My mother did not eat in front of her mother-in-law in 25 years. Not once. This is not a rule anyone stated. My dadi did not require it. My dadi, in fact, used to say "beta, khao na" at every meal… | Avleen Kaur Arora

My mother did not eat in front of her mother-in-law in 25 years. Not once. This is not a rule anyone stated. My dadi did not require it. My dadi, in fact, used to say "beta, khao na" at every meal, with genuine warmth, and my mother said "haan haan, abhi khaati hoon," and then used to eat standing at the kitchen slab after everyone had left, holding the plate in her left hand, fast, the way you eat at a wedding buffet when you are already late. I asked her about it once. She looked at me like I had asked why she breathes through her nose. Here is the thing that unsettles me. My dadi did this too. Her mother-in-law has been dead since 1981. My mother learned it from a woman who was herself obeying a woman who is now bones in Ludhiana. The original authority is gone. The original reason - whatever it was, deference, hierarchy, some economy of scarcity in a village where the men ate first because the men did the lifting is gone. The enforcement is gone. Only the behaviour is left, running perfectly, generating itself, needing nothing. My hypothesis is that most of what we call culture is orphaned enforcement. A rule outlives its enforcer, and in doing so becomes far stronger than it was when someone was actually watching, because: 1. A rule with a visible enforcer can be argued with. A rule with no enforcer has no one to argue with. 2. When the reason is forgotten, the rule stops being a cost-benefit and becomes an identity. You are no longer obeying. You are being yourself. 3. Each generation transmits the behaviour but not the justification, because the justification takes longer to explain and the behaviour is the part that shows. And so the rule gets purer over time. Stripped of context, it becomes non-negotiable. Which means the most binding constraints in any family, company, or country are the ones nobody can defend. The defendable ones get revised. The indefensible ones are invisible, and invisible things do not get revised. I am 24 and I am quite sure I am running at least four of these. I cannot name them. That is the definition. If a rule has no author, no enforcer and no reason - who exactly am I obeying :)

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