We Indians sure know how to work. We can write code till we drop dead, pump gas all night long at a deserted gas station, and study medicine while doing a side degree in engineering.

But do we know how to play?

Summer is coming – three glorious months of sunshine, greenery and utmost promise. Will we be so involved in work that the days pass by in a blur or are we going to be basking in the momentary pleasures they offer? Vacation seems to be that All American Dream, but most Indian immigrants, even after having lived here for decades, have never really taken to the idea of goofing off. However, a few have begun to embrace its promise wholeheartedly. And of course, the American-born children of these immigrants believe in vacations as a God-given right!

Flash back to your childhood, and you see everything through summer’s golden haze, the drone of bees, the endless, languid days stretching before one like a gift. This writer recalls the sheer over-abundance of the Indian summer, the mad growth of foliage.

Driving up to Mussoorie, we’d stop in the litchi orchards of Dehra Dun, buying crate loads of cloyingly sweet litchis encased in their prickly red skins to eat on the way up; at other orchards there would be choosa mangoes, whose juicy pulp could be sucked right into the mouth by tearing a hole in its skin. And of course the jamuns, those delicious purple berries that stained tongues and clothes and hands.

There was a languor, a sense of immortality, a conviction that each day was forever. You didn’t do much and yet the day was full: a walk around Camel’s Back, a spicy snack at a small storefront on Main Street, skating at the rink, or simply reading a worn, dog-eared copy of Gone With the Wind from the local library, while comfortably ensconced on a window ledge of the cottage on a drizzly day.

In those days you owned time — and now time owns you.

Ask Indians what they are doing during summer and you get a complex to-do list worthy of a major business marathon. Filmmaker and entrepreneur Harish Saluja of Pittsburgh, Penn, is a frenetic multi-tasker, and certainly can’t stop when it comes to summer.

“I am going to India to do location scouting for my next film Chasing Windmills and also to continue casting it,” he says. “I’m finishing the paintings for my solo art show in a gallery in Santa Fe later this year, and am preparing for the first Asian American Film Festival of Pittsburgh that I have launched.”
He’s also publishing Housecalls magazine, arranging for some high-profile events for TiE Pittsburgh, of which he is the executive director, preparing two courses he will be teaching in the fall at Carnegie Mellon University’s Arts and Entertainment Management College and co-hosting his weekly radio program, “Music From India.”

“ In essence, the usual relaxed summer!” he jokes.

One almost feels like telling him to conduct a brain surgery too while he’s about it! Yes, walking to nowhere or reading tattered books won’t fit into this super-busy summer, but that’s the way Saluja likes it, with his fingers in a whole lot of different projects.

While America may be a nation of devoted sun worshippers who live for the magic of summer, to most NRIs who grew up in India summer was nothing to rave about. After all, in India the choice was mostly between hot, hotter and hottest, with annual newspaper headlines about people succumbing to the 100-degree temperatures.
The goal was to hide from summer!

When families journeyed up to the hills of Mussoorie or Simla for two months, it was basically to get away, to run away from the fierce embrace of summer in cities like Delhi and Chandigarh. So in India, summer had no cache – it was the time to stay indoors in air-conditioning or close to the whirring fan, venturing out just to the cinema, where you were assured of ‘time-pass’ and heavenly cool temperatures.

America, however, has a centuries old love affair with summer. With its very defined seasons and its long, hard winter, there is a much greater appreciation of the possibilities of summer. It’s all about baseball, the beach, picnics in the park, cookouts and the time-honored family trip to national parks and other holiday resorts.

While children in India are urged by their parents not to play in the sun and ruin their complexions, Americans try their darnest to acquire that Indian golden glow in tanning salons and the beaches during summer.

So how do Indians who have settled down in America treat summer? Certainly with a lot more respect – a few of those freezing winters can certainly turn one into an ardent sun worshipper!

Having lived in America, NRIs gradually adapt to the rituals of summer such as heading out for Home Depot Country.

