On December

PART III. Thanksgiving

My November post was long and this lesson seeped into December, so I now present Thanksgiving

I think every American should at one point in their lives have to sit in front of fifteen inquisitive 6th graders, all of whom have no foundational knowledge of American history, and be asked to explain Thanksgiving. It’s a rare opportunity, as I saw it. A chance to take the clean slates of these young minds and tell them a true story, a story that was never truthfully told to me until I was practically an adult.

Of course, none of these children ever heard of Massachusetts or pilgrims, never made a hand turkey (though they loved making hand turkeys), so much of the lesson was laughing at funny-sounding words. They found it hilarious and gobsmacking to learn that early European colonizers called Indigenous people “Indians”.

“But they were not Indian ma’am.”

“I know that, but they didn’t. And when they figured it out, they didn’t care to change it.”

A small few had seen Thanksgiving depicted on TV as a big feast where families bicker and watch rugby.

“It’s actually called football in America,” I correct, but this is the wrong move. Chaos ensues. Now we must spend 15 minutes discussing the differences between football (American) and football (soccer) and dissecting why Americans must name things in such an illogical way. As usual, my students make excellent points and we must end the conversation by agreeing that logical nomenclature isn’t America’s strong suit. They find it all hilarious.

I did relish in making them to do what every American child dreads, the inevitable and inescapable list of things for which you are thankful. For the younger ones, I asked them to categorize their list into four segments: something about your family, your friends, your school, and yourself. The older ones groaned but did it anyways, with overwhelming gratitude abounding for BTS and Vijay, beloved Tamil actor.

Artificially recreating the ambiance of the holiday season— cooking mashed potatoes, sautéed green beans, and seared lemon pepper salmon (a difficult and costly meal to find and prepare here). Playing Christmas music in the evenings, cranking the AC and lighting ginger and cinnamon-scented candles, to remind ourselves that somewhere it was cold (not 85 degrees) and people were off buying tickets to the Nutcracker and putting up Christmas trees. We went to a Holiday market at Phoenix Mall, one of our main hangs for its abundance of affordable clothing stores as well as the presence of a movie theatre, a book store, a boba shop, and a nail salon. [Edit: two months later, the first Popeyes in Chennai and second in India would open at Phoenix Mall to my overwhelming delight.]

With midterm exams looming for my students, I didn’t do too much teaching after my Thanksgiving lesson and rode out the end of monsoon season by preparing the house for a guest!

A close reading on Chennai, inspired by the fresh eyes of my most-anticipated guest:

A funny thing happens when you are introducing a visitor to a new home: you revert back to an initial innocence, meeting them where they are in their processing of all these new and foreign characteristics of the place. I was back in the mind’s eye of July, a new arrival to Chennai, but this time I had perspective on my side. In July, I was in a bit of shock, the stimuli of everything had completely knocked me over and left me with an ineffable, vague overwhelm. I could barely record with any sort of precision in July, my mind was too busy melting from adaptation. December was the month where I had finally spent enough time here, learned enough about my surroundings, that I could parse through it with a fine-tooth comb and write it down, with the help of a most-anticipated fresh set of eyes.

So you start in the Chennai International Airport, a modest interpretation of an international airport. Four carousels churn out all the baggage arriving from Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata, Kochi, Goa, as well as Paris, London, Hong Kong, and Dubai. You cannot leave the airport until you’ve obtained your baggage because there are policemen guarding the entrances. You don’t know why, only that once you’re out, you’re not coming back in— that’s the rule. More importantly, no one, even an anxious, desperate partner whom you haven’t seen in 7 months, can come inside to greet and stand with you as you wait at the carousel. This partner can only argue with the policeman standing guard, trying to think of some lie that would allow an exception to this rule and then after no success, stand outside the grimy, glass wall and wave frantically at you until she gets your fatigued, waning attention (after all, you have just completed about a 16 hour journey across the world).

Once you’ve exited the building, the next order of business is transportation. Your partner (or whoever you’re meeting there) insists on an auto— this is her favorite mode of travel and though you aren’t sure how you will fit your two suitcases into the tiny vehicle with no windows or doors, the same size as a golf cart, you are too exhausted to question it. She speaks with a few drivers in her broken Tamil, trying to negotiate the price down. She ultimately fails and acquiesces at 500 Rs. What’s important is that we get home and it’s about a 40 minute drive away, she admits, so the price isn’t too absurd for a foreigner.

