For one, the sky was grey and overcast and it was drizzling all day long. Everything was covered in a grey mist. Once again our street looked like it was perched up on the mountains as it always does during and after rainfalls. However yesterday this was a bit of a problem because fireworks are a very big part of the Independence Day celebrations. While some people were not thwarted by the time nightfall came and went ahead with the sparklers and sprinklers - the big fireworks dispaly most likely did not go through. I've been wondering for the whole day today what they are going to do with all the fireworks.
The second thing is that I was rather grouchy and restive from the morning. I'm not so sure why but I know that I was missing home for some reason. And if I weren't really missing anything - I was indeed "seeing" these incessant images billowing through my head. I kept seeing the Oxford and the Landmark bookstores and the roads in front of them where I'd spent inordinate amounts of time during my last couple of years in Calcutta University. I could see the the times that I'd spent at these places on drizzling afternoons and early evenings when for some hours I'd forget everything else. I was reminded of my solitary outings to Nandan for movie watchings. I kept seeing the tea shop, "Dolly's" in Dakshinapan in my head. Dolly's, which had been my cubby hole for a decade and where I'd met more than a couple of people (Ria, Saron, Putul, Ratna di, Mili di, Anita di, Lily di) - some of whom went on to become very good friends, and then of course there was the image of the indomitable and formidable (in the "Poirotan" sense) Dolly di herself. I missed some other places and some people but my self-admonishing did no good. The thing is a part of me knew that the other part of me was not being reasonable in missing most of the things that it was missing. To which the part that seemed to be missing certain things replied, "I'm not missing anything. I'm not missing anything. I'm just reminded of these different things..." "And you shouldn't be missing anything. All the while that you were wandering around those bookshops you kept thinking about the day that you could be walking around a library and picking out books without anyone following you around!"
I never miss home and I certainly never miss Calcutta, and I never miss the days long gone by. The best thing that I can say about olden days is that they are old, dead, and buried. There are very few memories that I like to glance over and fewer still that I really cherish. So I always scold myself when I feel any sort of home-related pangs, even minor ones. I love the place where I currently live, and I don't intend to ever leave this country for good unless I have to (which may well happen in a year's time but I'll not go quietly), and so personally, I think it's rather stupid to get all teary-eyed or homesick when it comes to anything related to India. I am quite non-sentimental about my country and what I feel about it at the micro level and at the macro level would most likely not please anyone.
I know of some people who do get all prettily nostalgic about home. They sigh and lament as though they were being held in the United States, forced to live here like prison inmates, much against their will. They talk about missing the vibrant life and the earthy living, which is so characteristic of India. Some complain that the United States is sterile and antiseptic. They sigh and gush and wish they could just go back home where everything is so much better. Such emotions and more of the same remind me of those icky and bad stories by Jhumpa Lahiri in her Maladies of an Interpreter (that's what I call the book) and some other ickier stories written by some other Indian immigrants (Chitra Banerji Devakaruni and Anita Desai's daughter come to mind) who miss India with unbearable longing and desire. My point is if you miss being in India that much and that badly - then by all means please go back. Don't prattle, preen and prance about it, and write sob stories about that apparently non-negotiable desire and the fragmented identity. Gah, is all I can say. Although these novels and short stories collections based on themes of dislocation and longing have all made it big and are all mega hits.
The opposite is no better. Bengalis will have their Bongo-samitis. I have heard that that these samitis happen in a bigger way in large cities but this University town also boasts of its own Amra Bangali club. Now the first year I was here I actually went to one of the gatherings (I swear I went only for the food). And what do you see? Pompous, fat bengali men and women who think they are the cat's whiskers because they have immigrated to the United States and brought with them all their incorrigible cultural habits while developing no commendable ones. I vaguely remember why I was terribly amused and annoyed with the people who had organized this Amra Bangali meet and I left before any of the goodies were served. There was some name dropping - that I do remember. And I also remember that it felt as though I were at the para pujo with nosy kakimas and jethimas and pompous jethus, and I didn't see any reason to stay for another second. Now some people may like to be reminded of (and may even get tearily nostalgic for) those long-gone days with the neighbourhood aunts and uncles breathing down their necks even when living ten blocks away - for me it was a little short of a nightmare, although I must say that it was rather amusing if even a slightly demented form of amusement for the first 7 minutes or so.
For the first two years or so that I was here, I adamantly refused to interact with any Indians leave alone a bengali apart from one bengali girl, and only because I had known her earlier. I wouldn't have talked with more than 99 % of these Indian university students if I had been living in India - I didn't see any reason to hold their hands just because I was 10,000 miles away from home. When I did start making Indian friends - they were friends because I liked them - not because they were Indian.
