The Holiday Dinner

A few months after moving to the U.S. from India, on a weekly trip to the San Jose Flea Market, I found an artist whose work would take me by the hand and show me around our new home.

Before discovering him, I wandered through paintings of majestic mountains and luminescent waves, through the cityscapes slick with rain, through all the images of white-picket farms with idyllic barns, American scenes I knew must exist somewhere but had not yet seen. These paintings inspired awe, but kept eleven-year-old me at a distance. Finally, after much perusing, on the dimly-lit back wall of the store, I saw a picture of a puppy biting down on a man’s butt. The man bolts full throttle, terrified, his mouth agape mid-scream, his shoelaces untied and flapping, but the puppy holds on tight, his jaws unrelenting. As the man runs, the puppy flies through the air behind him. Now here was something relatable. 

Stray dogs roamed the streets of Bhiwani, my hometown in North India. Generally, we ignored them and they us. But as I walked to school one day, when I must have been seven years old, a mangy puppy growled at me. Determined to not let the little runt intimidate me, I stomped my foot at it. The puppy growled louder, clearly of the same mind but unfortunately with a stronger resolve. As I turned my back to run, it latched onto my dress and wouldn’t let go. I yanked and yelled, but it only clung harder. Scared and embarrassed, I dragged it to the sweets shop a few feet away, where Raju Bhai, the kindly shopkeeper, finally shooed away the beast. As I stared at the image in the art store, I was amazed the artist had seen my own plight, thousands of miles from Bhiwani. 

In another one of his paintings, a young boy sits at a diner, his feet dangling high above the floor, while a benevolent police officer, perched on the stool next to him, leans down toward him. The boy’s bundle of clothes, the kind you pack when running away from home, lies beneath his feet. I knew the officer would listen to the boy’s woes, buy him food, and convince him to stay.

Something drew me to these pictures. Maybe it was the humor and warmth, or maybe the reassurance of our entry into a gentle place. I peered closely at the paintings, and saw the name at the bottom. Norman Rockwell.

Once I discovered Rockwell, I saw his work everywhere: in bookstores and libraries, on t-shirts and mugs. His bespectacled self-portrait within a portrait, an artist drawing himself drawing while looking in the mirror, left me staggering with wonder. The man was a genius, and I was smitten. 

I came across a timely Rockwell painting that would help me make sense of this new world. An entire family leans into the dinner table, children and parents eagerly anticipating the gigantic turkey the grandparents place in the center. The table is set with matching, elegant dishes and silverware, flowers and fruit. The whole scene radiates Thanksgiving. 

So that’s how you do Thanksgiving, I thought. It had been difficult to learn how to celebrate American holidays when we first moved from India. Everyone hid the festivities behind closed doors. 

1977-78 in Bhiwani

Indian holidays didn’t stay contained within our homes; they spilled into the streets. In Jain Chowk, our neighborhood, when you stepped outside the house during Diwali season, you were barraged by the delirious bazaar. Raju Bhai showcased the multicolored desserts he produced overnight: the sticky, syrupy, curly-cued jalebies piled high, mountains of laddoos arranged in perfect pyramids, brilliant pink, yellow, and green sweets, all crying, “Take me!” Flies seemed livelier, buzzing over the sweets, and errand boys, fetching supplies and spraying down the dirt in front of the shop, a little more harried. Raju Bhai blasted his tape player at the highest volume, serving his customers a rich dose of his favorite morning prayers. The shop next to his encroached onto the road, its tables laden with fireworks, and one next to that displayed its fanciest saris. Each shop blasted its own music, and the cacophony echoed through the neighborhood and into the home. You didn’t even need to step outside to know the holiday season was upon you.

Most holidays were communal; you could just stand still and let the waves of festivities carry you, like boarding a train in Mumbai during rush hour. 

Normally, Bhiwani’s biggest temple, shoehorned into the dingy marketplace, served as an oasis from the town’s chaos. Just outside the temple, the blacksmith hammered his brass pots, the vegetable vendors loudly beckoned passersby, and the street echoed with rickshaw bells. But inside, the cool, clean marble floors and thick walls offered silence and serenity.

This oasis became the hub of the din every Janmashtami, Lord Krishna’s birthday. A cradle in the center of the main hall rocked a statue of birthday boy Krishna deep into the night. Throngs of people crowded into the temple to creep past the cradle, awed, inspired, and jostled. The mass of bodies craned to see the clay Krishna smiling up from his swinging bed. Mummy and Papa never wanted to enter this mad scene, where bodies crushed bodies, and you were lucky to get a glimpse of the blue god. Most years though, my brother and I insisted, and they relented.

But on Dussehra, they held firm. On this day that marked Rama’s victory over the evil Ravana, the whole town, it seemed—except for them—came together to watch the burning of his two-story tall effigy. The crowds held no appeal for my parents, especially on this festival, that combined crowds with flames.

I was about seven years old when I had the chance encounter with Ravana up close. The ten-headed maleficent god, the fearsome fighter who kidnapped Sita and kept her captive for years, lay on his back in the yard of a workshop on the outskirts of Bhiwani. Papa and I went for walks there, where a small creek fed the gooseberry bushes and naked children played in the muddy waters. 

