Zip code: How to solve the problem of social eating and drinking while being masked

As lockdown restrictions across the country are gradually lifted, people will start visiting friends and receiving guests again, and will be only too happy to do so after weeks of isolation.

However, certain safety norms should continue to be followed. Get-togethers should comprise no more than five people, to ensure social distancing. And face masks, which have now become part of our obligatory dress code, should be worn both by hosts and guests, creating a problem.

Thanks to the tenets of Indian hospitality, socialising in each others’ homes doesn’t involve only the exchange of chit-chat but also the partaking of khana-peena, which is an indispensable part of the occasion.

But how does one tuck into the khana, or enjoy the peena, so hospitably provided by one’s host, while being masked up to the gills or, more pertinently, to one’s mouth?

Human ingenuity, being what it is, will doubtless devise a solution to the problem. A possible design feature for special meal-time masks which would facilitate eating and drinking might be a small horizontal zip across the section of the protective surface which covers the mouth which could be unzipped to permit the entry of food and drink and then zipped shut again, to preclude possible infection.

As an extra precautionary measure, a protocol could be established so that all those present aren’t unzipped at the same time, with guests being given precedence for the intake of nourishment.

Such turn-by-turn eating and drinking could, however, turn meals into prolonged marathon affairs, extending over a couple of hours, if not more, and run the risk of an embarrassing turn of events if, through sheer fatigue, a guest or, worse still, the host were to fall asleep at the dining table.

A far easier solution might be to popularise the practice, which many Indians already follow, of doing vrat, or upvaas, on a given day of the week, which in north India is generally a Tuesday, when people refrain from eating anything. If this no-food day becomes a trendsetter, we can forego all worries about eating and drinking when we invite people over who are, literally our fast friends.