Home improvements are a big part of summer, and Indian-Americans too get into the do-it-yourself mode. Landscaping is a multimillion-dollar industry, and as Indian families improve their homes and gardens, they often add an Indian touch, using Indian plants and flowers such as raat ki rani or chameli, or planting Indian veggies in their backyard.

For many Indians, summer is also wedding time. In India, December is the favorite month for nuptials, but in America hotels and wedding halls in the summer are booked a year in advance because this is the time overseas guests also can take advantage of the benign weather. With hundreds of summer weddings planned, we certainly know how wedding planners, DJs, photographers and caterers spend their summers!

While Indians have taken to the American notions of vacation travel and cookouts, sometimes they add their own desi touch to it. A handful of travel agencies organize group travel to different parts of the world where Indian vegetarian food is part of the offering. There are also cruises such as A Spicy Vacation run by Maharaja Vacations, which is based in Chicago. These cruises in conjunction with Carnival Cruise Lines, give the travelers everything from idli dosa to palak paneer and masala chaat even as they laze on the deck of the ship headed out to Mexico, Bahamas, Jamaica or Alaska.

Interestingly enough, even the entertainment on board is desi-inspired, with a Mumbai Masti dance party on the deck, Disco Dandia, Garba Raas and ‘Saris and Sherwanis’, a social evening. The very idea of going away, of travel is to experience something new and different, but many Indians enjoy things more when they are desi-fied!

Even when it comes to the all-American cookouts, Indians want their spice! The tandoori cuisine fits well with outdoor grills, so kababs and chicken legs a la tandoori take their place along with hot dogs, burgers and steak. Some enterprising vegetarians also grill tofu hot dogs and veggie burgers on the grill. For Lavina and Mike Aswani of New Jersey, summer isn’t over till they host their huge barbeque party for about a hundred people on Labor Day. As the younger crowd plays ball, the adults go on a talking and eating marathon, with all these delicacies from the grill as well as Indian street foods and sweets like kulfi falooda.

And if Americans and second generation Indians have a passion for baseball, summer is cricket season for Indian immigrants. Hundreds of cricket clubs across America come alive in summer, drawing players and fans of South Asian origin as well as from the West Indies.

“It’s a totally summer activity,” says Atul Huckoo, the president of the Edison Cricket Club in New Jersey, which has about 30 members. “It starts in April and ends by late September. Some of the families do come to watch, so it becomes a family event too.” The club is part of The New Jersey Cricket League, which has 32 member clubs, each with about 30 members.

There is clearly a generational divide in sports: the members of the cricket clubs are 80-90 percent first generation while their children are all into baseball and other American sports. Huckoo’s 14-year-old daughter Abha plays softball and basketball, but watches both baseball and international cricket matches. The cricket aficionados are now trying to get cricket introduced into local schools.

There are as many versions of summer as there are people. Some like to celebrate the sea and the sun, preferring their summers in slow motion, almost held on pause. Sukanya Rahman, the noted dancer and artist, lives in Orr’s Island, a sleepy fishing hamlet in Maine and rarely stirs from it. The still waters and fishing boats off the coast are beautiful. She likes to paint and write during the summer, and play with her visiting grandchildren.

The daughter of the celebrated dancer Indrani Rahman, Sukanya has just written a fascinating memoir, Dancing in the Family about the experience of growing up in a family of passionate performers. As a child, she saw her grandmother, the dancer Ragini Devi, and her mother Indrani totally caught up in dance. Summer was just an extension of dance rehearsals, of performers dropping in or of endless performances.

“I don’t remember having a summer vacation as a child,” says Sukanya. “My parents never took a vacation. All my traveling was done on my mother’s tours.” Even her short three-week summer vacation from boarding school was dedicated to dance classes.

Time is at a premium during summer even for children who are just as over-scheduled as their busy parents, with sports activities, play dates, classes and summer camp. There are extra credits to be earned, remedial or accelerated learning to be addressed. High school kids and college students often venture out on their own to new destinations with friends, gaining new experiences.

