A different Thanksgiving……

 

At last it was my much awaited Thanksgiving Day. I and my wife were walking along the Pomegranate Ln. I was fully confident that I would be invited for a Thanksgiving Day dinner and my wife more confident than I was that such an incident would never happen! Whenever someone waved towards me I took it as a prelude to a thanksgiving dinner invitation, but it seemed that no one found me to be a suitable Indian to be invited for a dinner. (I purposely waved and wished to all the passersby wishing………….)
Once I saw an elderly person walking across the road towards me. I felt almost got invited! The gentleman wished and looked straight at my camera and said:
“Hi! Nikkor 35mm prime? It is a cool lens and I too have a similar one”
“Yes. Happy to hear that you too have such a lens. Happy Thanksgiving.” I answered.
The elderly person just nodded and moved past traipsing..
My wife looked into my eyes and said “Dilip, I feel sorry for you. You are in a dream world and you have the strange desire to get transformed into one like the tramp Pep in O. Henry’s story “Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen”. But I am sure it is not going to happen.” (The story can be read by logging on to the site: https://americanenglish.state.gov/…/two-thanksgiving-gentle… )
“I too have lost hope” I whispered.
“You don’t need to be totally disappointed. I am inviting you for a Thanksgiving dinner. We will go to the Mexican restaurant ‘The Blue Goose Catina’ in Dallas Pkwy”.
“Ah my dear wife sometimes you come up with novel suggestions! An Indian eats Thanksgiving dinner thrown by his wife in the US, and in a Mexican restaurant. I am sure this is going to be first Thanksgiving of this nature- a truly international integration”!
“Still, to be truthful to the sprit of the original story I will just buy food for you and will not even drink a coffee.” She sounded firm.
In the next fifteen minutes were inside the warm restaurant and we found a comfortable table facing the Pkwy. My wife ordered different Mexican delights the names of which I had never heard before. (Unlike in the story where Pete’s stomach was filled with food here mine was empty!)
The dinner was so heavy that I had to free three notches in my hip belt! I gladly thanked my wife and we returned home. It was cold, and we were watching a documentary when the door opened and our daughter and son in law burst in with a big dinner package. She smiled and handed over me the heavy package and said:
“Dad you wanted to experience a Thanksgiving dinner as Pete had in the story . But we knew that was not going to happen. So, here is a cool thanksgiving dinner that we have brought for you”.
This is irony! If I were offered this meal some thirty minutes ago, how wonderful it would have been? 
I smiled and shook hands with my daughter and son in law and said
“Thank you, my dear daughter and son-in-law for this Thanksgiving dinner. May God bless you.”
I turned towards my wife and handed over the dinner package to her and said:
“My dear, I wish to offer this Thanksgiving dinner to you. You are the most suitable person to receive it”

 

 

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