Thanksgiving Dinner

Most of you know that Thanksgiving happens to be my favorite holiday, so it was a bit bittersweet to not be in the States for it this year. My normal routine usually involves a couple different Thanksgiving dinners, one or two in DC – Justin and I would often have a cook off and invite too many people over (I’m glad to have heard that he took it upon himself this year to make two birds this year for a party in Columbia Heights). And then the big family dinner is up in NJ at my Aunt Betty Jane’s house where I further practice my ability to eat too much.

Now there was talk at different points in the last few weeks of trying to do a Thanksgiving dinner here in the village, but when I was in Chittoor earlier this week and had the option to buy the needed ingredients I was tired and cranky and decided not to. Luckily though we stumbled our way into a happy substitute, I had asked some of the teachers if we could all get together for dinner this week; a) because I like hanging out with them, and b) because I wanted to get Kurt into Kothapalli so he could get a better idea of where are kids and teachers come from.

Well it turned out that our dinner night was Thursday night. So I spent the whole day giving every class a short talk about Thanksgiving, and how it’s a day when friends and families get together, eat a huge meal, and then talk about everything they are thankful for in the last year. They seemed to like the idea. When school ended we took some rest, then put on our elastic waist lungis, and when night was upon us we made our way to the village.

The dinner ended up being a staged affair as Kothapalli is the village where Kavita madam, Pushpa madam, and Prameela madam all live. So it became a triple threat of hostessing. It seemed to be a challenge that Kurt, John, Vasanth, and I were willing to tackle.

We started at Kavita’s place to collect our thoughts and wait for Pushpa to arrive; we watched a little TV, taught Kurt a little bit about village life, and also a little about Hinduism and its place in the home. Then we made our way to Pushpa’s house, which was deeper into the village than I had ever made it, so it was really exciting for me. Here was the appetizer course; tea, biscuits, and mixture, along with a different style house for Kurt to check out. Our final stop was Prameela’s place and this is where the main event happened.

The floor was cleared off, the mats were laid down, and banana leaves were spread out. The guests took their places and the hostesses went to work laying out raw banana curry, channa masala, rice and sambar, vadai, russom, curd, and ended the meal with vermicelli pudding (I don’t know the Indian name, I apologize). After this we switched rolls and got the girls to sit down, and I even managed to do some serving myself – though I had to channel all my stealth and ninja powers in order to grab a pot of rice and scoop some out before getting yelled at.

Here's Kurt and here's our dinner spread, mmm.

Here are the ladies; Kavita, Pushpa, and Prameela, along with Cheran, Prameela's nephew.


Kavita's husband, Vankateswaru, Kavita, and Pushpa having their dinner.

Me managing to sneak some more rice onto Pushpa's leaf.

The night ended with a whole bunch of laughter, playing with a few of Prameela’s pets, and some cool drinks and bananas that we boys brought with us for desert. I even had everyone stand in a circle and tell what they were thankful for before saying a Richard Haslett style prayer.

Vasanth with a bunny.

Now it wasn’t quite the same as Aunt Betty Jane’s turkey and Aunt Gail and my moms desert spread, but you know what, it really did fill in wonderfully. We had a great home cooked meal, had an amazing time with a bunch of the teachers, and Kurt got to see another slice of Indian living.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving yourselves,

Michael