For American youth, summer has traditionally been a time to chill out, take trips away from family and experiment with summer jobs. While many Indian-Americans do that, watching summer movies at the Cineplex, wandering the malls and catching up on their summer reading on the beach, others like Akash Gupta, a 7th grader from Chaboya Middle School in San Jose, have weightier things on their mind – like participating in the Primary Mathematics World Contest in Hong Kong during July.

Yes, for Indian-Americans it’s hard to give up goals, even if the ocean, the seagulls and the beach are calling. Ask Anjali Dalal, an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, about her summer plan and she laughs, “Proactive Ivy League students should responsibly say ‘Summer is the chance to get ahead’, I guess! Everyone compares their summer internships so that’s what it boils down to.”

Last summer most of her friends did business internships with banks in New York while Dalal interned at a start up company in the music industry and also moonlighted at a restaurant. All of them saw these stints working in the city as a step in their future careers.

She adds: “When you have free time, no one wants to waste it, You do what you want with it. For a lot of kids in schools like the Wharton, it’s very competitive. Everyone wants to get where they want to be and they are willing to work for it. Others study abroad while kids in pre-med spend their summers in the lab! These are type A students, very goal oriented. They don’t want to lose sight of where they want to be, which is a good thing – or a bad thing – depending on how you want to look at it.”

This summer will find Dalal not at the beach, but in Washington DC where she is doing research at the World Bank. Doesn’t she do any summer fun things at all? She laughs merrily, “I like to think my life is pretty fun! I’m very excited about the work, which is my own research, and it allows me to travel as well. So I’m getting to do a bunch of things and in a context that’s stimulating as well.”

For many Indian parents, summer is the time to get their kids acquainted with their religion and culture. Increasingly that has involved adapting spirituality to the fun American concept of camping.
In Rochester, NY, about 150 boys and girls, ages 8 to 16, will be converging on the Indian Community Center for a Hindu Heritage Camp on 22 acres of land overlooking lush farms and woodlands.

Outdoor games, swimming, arts and crafts classes are interspersed with yoga, music, dance, philosophy, puja, chanting and culture classes, according to Padmanab Kamath, camp director. Last year children from 17 states enrolled for the camp.

For Sumati Jain, 19, of Shreveport, La, summer is intricately connected with the camp. Although Shreveport is the third largest city in Louisiana with a sizable Indian population, her 1,200 student high school has only ten Indian students. So Hindu summer camp was a definite eye-opener for her.
“It was the first time I had seen so many Indian children in one place at one time,” says Jain, who was born in Shreveport. “There were so many people I could connect with, who were experiencing growing up as an Indian in America, just as I was.”

Jain, who has just finished her first year at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn, has been attending the camp in Rochester, NY, since she was 9. Now she serves as assistant director, and her summers largely revolve around the activities of the camp.

She says, “That experience has connected me with myself by knowing more about my religion and my heritage. It’s given me more pride and self-esteem and a deeper understanding of who I am.”

Many Indian parents in the U.S. also turn to mainstream summer camps, where the agenda is simply outdoor activities, sports and having fun. Seema Sharma, an AIDS research co-coordinator in Houston, Texas, always enrolls her 8-year-old son Neil in these camps. She says: “He goes to camps for weeks on end, does a lot of rock climbing, ice skating to cool off in the hot summer heat. Houston’s weather is just like India’s.”

Houston in the summer, Sharma says, is bursting with fun activities from golf courses to pools and tennis courts. She takes Neil out to the beach, to water-rides amusement parks and also organizes at least one trip to a different region. Last year they headed to South Padre Island in southern Texas.

Sharma, who grew up in Kuwait, experienced summers full of travel. Her father was with the United Nations, so every summer they’d head to Europe or the United States, where her brothers were studying. “We made road trips within the country and that’s what we are planning to do this summer. My whole family is coming here and we are going to take a road trip for a month, driving along the whole North East to South East part of the States.”