Smells Like Masala

It’s hard to imagine a place further away from the land of root beer, apple pie and hot dogs, but Tristan and I were determined this fourth of July to celebrate in style.

This being said, we set out early on an odyssey to buy all things American, and some stuff to blow up.

On our way to Dharmshala we made a stop in McLeod for a soda and happened upon a true gem, an expired can of Budweiser. The red white and blue label called to us from the bottom of a cooler and heeding its siren’s call we shelled out the $3 US for one can.

The pictures alone may be worth the price. We tasted the sweet, skunky golden waters of St Louis, MO and savored every bit before offering the can up to the Indian countryside.

Verily, a taste of home.

Later, after an exhaustive search of the city we found what may be Dharamshala’s only cache of fireworks.

At our wits end, we asked the proprietor of the very last store we came to on the road back to McLeod if he knew where we could buy fireworks.

His reply was simply, “Yes, come in.”

Thinking he didn’t understand us, or may be joking, “No, fireworks, fire works, you have them?”

Indeed he did.

Handing over Rp.120 ($2.50ish) for each of six tubes of questionable explosive strength we headed out to find some kitsch.

I’m fairly confident we bought Dharamshala clean out of American flag bandanas.

They had fifty stars and we’ll ignore the number of stripes (25) but they nearly screamed our one-day nationalist fervor and they were ours.

Heading back we picked up a bottle of whiskey, had some apple pie with ice cream, couldn’t find any root beer and invited our new Israeli friends to an Independence Day party on the roof of our guest house.

As darkness fell our bottle of Pioneer whiskey became lighter and our excitement mounted. This was our first run-in with Indian fireworks, and quite a run-in it was.

Not sure whether to expect the shimmering disappointment of a fountain of sparks, or the exhilaration of some sort of pyrotechnic accident, we lit the first of the fireworks and it was glorious.

Shooting into the sky, tailed by a cascade of golden fire our rocket leapt from its cardboard home. Exploding with the dazzle and noise of a professional firework the blossom of light filling the sky left me speechless.

Well, nearly speechless, I was able to mumble a string of excited expletives in between chortles of amazed laughter.

As the last of our explosions faded from the sky our neighbor, Russel launched into a particularly rousing rendition of “God Bless America.”

Here’s a sample of his singing from one of the daily jams at our guest house:

Russel Jamming

Ultimately, we had a mixed bag of nationalities show up to  rather subdued, but fun party in honor of the birth of a country on the other side of the world.