I did not plan to celebrate the Fourth of July this year. It isn't my holiday, technically. I've been in New York three years and I still feel like a guest at the party — welcome, but always slightly unsure where the bathroom is.
But my friend Devika texted me at noon: rooftop, Bushwick, bring something. So I took the L to Jefferson St, walked past the mural of the giant sleeping cat, and climbed five flights up a building that smelled like old paint and someone's dinner.
The rooftop was tar and folding chairs and a string of lights that only half worked. Somebody's aunty had sent up a foil tray of samosas, still warm, and I ate four before I even said hello to anyone. This is my personality now.
Here is the thing about the Fourth of July on a Bushwick rooftop. You don't get one clean firework show. You get maybe fifteen of them, all at once, from every direction — Queens over there, Manhattan glowing behind the water towers, some illegal ones going off in the street below that made us all flinch and laugh.
It reminded me of Diwali, honestly. Not the holiday, but the feeling. Chaos you don't control, light you didn't buy, everyone on their own roof doing their own thing but somehow together.
A guy named Marcus asked me what I was celebrating. I said I wasn't sure. He said, "Same. Mostly the samosas." Correct answer.
I stayed until the smoke cleared and the sky went back to its dull orange NYC glow, the one that never really turns black. Devika and I split the last samosa on the walk back to the L.
Some holidays you inherit. Some you just borrow for a night.
Love,