Thanksgiving in Bangalore feels a bit like any other day here. The sun is hot, the streets are dry and dusty, and no one seems to have that “Lets pig out and watch football” attitude…. except for a few people that I know. I guess that’s because there really is no reason to celebrate Thanksgiving here. No Abraham Lincoln to declare the last Thursday in November as the day to remember the Pilgrims, how they landed on Plymouth rock, and how the Natives, ironically called ‘Indians’, helped them learn the lay of the land and produce sustenance to survive. Or at least that is how I always had remembered it.

Well, that same general feeling of non-Thanksgiving-ness continues its dull existence through Thanksgiving night. Let me amend that statement slightly. Even though every American expat that I know here in Bangalore is thinking about Thanksgiving dinner even in the car ride to work its just not Thanksgiving here in Bangalore. We all reminisce about holidays past but there is no shopping buzz, no Christmas music, we know that football here is really soccer (so no NFL) and we’re pretty sure that even though there are a lot of Indians, there is no understanding of Thanksgiving.

I will say that there are some restaurants that do know that it is Thanksgiving somewhere. They advertise it happily and charge through the nose for their effort. But we wanted Thanksgiving, albeit the easy way. So we decided to get the Target gang together and head to one of those restaurants. It was nice to have freinds together celebrating the day. It really started to feel like Thanksgiving in a very chic, upscale, “Yeah, we know what Thanksgiving is” sort of a way that only a grand hotel chain like the Taj can put on.

It went like this. I got off of work (first that’s just wrong because I’m not supposed to be working on Thanksgiving) went and had drinks while listening to Techno (also wrong anytime), then headed to dinner in the hotel courtyard. The company was nice. It really made the night. BUT, there was dinner. Each plate consisted of dry hard turkey breast slice, some brown sauce, a sweet potato or something and what has been described as some sort of pate or cat food. The chef did redeem himself with his pumpkin pie and some mysterious potato hash brown dish that ended up on teh kids table somehow. Luckily being a dad of one kid at the kids table I had the opportunity to “clean up” after the kids

Here is the brilliant dinner plate:

Here are the kids ‘giving thanks’ that we let them escape the dinner table with food still on their plates:

All in all a Thanksgiving that was only made palatable by good freinds and some pie.