But as luck would have it - yesterday I did end up missing some bits and pieces from back home. Some bits I do miss every day but I haven't missed Park Street and Lord Sinha Road in a very long time, and so it was curious to miss these things and some others on the 4th of July of all days. "I keep telling you that I didn't miss anything. Those places kept invading my head. I missed not a thing!"
Independence Day in the United States is celebrated with parades, barbeques, songs, and overall it's a day for eating and spending time with family and friends. It's also as I mentioned a grand day for fireworks. In Washington I hear they have lovely parades, and I know that any military base camp can fire one shot for each of the 50 states on Independence Day. These I have never viewed for myself.
Yesterday inspite of the grey weather and my own glumpiness - some of us got together. Alicia, Ian, Beth, Pablo, Namrata, Saptarshi, Guha and myself got together for a barbeque and we ate, chatted and drank and had a nice time. There were different salads including pasta salad, macaroni salad, potato salad, coleslaw along with corn on the cob, cheese and crackers, chips and salsa. There were vegetarian burgers and hotdogs, and paneer tikkas for the vegetarians, and great big juicy hamburgers, humongous polish pork sausages with stuffing, regular hotdogs and fish tandoori for the meat eaters. There were grapes, watermelon, blueberry crumble, cookies and ice-cream for dessert. There was also a fair bit of beer on the side. I had almost finished a good bit of the fish tandoori while standing in one corner when the others had been pecking at the chips and downing their beer and chatting around the kitchen table, and for the main meal I had bits of the different salads and had a great big polish sausage, which reminded me yet again why I can't be a vegetarian for good. I also had four pieces of the blueberry crumble, which Beth had made, and I would have had more if my tummy could have taken another bite. It was a good gathering yesterday evening inspite of the grey drizzles.
We went out for a walk later on in the evening and spotted some fireworks here and there. I was also reminded of the time very many years ago when I'd done something utterly naughty and had gotten scolded for it but hadn't minded even though I'd felt rather sheepish. Many years ago I had put a couple of chocolate bombs under half a coconut shell, lit the wick, and had jumped the highest at the resultant explosion. One of my friends insisted for the entire evening that she couldn't hear right with one of her ears. Now of course I'm too old to be pulling pranks of a similar sort. Alicia had some sparklers, and some rocket-looking fireworks which apparently didn't need to be put into a bottle but needed to be "planted" into the ground. Guha and I wondered how the rocket would launch itself into the air since it was being "planted" into the ground. Namrata hollered from the background, "Rockets are very dangerous. They attack people. I know of a boy who was killed because a rocket went straight through his neck." Ian said that we weren't supposed to plant the rocket into the ground but put it inside a bottle (that sounded familiar). Alicia scolded me for trying to peel off the paper cover. Guha was worried that the rockets would hit the power lines overhead. Saptarshi and Pablo were merrily playing with some blazing pink sparklers. I was thinking of coconut shells and chocolate bombs. I lit the "rockets" after planting them in the ground with Guha poking them in for good measure, and they turned out to be more like very vibrant tubris. So there was nothing to worry about. But right till the end I honestly expected the rockets to go flying into the sky.
At some point we were talking about the U.S constitution and when that was framed and when it was adopted. The Articles of Confederation was put into effect in 1781, which was signed by the original 13 states. However over the years, a confederation was seen as lacking in some important respects. For one thing, there was no centralized government to provide some overarching unity of purpose. Secondly, there was (therefore?) a lack of standardized laws and additionally there were no regulated means of raising funds for common purposes. Even a standardized coinage system did not exist. It was to address these and other issues that Congress met in early 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation. And it was on the 17th of September, 1787, 11 years post independence that the U.S constitution was formally adopted. We did crack some jokes about the length of time in between The Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Constitution by the 13 original states (Rhode Island, the last of the thriteen, ratified the constitution not until 1790) - but it seemed not that long considering that it is afterall a grand constitution. Piddly-plunking a dissertation these days takes some students close to a decade if they are not careful while some are able to waltz out with one in two years flat.
Some time during the course of the eve' Beth said that it was quite funny to think that out of all of us who had gathered together for the July 4th celebration there was only one American. Well there were two. Alicia and Beth. The rest of us were Indians, Eucadorians or Canadians. And the Indians outnumbered the rest as we almost always end up doing.
Now this post must be concluded. Some other day I'll talk some more.
Take care...