Ravana was even more enormous up close than I had imagined, his face longer than my arm span, each tooth the size of my head. His hot-pink cheeks, candy-apple lips, and royal blue and gold tunic shone in the dusty field strewn with dilapidated building material. His unblinking eyes stared up at the sky, looking oddly terrified instead of terrifying. His fangs pierced from the edges of his mouth, intruding onto the thick handle bars of his mustache. Only the central head was attached to his torso. The rest, smaller and all identical, waited near the bramble at the edge of the workshop. The demon was said to be brilliant, requiring all those heads to store his vast trove of knowledge. They would be installed later, along with the legs. And finally, the entire structure would be topped off with a papier-mâché rooster, like a weather vane. The hapless bird was meant to signify Ravana’s dominant trait, his tragic lack of wisdom. 

I was desperate to see the fabled demon in his real splendor. It took some convincing, but Mummy and Papa eventually let us go to our friend’s roof parapet, where we could watch the spectacle far from the crowds and stray embers.

The creators of the effigy wowed us with their clever pyrotechnics. As darkness descended, and the anticipation heightened, the rooster started spinning like a top. A long garland around Ravana’s neck lit next, the small, bright bursts running down its length, starting at one shoulder, traveling down to the chest, and back up towards the other shoulder. The crowd went from restless to transfixed. Some people clapped, others hooted in appreciation. Then Ravana’s chest exploded with booms and hisses. Soon, fire engulfed the entire body and all the heads. As the effigy burned, pieces of its skeletal structure tumbled to the ground. Some intrepid devotees ventured near to collect bits of the burning debris for good luck. The actual event only lasted a few minutes, but the excitement around it consumed us for days. 

After we moved to California, we struggled to figure out how to celebrate Indian festivals. Be it Janmashtami, Dassehra, or even bigger festivals like Holi or Diwali, schools and work never gave us a day off, and our neighbors didn’t celebrate. We had none of the right equipment. How do you celebrate Holi without powdered colors or Diwali without fireworks? Holi only worked when everyone in town lost their mind at the same time, albeit some with the help of a milky, cannabis-laced drink, and doused all the neighbors, young and old, frail and robust, with nearly-indelible color. 

Diwali only worked when everyone lined their roofs with candles and oil lamps, so that when you went up to your roof, you could see the whole town sparkling. But for that you needed flat roofs and brick houses, not wood. You needed the whole neighborhood to boom with fireworks at night, so even your anxious Indian mother would have to let you buy the big noise-makers, the ones named “Atom bomb,” or the ones that whirled around like the Milky Way, spraying embers as they spun and skidded, no telling if they were heading toward an open spot on the veranda or toward your feet. In Santa Clara, there was no place to light the oil lamps or fireworks. What, then, was left of the festival? 

We could have prayed to the goddess Laxmi, I suppose, as many Indians do at Diwali. Who wouldn’t want to pray to the unapologetic diva of wealth, the goddess with four hands, the two on top holding lotus flowers, symbolizing spiritual wealth paling in the glint of the gold coins pouring from her other two hands. “May Laxmi visit your home,” people wished each other, and also wished for themselves.

Vibha and her mother. 1977-78 in Bhiwani, India.

We could have bought a portrait of the goddess, put it in a gilded frame and created an altar with fruits, flowers, and incense sticks, singing devotional songs to it. Mummy would have loved this comforting ritual. To the rest of the family, though, having never prayed in India, it felt artificial. So we wore our best Indian clothes and made an extra special dinner, Mummy trying her hand at making gulab jamun, the syrupy dumplings we couldn’t yet find in the Indian stores, substituting her traditional flour mix with Bisquick. But these gestures felt like mere crumbs of the holiday. Like the gulab jamun, Diwali didn’t feel the same. We had to look for something new.

Yet, American holidays were an enigma. The stores filled with holiday gear, everything orange and pumpkin-y before Thanksgiving and red and green before Christmas. But what did people actually do with these things? How did they celebrate? Halloween was the only holiday that revealed itself. Children dressed in costumes and went asking for treats. But what about the other holidays? Some neighbors strung up lights and we could see Christmas trees through their windows, but that was in their homes. For the most part, the streets remained empty of the revelers. We remained lost.

Now, thanks to Norman Rockwell, at least I understood Thanksgiving. I was determined to celebrate it the right way. But I had never even seen a turkey, dead or alive, let alone tasted one. Mummy didn’t eat meat and Papa said, “Let’s just have our Indian food. At least we know how to make it.” He even offered to prepare my favorite dishes, mattar paneer and chana masala. 

I had no idea how to guide my family’s foray into American holidays. None of us knew how to cook that bird, or how to set that kind of table, ours normally a mess of mismatching bowls of curries, none of them properly autumnal or even vaguely American. Even if we had somehow managed to cook a turkey, only my brother and I would have fallen in line to eat it. The rest of the family would have grumbled and asked for the chili pickle and yogurt, something—anything! —to make it spicier and creamier.

So, we had our Thanksgiving dinner all wrong. On the table was the usual, boring, Indian spread. No one leaned into the table with any excitement. In fact, I was downright sulky. How were we ever going to become Americans if no one would cooperate?

-Vibha Akkaraju

Vibha has been writing memoir essays and personal narratives for about fifteen years.​ She wrote for Big Apple Parent many years ago, and more recently has had several articles published in India Currents. In the last few years, she has enjoyed being a part of the CWC and some other writing groups, as well as reading her works at open mics, including at Kepler’s Literary Foundation’s Story is the Thing series and twice at Bay Area Generations. In May 2019, her essay, “Of Idols and Indophiles,” won first place in the personal memoir category of the San Mateo County Fair Literary Contest. Some of her current pieces can be found at medium.com/@vibha.akk She is also working on a memoir about her family’s move from India to the U.S.