Today the tables are turned - since it is one of my favorite holidays in the US, but I am alone in a new city (as has so frequently been the case in the course of this research) where I have few friends, and don't know a single other American. It is just another regular working day here. I feel a sense of nostalgia for Thanksgivings gone by - but don't really have anyone to share it with. I remember a couple of years ago I went for a long bicycle ride on Thanksgiving afternoon, before dinner. I was struck with the pattern - everyone was already at their Thanksgiving destination, and the roads were very quiet. Out in the country it was striking to see most houses empty - and every fifth or sixth house packed with people.
When I was a teenager, my Thanksgivings began with helping my mother cook on Wednesday afternoon, after we both came home from school. I did not cook much growing up, and it was helping mom cook these special holiday meals that taught me the rudiments of cookery. We would often listen to my parents' old record collection - Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Judy Collins, and of course, The Beatles. Then Thursday morning we would pack our bags and leave early for our little post and beam cabin in the glacially scoured schist hills of Southern Vermont, so that we could light a fire and warm the place before our guests arrived. Being from a small and scattered family, we rarely shared Thanksgiving with relatives, but with other friends whose families were equally small and scattered. They would join us in the afternoon, bringing plates of lasagna or vegetables to add to my mothers' pumpkin pie, corn pudding, tofu-spinach pie, and cranberry bread. For many years my guitar teacher and his family joined us, and after dinner we'd go for a walk up the hill to the old commune at Packers Corner (it was on such a Thanksgiving walk that I saw a goat, housed in a building that had once been the commune library in its more crowded days, chewing on a copy of the Odyssey). Then we would sing songs and play guitar around the woodstove, and eat our dessert.
For several years, we made it a tradition to climb Mount Greylock the day after Thanksgiving. Mount Greylock is the tallest mountain in Massachusetts, and while westerners may scoff at its height, it is still a massive chunk of rock, dominating over the valley of Williamstown and North Adams. The closest approach to our cabin was from the Appalachian Trail in N. Adams, and from there I recall the climb taking perhaps 3 or 4 hours. The Housatonic Valley, where the trail begins, is solidly in the temperate zone - dominated by maples and beeches, but as you climb, you enter a great boreal forest, dominated by spruce and fir. One year, as if to remind us of the difference between the warm valleys and the harsh summits of the Taconic Mountains, we arrived on the summit to find 3 feet of snow. Our trail was hard packed by previous visitors, and we were always prepared for the wind and cold, so we took it lightly, but it was impressive to see the difference with the valleys, where we had yet to see snow.
Like many well-known mountains, Mount Greylock has the misfortune of having a motorable road to the summit. I suppose if you climbed it in summer you might find it full of motorists, but we never saw any in late November. However, this particular year, we heard a car making its way up the snowbound road as we sat sipping our hot chocolate in a wind-free spot in the lee of a building. Although the road was not plowed, it had been packed tight by traffic from four-wheel drive vehicles, but still, we were surprised to see a station wagon appearing in the parking lot. Because the 4-wheel drive tracks spread out in the parking lot, the snow was less packed in the lot, and as the station wagon drove into the parking lot, it sank deep into the snow, and the wheels began to spin.
Out of the wagon poured a big extended family of Indians, taking advantage of their holiday to see some of the famous sights of the state. They were dressed as people in the city might dress for a cool day in the late fall - leather jackets, street shoes, cotton socks. The wind and snow howled around them, and they clung to each other for warmth. Being foreigners, they did not know that New England mountaintop in late November was a thing to be treated with respect, fear, and heavy down parkas. Things did not look good. Fortunately, there were a few other hikers on the mountaintop, and together we were able to push the car back to the safety of the beaten track.
Being here in India, I sometimes feel like that Indian family must have felt - dazzled by the beauty of the country I am visiting, but struggling to understand the customs, culture, ways of life, and dangers. So far, my car has not gotten stuck in any snow drifts. I have now been here for over six months, and every day I've relied on the kindness of strangers and friends to show me the way. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for all the help I've been given, as I've made my way through this challenging experience of living and conducting research in a foreign country. I also feel tremendous gratitude for all of those back home in the US whose support has helped make it possible for me to undertake this wonderful adventure. I hope you all have a warm Thanksgiving, and I look forward to sharing many more with you!
Last night, thinking of friends and family far away, I opened up my copy of "Selected Poems" of Rabindranath Tagore (Translated by William Radice) to a page with this poem:
Flute-Music
Kinu the milkman’s alley.
A ground-floor room in a two-storeyed house,
Slap on the road, windows barred.
Decaying walls, crumbling to dust in places
Or stained with damp.
Stuck on the door,
A picture of Ganesa, Bringer of Success,
From the end of a bale of cloth.
Another creature apart from me lives in my room
For the same rent:
A lizard.
There’s one difference between him and me:
He doesn’t go hungry.
I get twenty-five rupees a month
As junior clerk in a trading office.
I’m fed at the Dattas’ house
For coaching their boy.
At dusk I go to Sealdah station,
Spend the evening there
To save the cost of light.
Engines chuffing,
Whistles shrieking,
Passengers scurrying,
Coolies Shouting.
I stay till half past ten,
Then back to my dark, silent, lonely room.
A village on the Dhalesvari river, that’s where my aunt’s people live.
Her brother-in-law’s daughter –
She was due to marry my unfortunate self, everything was fixed.
The moment was indeed auspicious for her, no doubt of that –
For I ran away.
The girl was saved from me,
And I from her.
She did not come to this room, but she’s in and out of my mind all the time:
Daca sari, vermilion on her forehead.
Pouring rain.
My tram costs go up,
But often as not my pay gets cut for lateness.
Along the alley,
Mango skins and stones, jack-fruit pulp,
Fish-gills, dead kittens
And God knows what other rubbish
Pile up and rot.
My umbrella is like my depleted pay –
Full of holes.
My sopping office clothes ooze.
Like a pious Vaisnava.
Monsoon darkness
Sticks in my damp room
Like an animal caught in a trap,
Lifeless and numb.
Day and night I feel strapped bodily
On to a half-dead world.
At the corner of the alley lives Kantababu
Long hair carefully parted,
Large eyes,
Cultivated tastes.
He fancies himself on the cornet:
The sound of it comes in gusts
On the foul breeze of the alley –
Sometimes in the middle of the night,
Sometimes in the early morning twilight,
Sometimes in the afternoon
When sun and shadows glitter.
Suddenly this evening
He starts to play runs in Sindhu-Baroya Rag
And the whole sky rings
With eternal pangs of separation.
At one the alley is a lie,
False and vile as the ravings of a drunkard,
And I feel that nothing distinguishes Haripada the clerk
From the Emperor Akbar
Torn umbella and royal parasol merge,
Rise on the sad music of a flute
Towards one heaven.
The music is true
Where in the everlasting twilight-hour of my wedding,
The Dhalesvari river flows,
Its banks deeply shaded by tamal-trees,
And she who waits in the courtyard
Is dressed in a Dacca sari, vermillion on her forehead.
Finally, here are some pictures of the beautiful gardens at the Centre for Economic and Social Studies in Hyderabad, where I am staying this week:
The building in the background is the old observatory of the Nizam of Hyderabad - the telescope is long gone, but the preserved campus is now a lovely place for me to spend Thanksgiving.
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