My Thanksgiving Story, Nov 25 2009

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A Long time ago on a far away land sometime in the 17^th century did the first gathering among the pilgrims (Fred and Ethel Pilgrim, that is) and the Winnebago Indians take place. It was the harvest festival celebrating a rain that came down like cats and dogs, the autumn harvest festival featured fine foods such as turkey, giblets, gravy, mashed potatoes, lettuce, turnip & pea. Pheasants and swans were also offered and ironically, no one wanted the turkey wishbone at that time, but the kids all fought over the swan's neck. Also add a bunch of rare already Religious eggheads and hippies and rock bands in your scene to spice up your imagination a little more. All in all thanksgiving (apologies if it hurts anybodies sentiments) according to me would be a : “SAY A THANK YOU DAY ” just like the valentine’s day, mothers’ day, fathers’ day, pink princess day, twin day, the who’s who :“mix-n- match day “, the tomato day , …. day…..day…..day….day ( I am sure some of these are not even real but I won’t be surprised at all if a little birdie tells me in my ear that they do really exist) Jokes apart , the Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in a whole reason of saying thank you to everyone and everything. Also, Thanksgiving is to also be reuniting with family and friends and just discussing how life is and being appreciative.

For a normally evolved human brain that is as developed as it should be, I assume (please feel free to correct me if I am wrong)by now the obvious question (assuming again) on your minds would be “ she is not an American neither does she sing and dance during the harvesting festival and if she does, she needs to see a psychiatrist even before she thinks of writing another line nor is she is meat eater, the only thing she could relate to probably is the word “ THANK YOU” and that some homo sapiens erectus species back in the 1700s had their ‘last names’ as Indians. Then what is it that she has to tell? Well here it comes…

When I lived in India I grew up watching F-R-I-E-N-D-S and every season had to have a thanksgiving episode where Monica would bake the turkey and Joey would be exercising to work up his appetite and Chandler would be sulking because his own parents are both females, one of whom used to be a man once upon a time and Ross would either be getting married or getting divorced or getting his girlfriend pregnant or yapping about the terrestrial archosaurian reptiles who held their limbs erect beneath their body. The reference to context for one of the longest sentences I have ever written is to highlight the tradition of stuffing and marinating and greasing and baking a beautifully wattled and multihued bird; ladies and gentlemen, hold your breaths for I am presenting the star of the article Ms. TURKEY (Kindly notice the political correctness in my usage of the title ‘Ms’ pronounced as mih-zzzzz (h is silent)).

Before I say anything else about this point of contention, let me brief you about something that happened to me two days ago. For most of you know my schedule (those who do not ...people get a life …. You cannot miss out on such extremely vital information about the happenings around the globe especially about celebrities) my usual day would end somewhat in this manner: Eat dinner in bed after a two hour extremely onerous shift at the gym, wash up, brush my teeth ( I know mom you are going to be so proud of me .. I haven’t forgotten the values you taught me..But it is not your article, you already have a dedication :P moving on) change into my night wear , start watching an episode of the Big Bang theory on Mega video and dose off listening to Sheldon’s nerdy intelligent yet droll sarcasm. And the day following that would have me first set the alarm off and put it on snooze so that I can sleep for at least 5 more repeated snooze cycles and then finally wake up unable to bear the pricks of guilt inflicted by the masochist in me and the decibels of the noise in my head (THE CONSCIENCE).

BUT that morning was different. With half eyes open I saw something that gave me the shock of my life (To all the Rakhi Sawant fans… this is a moment one would stand in peace for 2 minutes in order to give her “Aadaranjali “(respect) she has been and will always be our inspiration for make-up-full-zero-acting display of emotions, and to all the Ekta Kapoor soap lovers this would be the moment where the camera shows you the same face/object/house/animal/paper/ for exactly 3 times with the ‘dhish-dhish dhish-dhish’ music). My phone, my sweet, white, clean, Sony Erricsson w580i walkman phone was splotched. Oh poor thing!!! It had an approximately 1.3 inch long and a 0.4cm wide blotch running across the screen horizontally. It was a gory sight I tell you, it took me half an hour to actually realize that it was not a nightmare, it had happened for real; my beautiful phone, companion, my only source of communication (other than my laptop) with the outside world had a damaged screen. L

That day and yesterday have by far been the most traumatic days I have spent in the US of A. Every time I keyed in my numbers I would not be able to see the top most line… every time someone called me, their display pictures made them look like they were all Veerappan’s pedigree as both genders had a mustache with the above mentioned dimensions .. jet black… no hint of color and every time I had to text message someone (me being a religious user of the dictionary option) the word hints that the phone gave me were all covered under the black line and I ended spending more time and energy trying to guess what the word under the screen would be rather than just typing it in the usual manner. Two whole days and one night… I was starting to get really impatient…alas the engineer in me spoke in the voice of Shakespeare:

I am the owner of the sphere
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.

What is thy use if thy cannot repair it

Such a shame if thy left it unfinished

So, there I was, in my unlit bedroom at 3.22 am, geared with my MVP card, a tweaser, a pair of scissors, an illustration link that I obtained from yahoo answer on “how to disassemble your walkman phone in 5 easy steps” in the bright not to mention extremely clear light of my lap top screen. Being gifted with an extremely intelligent, smart, zealous and a highly convoluted brain unraveling the phone was a trivial task. Then after a careful examination in the luminous presence of my lap top and cleaning I finally put together the components of my phone with utmost perfection. Nervous and paranoid yet ecstatic about my new-fangled exploit, I pressed the tiny white button on the top of my phone to put it to life. And then was the moment o truth, to my dismal observation I saw all the possible colors (literally) that I must have never seen in my entire 23 year and 11 month life laughing back at me on my phone display. I cannot even begin to catalog the assortment of hues I witnessed in that unearthly hour of the morning.(If anyone is interested in the list one can refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors and save me the task and torture of recollecting the shades I saw.)

It was a sudden death of the adroit and fervent engineer in me. (Condolences accepted) But as it is said an engineer’s brain is always an engineer’s brain, (I don’t even know if that is a saying, but what the heck!!) something interesting caught my eye, something unusually bizarre, something really mind boggling. The colors on the display of my phone looked exactly like a traditionally stuffed, marinated, greased, golden roasted, beautifully wattled and multi-hued bird. Did that ring any bells? Oh yes!! To my unbelieving eyes it was a TURKEY sprinkled with multi-hued condiments placed on a multi-hued banded table cloth!

I did not really know what it signified. Did it signify that god had blessed me, almost a vegan me with a turkey on thanksgiving as I was away from my family or was it a lesson that I learnt about not being content with what I already had (the big black hideous looking scar across the display) or was it an indication from god that I had to be thankful for the joy of loving, caring, sharing, be thankful for the togetherness and merry making, the 'Oneness' of people, epitomizing peace, harmony and union? I know this must have been the most unusual story anyone ever wrote but it all made me think, changed my stereotypical opinion about celebrating and dedicating a day for making up for all the 364 days of the year (and 365 days in case of a leap year ;))that you forgot to thank god for what he gave you .

Well, that’s my thanksgiving story for all...the night that I had a non-functional phone, a sleep depriving experience in dismantling and a gifted digital turkey!!

Let us all join our hands this thanksgiving and thank the Lord almighty for all the blessings and material possessions he has bestowed on us.