Round Coffee Table with Lower Shelf, Walnut Tone

Gol mez, walnut tone, early 21st century. Ring marks at centre consistent with daily shaam ki chai. Lower stratum: magazines, one remote, a book begun twice.

Future scholars will identify this as the household's true meeting point, a round top with no corners and therefore no head, where guftagu happened at the pace tea allows. The form is simple and clever, a full circle riding on three angled planks, with a second, smaller circle floating beneath, the shelf that archaeologists know as the layer where reading material went to rest between Sundays.

Specimens were found centred in living rooms with the sofa curved around them and on wide balconies serving the evening shift. Walnut-toned finish over engineered wood, roughly knee height, wiped with a damp cloth and dried after, coasters recommended if you'd rather leave fewer marks for the scholars. Round tables gather people. Corners never learned the trick.