Happy Birthday Stars and Stripes

It's strange to remember a classic national holiday you grew up with when you are in a different country. It's like nostalgically remembering a good friend with whom you've lost touch - memories full of associations that spin into an intricate web of moments, emotions, images, smells, textures, and you are transported.

I just realized that today is July 4th - as far as vintage American celebrating goes, this ranks at the top, tying closely with Thanksgiving. But the Fourth of July has the added euphoria of summer vacation, the only time when the weather permits enjoying the requisite and trademark Bar-B-Que and beer, vanilla smoothies, kids running through sprinklers to cool off, garish parades, and of course, fireworks by the waterfront.

Well - here I am, in a little place called Malleswaram, a swirling enclave of activity revolving around vegetable markets, temples, idli-dosa joints - in which I couldn't be further removed from the long weekend of hot dogs and fries. I think about how I barely remembered this occasion even after seeing the date on my calendar. How our surroundings play such a huge part in shaping actions that we think are actually ours. How I completely forget what time of the year it is in another part of the world that I used to inhabit, where summers are glorious, precious, and short, and there are four distinct seasons. How I now think about the rains and speak about the "cool" weather that has set in. How engulfed we become in the activities of our communities, by choice or not, and how this becomes a norm. And as we move around from one community to another, we adopt another norm, and the previous one becomes a faded but dear photograph in the album of our life.

I should take a moment to note that the Fourth of July, for me personally, holds no special historical significance. I would hardly call myself patriotic - although I love my country for what it has given me. These are definitely hard times to speak of the United States in any foreign country - it is quite possibly the worst and most shameful period in the country's history. But, what it evokes in me is really much simpler; it is a syrupy sentimentality that comes with growing up with certain holidays, and being subconsciously trained by society to celebrate them in a certain way, thereby becoming attached to the idea of what it should be. It is conditioning.

I found myself feeling the same way last year in New York during Diwali. After having spent a few Diwali's in India, I was quite wistful, coming home from work during that late fall darkness that sets in post-4 pm and spending a quiet evening with my parents eating dinner and going to bed. Just another regular day, where on the other side of the world, people were buzzing in a frenzy of fireworks, eating fried delicacies, getting new clothes, and getting oil head-massages from their grandmothers (well, maybe that’s just my family).

Nostalgia seems to be a confused walk down memory lane; an attempt to hold on to a filtered-down image because subtler shades of lost emotions cannot be recollected – they can only be experienced at that time. But at the end of the day, what is life if not a sequentially woven collection of such impressions?