It was Thursday, November 22nd, and of course we wanted to have a Thanksgiving holiday and traditional feast. After receiving scores of e-mails asking us what we plan to do for Thanksgiving here in India, we decided to make an adventure out of it, taking photos all along the way and creating a blog post out of it.Our adventure began by walking down our street toward a corner where we usually see about half a dozen turkeys standing around some garbage. Just two houses down our street there is also usually a man doing some ironing on a cart. We saw him there, and so we took a photo of him as he didn't seem to mind.
Just a little further down the next block, you come to the Mulim butcher shop. This is a shop that is fairly well known to westerners in this part of town because this butcher also sells beef, whereas none of the other shops carry it. We still have not yet tried the beef here. In the photo of this "meat shop" you can see a cage out front, on the street, which contains a few rabbits and has a chicken sitting on top.This shop is not nearly as gruesome as the market down a few more streets. In that market you are confronted with the carcases of goats, pigs, and rabbits, stripped of skin and hanging from the ceiling. The goat heads are also for sale, sitting on the counter to tempt passerbys.
But our adventure for this Thanksgiving did not call for a turkey, and you will soon see why.
Another half a block down the street brought us to the corner that we have been promising 
ourselves we would photograph for some time. As luck would have it, the turkeys were present in full form. If they had not been there our back-up plan was to walk down by the canal where there are always a few standing around. But no need this time because they were right there waiting for us. There is some construction going on in the next lot, but this corner remains a real train wreck. The turkeys seem to enjoy this place due to the scraps of food they find in the rubbish piles.
ourselves we would photograph for some time. As luck would have it, the turkeys were present in full form. If they had not been there our back-up plan was to walk down by the canal where there are always a few standing around. But no need this time because they were right there waiting for us. There is some construction going on in the next lot, but this corner remains a real train wreck. The turkeys seem to enjoy this place due to the scraps of food they find in the rubbish piles.
I crossed the street and walked just beyond the garbage cans so that I could get a close-up of the turkeys. Here they are. Now you can see why we wanted something different this Thanksgiving. The close proximity of these turkeys to the cage with the bunnies in it just caused us to want to try an alternative of some kind. Heck, of ANY kind.
But wait, this was kind of nice after all. The handsome white turkey decided that he likes me and he came right close to me, making a cute little "whirring" sound as he bobbed his head. He was hoping for some food from me, but it was somewhat endearing nonetheless. Just after this a family of ducks came waddling across the street, also looking for handouts.
After enjoying this corner, we went back to Mission Street and headed to the center of town, aiming for the Fish Market. Oh, along the way we were feeling bold and so we decided to stop and 
take a photo of the Petit Canal. This is just a little canal that has a few families living in it. This is really a very nice and clean canal, as Indian canals go, but it will suffice just to give you an idea of what it can be like walking down the street here in an Indian city. Other canals in larger, nastier cities are just about one thousand times more disgusting than this one.
take a photo of the Petit Canal. This is just a little canal that has a few families living in it. This is really a very nice and clean canal, as Indian canals go, but it will suffice just to give you an idea of what it can be like walking down the street here in an Indian city. Other canals in larger, nastier cities are just about one thousand times more disgusting than this one.Just a few more blocks and we stopped at a wonderful, authentic Indian restaurant called Surguru. This place is an outpost of the Surguru Hotel, which is across town and is known as being the king of the South Indian Tali meal here in Pondicherry. A South Indian Tali meal is difficult to describe, but I'll try. You sit down and tell the waiter that yes, you will have a "meal". He smiles happily, and then brings a stainless steel try to you that has the bottom covered with fresh banana leaf. There are several (8 or 10) small stainless steel bowls inside the tray, each filled with a small amount of an amazingly tasty and tangy type of curry. There is no meat present, but you don't really miss it. Then a guy comes around and gives you a big pile of white rice right in the middle of the banana leaf. If you know what's good for you, you'll ask for a papadam and they will bring you a fresh one. Somehow everything gets really serious at this point and you kind of go numb in awe and taste overload. You come back to reality when you realize you need a drink and slam down 12 ounces of cold, fresh water, and then realize you ate too fast and your stomach hurts a bit. The ride is usually downhill from here, unless you have been wise enough to stop eating before you are too full. If you are western, you may decide to consume a chai tea at this point (the Indians wait until 4:00 PM), and then you learn a new level of "carb coma" that you have not yet experienced, even with several dozen business lunches at awful Chinese places in America under your belt. This time, however, we only had one big dosa to share and so we managed to keep our lunch small so that we still felt great and were able to save our appetites for dinner. But while we were at Surguru we bought two curry dishes and took them to-go, intending to "cheat" in our preparation of our Thanksgiving feast. We selected a paneer butter masala (called makhani many places in India) and also a navratan korma. If you don't know what these are, go to an Indian restaurant and ask for them. If you are like me, you'll get angry when you taste them, wondering why everyone has kept this from you for all these years.
