Get off on the right foot

"A coffee table is a low table designed to be placed in a sitting area for convenient support of beverages, remote controls, magazines, books, decorative objects, and other small items," says the internet. In real life a coffee table is a nervous wreck.

Cursed by all the tea in the world for usurping a name that could well have been theirs – what’s wrong with the central family table being called a tea table? What if no one in that house drinks coffee? And the vanity of those dull publications calling themselves coffee table books! Cup and saucer sorcerers got together to put a hex on the coffee table: "May you be used for everything but hoity toity caffeine!"

Still, a table needs its identity, and constantly renaming it cola table, rum table, peanut table will take a toll on its self-esteem. We need to call it just one thing and stick with it. We could say Cleopatra or Tansen, but visitors will need footnotes the minute they come in. And other pieces of furniture may take offence at not being named anything. And if this goes on, all day you are left with no other job but naming the saucepan and spoon something or the other. Which is still doable, except that you also have to memorise these names – calling Rukmini the stool Radha will make Radha the rug mad.

Other people keep pretty trinkets they picked up from trips abroad on their coffee table, our family has traditionally kept feet. That is, their own feet. Not random severed ones of strangers – we draw the line at that. Wherever we are seated in the house, we automatically inch or angle our chair towards this centre table. First grip it with toes and then lay feet like sleeping babies fair and square in the middle of it. A new-age artistic centre piece of a movable variety, even if it includes Baby Uncle’s bunions.