Through your state of delirium, you probably still notice that driving in Chennai is a high-stakes game of speed tetris. The painted lines on the road seem to be purely decorative. Speed limits are not visibly marked so it’s impossible to determine how fast you should or shouldn’t be going, but something in your gut says that it would probably be best to slow down just a bit. The opposite happens. Autos, motor scooters, cars, trucks, and buses battle it out for road space, quickly swerving and speeding around each other and leaving no square inch of road unfilled. There is a new language you’re hearing for the first time and it isn’t Tamil. It’s honking. Horns of all sonic varieties sound at every slight acceleration or brake. You take a turn onto a busy highway, your driver is laying on the horn. You cruise down an empty side street, still he honks. You wonder if he’s simply horn-happy? But you observe after a few of these rides that honking here is a symphonic form of communication, one that does not exist where you are from. A honk can mean “hey, I’m behind you” or “move over, I’m trying to pass you” or “I am driving speedily down this empty road and though there seems to be no soul in sight, if you do happen to be hiding in the shadows, you better not walk in front of my vehicle” and interpretation depends on the ever-changing circumstances of your current position, speed, and motive. The whole experience is sensationally loud and unpleasant to unacquainted ears. But you get used to it with time. In fact, once you’ve taken a couple rides around Chennai, you realize that this language of honking is actually quite ingenious, remarkable in the sense that every driver must be hyperaware of their surroundings and constantly in communication with one another. You wonder how there are not more accidents given the chaotic nature of the roads and assume that this shared language must be the answer.

Some things hit with some resistance: you are not too fond of the lukewarm-at-best-but-more-aptly-room-temperature showers, the ultra firm furniture, or the incessant staring. Fair enough. Other things come quite easily: you quickly come to to love long auto rides, mango lassis, poori for breakfast (with a great respect for idli and dosa as well), and the prices of delivery take-out. You are bewildered by the sheer number of people filling every square-inch of space (I mean seriously, existing in a large Indian city really gives you a better grasp of what a country of a billion people looks and feels like).

You both fight a cold throughout the two weeks (from where or whom, does it really matter?) so site-seeing becomes limited. Plans to visit San Thome Catholic Church on Christmas Day are thwarted by a low-grade fever and a bit of laziness. Besides, your host is more interested in showing you her personal favorites places, not necessarily falling into any boxes of cultural or historical significance. She takes you 40 minutes away to her favorite international imports grocery store so that you can buy Kraft Mac N Cheese and Cinnamon Toast Crunch for an absurd price. You glimpse the Bay of Bengal at Besant Nagar Beach through an unbelievable New Years Day crowd. You enjoy wine and pizza in Thousand Lights, sushi in Alwarpet, and mutton biryani in Nungambakkam. The latter is your declared favorite to the delight of your host, who has fallen madly in love with southern-style mutton biryani. You are perplexed by the amount of cows you see in your auto rides to all of these places and quickly learn that this is a cow’s world and the drivers and pedestrians of Chennai are simply living in it. You too are overwhelmed by the unfamiliar and constant stimuli of life here, but your trusty guide makes sure there’s lots of time for movies and take-out.

Given both of your weakened immune systems, much of your time is spent on the roof of her apartment building, a botanical wonderland boasting several full-size palm trees and other variously colored flora. You read until the sun sets and the sky erupts into purples and oranges. Another resident of the building chases her giggling toddler around on the other end, and their laughs make you both laugh too. You can see the ocean from your seat, feel its breeze. You observe the vibrant mosaic of the Besant Nagar neighborhood below. After twelve days, the trip is over and you’re excited to return to the land of familiarity. You auto back to the same Chennai airport from whence you came. This time, however, your host (in the mental fog of goodbyes) forgets that autos are not permitted to enter the departures section of the airport. So your anticipated farewell at the drop-off point turns into a rushed, chaotic hug and kiss (the auto driver is impatient and your host is worried he’ll abandon her) before you embark on a two-suitcase hike through the vast parking lot to the building lit up with still festive red and green lights. She feels extremely bad about the whole thing, but you make it home perfectly well.

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Ultimately, a beautiful December. It was a joy to share it with roommates and guests alike. A turning point as well, suddenly it was clear that the majority of this experience was behind me. I resolved to squeeze as much as I could out of the next few months.