
This lone television set has pride of place in the centre of the large hall at the top of the family house and is switched on sparingly when popular soap operas are aired.
"It's like watching television on a busy railway platform with children and people constantly milling around," Nyamanna says. It's chaotic but comforting, he adds.
"Happiness is togetherness. We feel secure in our unity, camaraderie, brotherhood and accommodation," family head Bhimanna offers as an explanation of how so many of them continue to live together at a time when the traditional Indian joint family system, threatened by consumerism and individuality, is swiftly disintegrating across the country.
Together we will remain intact and grow strong, he adds optimistically, but laughingly admits that he does not remember the names of all the family members.
Others indicated that it is their women who had kept them together and consequently, brides of about 15 years of age, who had not studied beyond the fifth or sixth grade, are preferred. Keeping the women "under control" ensured harmony in this unique joint family ; giving them "undue freedom" could spell ruination, a senior Narsinganna suggested quietly.