America at 250: Fireworks and fault lines
Casie, a co-worker, catches hold of me in the hallway. “So, where will you go to see the fireworks?” Fireworks? My mind goes blank for
Casie, a co-worker, catches hold of me in the hallway. “So, where will you go to see the fireworks?” Fireworks? My mind goes blank for a moment. “Oh, I mean the July 4 fireworks,” she says, reading the unsure look in my eyes. “Have you made any plans yet? This time will be special. It’s the 250th year.” I have been in the U.S. for exactly one year after spending close to two decades in Sweden. I am still discovering American traditions, and in this first year, I have realised that many of us outside America think we know the country better than we actually do. Its music, movies, technology, universities, wars, presidents and slogans have travelled so widely that America often feels familiar before one has lived in it. Yet, familiarity is not the same as understanding. The Fourth of July was one such ritual for me. I knew it from films: flags, fireworks, barbecues and marching bands. But as America marks 250 years of independence, I want to understand what the day means to those who live here, those who were born into its story, those who arrived later and made it home, and those who live between more than one country. What emerges is that July 4 is not a simple celebration. It has evolved into something more layered: gratitude mixed with anxiety, belonging mixed with caution, pride mixed with embarrassment, and a dream that is still alive but no longer unquestioned. A changing vocabulary To understand this changing narrative, I first reach out to Shylashree Edalur, a physician who moved from India to the U.S. in her 20s and has lived in Texas for nearly three decades. America is where her life was built from the bottom up. “America has been home for me since the age of 24,” she tells me. “I had my children here. They are American citizens.” Her story carries the older Indian imagination of America: the country where education, hard work and professional ambition could move a family from one class position to another. “From my middle-class status, where I am the first physician in my family, and my husband is too, in his family, America has really proven to us that by hard work you can make your dreams come true,” she says. “For me, the American dream is a reality.” That statement would have resonated with generations of Indians who looked at America as the world’s greatest meritocracy: the destination for higher education, the place of innovation, Silicon Valley and Wall Street, where one could arrive with little more than a degree and ambition, and build a life that may not have been possible elsewhere. The numbers show why the belief has endured. “From my middle-class status, where I am the first physician in my family, and my husband is too, in his family, America has really proven to us that by hard work you can make your dreams come true. For me, the American dream is a reality.”Shylashree EdalurPhysician According to Pew Research Center, Indian Americans now number about 5.2 million in the U.S. and are the country’s second-largest Asian-origin group. In 2023, households headed by Indian Americans had a higher median annual income compared to U.S. households, overall. I thought back to my graduating batch of 2004 from IIT Delhi.
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