We made it to the fish market after our small lunch. The f
ish market really deserves a blog post all of its own. The last time I was there I saw three huge marlin get delivered to the market on the back of a bicycle rickshaw. I watched as the guys dragged the huge fish into the market. I managed to snap a quick photo of them dragging the biggest one, and you can sort of get a feel for the fish market by checking out this photo.
ish market really deserves a blog post all of its own. The last time I was there I saw three huge marlin get delivered to the market on the back of a bicycle rickshaw. I watched as the guys dragged the huge fish into the market. I managed to snap a quick photo of them dragging the biggest one, and you can sort of get a feel for the fish market by checking out this photo.My intention was to purchase a huge cross-section of marlin, maybe 5 or 10 pounds of fish. I just love the red, translucent meat of marlin - you can do lots of different things when preparing it and they all come out tasting wonderful. But there were no marlin today. T
here were also no mahi mahi. There was one tuna, but it looked like a kind of tuna that is a little off the beaten path, so we chose a nice, large kingfish. This fish is called a king mackerel in the USA, and here they call it a kungadunbadumbadagingka, or something like that. The meat is white and quite light, but you can't cook it too long or you will dry it out. It's not an oily fish at all, and is not very "fishy" tasting. Leave king mackerel on the grill too long and it will shred when you try to lift it off. But we have no grill (nor oven) here in India, so I have to get jiggy with the frying pan and the lid of the frying pan to simulate a grill. I'm quite good at it now.
here were also no mahi mahi. There was one tuna, but it looked like a kind of tuna that is a little off the beaten path, so we chose a nice, large kingfish. This fish is called a king mackerel in the USA, and here they call it a kungadunbadumbadagingka, or something like that. The meat is white and quite light, but you can't cook it too long or you will dry it out. It's not an oily fish at all, and is not very "fishy" tasting. Leave king mackerel on the grill too long and it will shred when you try to lift it off. But we have no grill (nor oven) here in India, so I have to get jiggy with the frying pan and the lid of the frying pan to simulate a grill. I'm quite good at it now.Here you can see the kingfish that we bought. It was about 8 pounds, and I was able to obtain it for 450 rupees. That's about $11 USD. That, I'm certain, was the foreigner price. I tried very hard to get the price down, but the ladies knew they had the best fish in the market that day, and they knew that I knew that too. I have bought fish from them before and I'm more interested in cultivating the relationship than saving a buck, so I gave them their price with a smile and a wink so that next time they will remember me and pull out the freshest fish they have. Just like I have learned in the software industry, when you can't get the price any lower, go for quality and convenience!
The ladies also wanted to see the king mackerel held up next to our son, Marlon. They tweaked his cheek and thought it was the funniest thing that the fish was over half his size. If they could only see him next to the 26 pound salmon that he and I caught this past summer, they'd get a kick out of that.
Finally all our preparations were done, and it was still only 2:00 PM. So we headed over to a restaurant/cafe run by our landlord and had an iced coffee. Iced coffee? Wait, I heard that it snowed in Rochester on Thanksgiving. And how was the weather here in Pondy? It was just like the day before - 85 and sunny!
For our Thanksgiving feast, we cooked up the fish as boneless fillets and brazed them with a sugar/cardomon/vinegar/pepper sauce. Then we added the two curry dishes and some basmati rice. Oh, can't forget the fresh "today eat" pineapples that we bought at the fruit market, right next door to the fish market. All together we had a meal to remember and one that was easy to give thanks for! We heard about the cold and snow back in the USA and we missed the turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc., but we didn't miss the cold, damp, gray skies and the thought of "black Friday" soon approaching. We went in search of a Thanksgiving feast, and we found one.
