Turkey and potato raita: A vegetarian Dallas household's Thanksgiving story

The spread reflected aspirations. On the dining table, dishes married Hallmark and Karnataka: green bean palya, sweet potato raita

My father’s sense of America came from the John Wayne movies he watched as a young man in India. He loved the blank highways of the West Coast. An application sent on a whim from Chennai got him acceptance to a graduate program at U.C.L.A. and eventually a Ph.D in operations management, a new behavioral science in the 1970s that drew restless types from across the world. Physical openness suited his view of his second country.

We did all the American scenes big, but especially Thanksgiving. There can’t be many families of any race or creed as invested in the holiday