Cut to 2035. The lunch pack is a few colourful tablets. With the correctly measured amount of water. There are no food malls. No restaurants where you can have a leisurely meal. The pharmacies have been extended. Because food is served in tablet form. The agro-industry has progressed to converting wheat, rice, dal, vegetables, meat into buttons of appropriate calorific value. There are huge factories churning out colourful buttons to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner. No mithai shops. Who would eat them? Grandmothers are only fit to sit around. (Parents are busy identifying pills for a nutritional meal.) Homemade sweets and savouries are out!

Hey! Why is that so? Well! Most of the nutritional drink advertisements or health foods/ drinks that claim to provide all components of nutrition because ‘my little one just does not eat chapatti – rice’ are proliferating. Mothers and children getting swept into this new wave that could eventually help this industry to grow rapidly.

Plus there is no time to eat a leisurely square meal. People seem to be working all the time. Where is the time to chew food and eat it? Pop a pill. Swallow a button and there you are. The dentists are also going to go out of work. No teeth to maintain! Could it become a vestigial organ?

Maybe it is time to button up to the eventuality that a button meal could be a reality!

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