Looking around the table, or rather the room (Indian Thanksgiving is rarely a sit-down-say-what-you-are-thankful-for kind of event) - it felt reassuring to see all the faces who where there in the years BC. It's become a habit. Every gathering I go to now, I automatically scan the room and mentally tally the losses of the past two years. THe missing faces, a grim reminder of a world at a standstill, silenced and paralyzed in place by fear - broken only by the sounds of ambulances ferrying the sick.

The din of kids, the laughter from conversations between groups of cousins, the aunts and uncles reminishing of old times, the snippets of gossip about some common acquaintance, a big dog begging for scraps, a turkey-green-beans-gravy-mashed potato traditional menu vying for space with the lamb chops, spicy wings, curry puffs and shrimp biriyani, and a bar that could rival that on any hotel - felt so comfortingly familiar and yet- so extraordinary.

Amidst the news of the new Covid strain and stumbling markets we partied like the characters in Poe's The Masque of Red Death - trying hard to shut out the outside world.