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For this student newly arrived from India, Thanksgiving came to feel like home
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/11/23/503170309/how-a-student-from-india-fell-in-love-with-thanksgivingFor this student newly arrived from India, Thanksgiving came to feel like home
UPDATED NOVEMBER 21, 2023 9:46 AM ET
By Rhitu Chatterjee
Editor's note: This story was originally published in November 2022 and has been updated.
I celebrated my first Thanksgiving in 2002. I'd arrived in the United States in August of that year to start graduate school at the University of Missouri, Columbia. A few months later, I was invited to my first Thanksgiving dinner at a house shared by two Indians, one American, two New Zealanders and their sweet black Labrador, named Willow.
There was no turkey. The couple from New Zealand — the cooks in the house — were vegan, so they made tofurky and lots of vegetables. It was a delicious meal. We stuffed ourselves, shared stories, laughed a lot and eventually faded into a food coma.
I fell in love with the holiday right away. How could I not? I was so far from home and my family in India. Just a few months into my stay in America, I was struggling to understand American friendliness — everyone was quick to smile, say hello and joke around, but there were barriers to getting closer to people. Invitations to people's homes — a deep part of the culture back home in India — weren't common. There were invisible but strict boundaries to friendships that I was just starting to decipher.
I'd been missing my family terribly and was homesick. But over that first Thanksgiving meal, I forgot my homesickness. This coming together of a random group of people from different backgrounds and different corners of the globe, all away from their own families, momentarily cured my longings for home. I suddenly felt as if I belonged.
[...]
UPDATED NOVEMBER 21, 2023 9:46 AM ET
By Rhitu Chatterjee
Editor's note: This story was originally published in November 2022 and has been updated.
I celebrated my first Thanksgiving in 2002. I'd arrived in the United States in August of that year to start graduate school at the University of Missouri, Columbia. A few months later, I was invited to my first Thanksgiving dinner at a house shared by two Indians, one American, two New Zealanders and their sweet black Labrador, named Willow.
There was no turkey. The couple from New Zealand — the cooks in the house — were vegan, so they made tofurky and lots of vegetables. It was a delicious meal. We stuffed ourselves, shared stories, laughed a lot and eventually faded into a food coma.
I fell in love with the holiday right away. How could I not? I was so far from home and my family in India. Just a few months into my stay in America, I was struggling to understand American friendliness — everyone was quick to smile, say hello and joke around, but there were barriers to getting closer to people. Invitations to people's homes — a deep part of the culture back home in India — weren't common. There were invisible but strict boundaries to friendships that I was just starting to decipher.
I'd been missing my family terribly and was homesick. But over that first Thanksgiving meal, I forgot my homesickness. This coming together of a random group of people from different backgrounds and different corners of the globe, all away from their own families, momentarily cured my longings for home. I suddenly felt as if I belonged.
[...]
