America turns 250 today. Tomorrow, coincidentally, is my birthday.
I’ve spent 19 years of life here. Almost my entire adult life. Every job, every hard lesson, every friendship, every mountain I’ve ever stood on happened in this country. I became who I am here. It feels fitting then, that as America marks this milestone, I’m marking my own.
I landed in August 2007, a 23-year-old with a specific and slightly absurd dream: work in Hollywood. Animation studios. I had just enrolled in a Masters in Visualization Sciences at Texas A&M. Bush was on his way out. Obama was coming. I landed in Texas, as American as it gets, and began the long, humbling education of becoming.
In 2008, Riya and I got married, an inter-religion marriage in a country where that still carries weight and real risk. We didn’t stay to find out how much. We came here instead. America gave us something India couldn’t: the freedom to just be us, without explanation or apology. That alone was worth everything.
But the struggle didn’t stop at the border. Fitting in, catching up, keeping up. There were real disadvantages I hadn’t accounted for, gaps I couldn’t close fast enough. And then I graduated in 2011 right into the Great Recession. The animation dream faded. The job market had no room for it, and honestly I wasn’t ready for it either. So I pivoted to software engineering. A bet on myself when everything else had stopped working.
And somehow, a door opened anyway. That’s the thing about this place. Even when everything falls apart, doors open if you keep showing up.
That door was Dish Network in Colorado. My first real job. Ten years of showing up, learning, growing, and quietly becoming a professional in a country that wasn’t yet sure what to do with me. Colorado itself became home in ways I hadn’t planned for. The Rockies. The big sky. The particular kind of freedom that comes from wide open space.
Riya’s own journey had its own struggles running parallel. Her immigration, her health challenges, the particular exhaustion of building a life in a country that keeps you at arm’s length even as you pour everything into it. We kept finding opportunities anyway. We kept taking them.
Amazon, both of us. Four states over the course of it all. Careers that kept growing. And somewhere in all of it, this country got under my skin in ways I never expected. Yellowstone. Yosemite. Rocky Mountain. The national parks stopped being tourist destinations and became our backyard, our reset button. We fell in love with America the place, not just America the idea. America even gave us Korra, our Goldendoodle. An opportunity for happiness we hadn’t planned for but couldn’t imagine life without.
I became someone I couldn’t have become anywhere else. I spent my entire formative adult years here. I became less Indian, more American, and genuinely confused about identity in ways I’ve slowly made peace with. The melting pot does that. Friends of every background, every race, every story. You absorb it and it absorbs you, and somewhere in the middle you stop asking where you’re from and start knowing who you are. Even when the answer is complicated.
Nineteen years in, and the journey to truly belong here — in more ways than one — is still not over. The path has been long. The waiting never gets easier.
And yet. America at 250 is still figuring itself out. So am I. Maybe that’s the most honest thing I can say about both of us.
America gave me the pivot when Hollywood didn’t work out. It gave me Dish Network when the recession should have shut every door. It gave Riya and me safety when we needed it most. It gave us careers, mountains, friends of every color and background, and the freedom to build a life entirely on our own terms.
On its 250th birthday, I’ve spent almost all of my adult life here. The struggle has been real. So has the opportunity. So has the gratitude.
Still unfinished. Still showing up.
Happy birthday, America. And yeah, happy birthday to me too. 🇺🇸