The lost art of entertaining

‘JUST POPPING IN’

- SARANYA DEVAN

I WRITE this column after having just returned to Cape Town after spending eight weeks of the summer break with my parents in my home city.

T came back the way many of us do — suitcase half clothes, half Durban goodies. My cooler bag was stocked with sweet idli, unfried samoosas, vade, goolgoola, chevda (specially purchased in Pietermaritzburg) and loads of jalebi. But truth be told, most of these snacks are not for just one person — they are for the friends and family I will entertain over the coming weeks; the inevitable visits, the long chats, the “just popping in” moments that somehow stretch into hours.

Food, for me, has always travelled ahead of conversation. It says, I thought of you before I arrived, something instilled in me not only by my parents but my grandparents. I was brought up learning you never go to someone's house empty-handed. It doesn’t matter if it is a crispy, long French loaf, a packet of biscuits or freshly baked scones — just carry something. Not because the host needs it, but because the act itself says: “I value, you, your home and your time.”

It is etiquette, yes, but also care disguised as habit. Somewhere along the way, we have started to lose these small, gentle rituals of hospitality that were once so commonplace. There was a time when, even if you didn’t own Royal Doulton fine china crockery, you would unpack the shop-bought cake and biscuits from their plastic containers and arrange them on side plates. It was never about pretending - it was about presentation as respect. That extra minute taken in the kitchen quietly said: “You are not an interruption. You are an occasion.”