Thanksgiving Adventure 2006

Here's my Thanksgiving-in-India story. It's about my search for a turkey.

We, that's Srini our driver and me, went straight to Russel Market, the big market in an area called Shivaji Nagar. There, past the colourful flower and fruit and vegetable vendors, through the mutton-hall and next to the fish stalls outside were the chicken stalls. So far so good.






But they didn't have turkey, so they showed us down a small alley, immediately next to the big Beef Market. Now, note that Srini is quite devoutly Hindu and strictly vegetarian -- and cows are holy in India. But he was being a great sport about it all, and he was the one leading/translating so I figured it was ok ..... But that beef market was pretty hairy. Imagine a huge, slightly decrepit building, encircled by vulture type birds, emitting a strong beef stench, and butchers walking around who I SWEAR only have one change of clothing (including their butcher apron), uggghhh. Slight glimpses through the glass-less windows revealed entire cows hanging from hooks. Not so pleasant. ANYWAY, so down the alleyway we go, passing chicken and mutton stalls after stalls (these stalls basically have the live animals in little cages, with just a number of skinned animals on hooks). The last stall apparently had turkey. A fragrant 5 minutes later during which I had to duck a number of times to avoid the crows/vultures from swooping right at me, the guy comes around with a turkey in his arms. Live, of course.

"Male, is ok?" he says.
"Ahhh, I don't care. But it looks a bit big. I need a small one. My oven is small. 3-4 kgs. max."
"Let's see ..... (poor bird is placed on a mechanical scale, facing those chickens in their cages) this one is 6.5kgs." "Madam, the females are smaller."
"Oh .... ok, I guess."

Another 5 minutes later, it turns out I'd have to buy the pair. That's kinda strange. In any case, a good excuse for me to NOT buy any turkey at all. Phyew. But I'm not out of trouble yet.

"Well, how about duck then?"
"Sure," I say. Game for anything at this stage, I guess.

This time they lead me back up the alleyway. The very first shop happens to be a pet shop. There are plenty of ducks here! Oh no ...... I see that's where they got the turkeys too -- no wonder I could only buy a pair! The ducks looked really cute. How could I possible buy a duck PET and cook it for Thanksgiving? A duck is a duck, it shouldn't really matter whether it's meant as a pet or not. Regardless, there was no way I could buy it. Absolutely no way. But since we'd gotten this far, Srini said I'd have to at least offer the pet shop owner a price. Oh my goodness. There is NO way I was going to buy that turkey OR the duck, or any of the puppies and kittens and parrots, etc. Ok, what's a non-embarrassing but still ridiculously low price? Don't know -- I guess the price of 3 chickens (meat-type). FORTUNATELY, that was way too low. And his asking price was DEFINITELY a pet price. So I DID get out of that with a miniscule amount of dignity left (or so I thought, anyway).

But the story doesn't end there. I continued my pursuit, this time at one of the reputed butchers in town. I called on my mobile phone and asked:
"Do you have turkey"
"Let me check". Strange, wouldn't you know what meat you have or not? Anyway....
"Ahhh, no turkey. But we do have crane."
"Huh? Crane? You mean people buy crane? Ok, each to their own. Thanks anyway." Click.

I look at Srini, our driver, and ask whether he's ever heard of people eating cranes. His reply was "No, but I'm vegetarian so ...." . Oh yeah, he thinks we're crazy for eating any kind of bird. But I wouldn't give up. The next day, after really giving up on the turkey idea (our oven would have been too small anyway), I decided on duck for our Thanksgiving meal. So I call that butcher again.

"Hi, do you have duck",
"Let me check". Again I think it's strange that he doesn't know ...
"YES! we do have duck!"
"Oh great, and it's fresh right? Not frozen?"
"Huh? .... yes, yes", he says
"So it's about 3 kgs. or so?"
"Yes, actually about 3.5kgs."
"Ok, sounds great. And it's fresh, right? It's thawed?"
"Yes, madam, it's bronze. We also have swans, and cranes. Best quality bronze."
"............ (smile creeping in) oh, bronze! Well wonderful. Good then. Thank you!"

I'd been calling the antiques dealer, not the butcher. Good, ey?

In the end, on Thanksgiving day, I just bought a good ol' chicken from the butcher down the road from our house. Easy as. And he would have had a turkey too, except that it was still frozen hard.



P.S. Check out my Christmas letter at http://www.christmas2006-tiki@blogspot.com/ too!