I was sixteen when I first heard it.

The first notes of Doin’ Time serpentine through my room in shimmery indolence as the May heat blooms outside. Lana del Rey croons, “Summertime, and the livin’s easy,” and I resonate. It was summertime, and the living was easy.

For my bevy of third-culture kids, summertime translated to one destination: India. For me, it meant a respite from Dubai’s sweltering heat and jetting off to Palakkad, a sleepy town on the northern cusp of Kerala (one of India’s southern states) … and where I was born.

The year is 2010 — the era before video calling became the phenomenon it is today. Summer, for me, has begun before the aircraft even hit the runway, the first few weeks blurring into a messy cacophony of suitcases, masking tape, and bickering over gift shopping for the hundreds of relatives I can only vaguely remember. The airport is crowded even at three a.m. and greetings laced with happy tears erupt around me as reunions take place. I, however, pay no heed.

My six-year-old eyes anxiously scan the crowd until I spot a pair of outstretched arms that I proceed to run into. I breathe in my grandmother’s sandalwood musk as she lifts me off the ground. As we make our way home, I watch in fascination as Kerala’s trees tower over me, as she wears her lush greenness with Tinkerbell charm, as her soil starts to smell like rain is coming. Summer passes like it always does: it is a blissful cocktail of vanilla ice cream, joyrides with my grandfather on his scooter, comics, games with my cousins, flamboyant weddings, and thrillingly stormy nights. It is a taste I take for granted.

The year is 2022 — I’m now 18 and it is the summer after high school. My grandparents are there when we land, at three a.m. on the dot. The airport has changed; it now has a glamorous solar-powered facade that somehow does not feel the same. I can no longer run toward my grandparents in six-year-old squeaky delight; I tower over them as they pull me into their embrace.

Kerala is still beautiful but it is also smaller, somehow: the trees seem littler, the grey-streaked sky less imposing. Two family members have passed and thoughts of their absence bite at the oddest of times. The scooter has changed and so has my grandfather’s ability to take me with him. The wedding pool has evaporated; my cousins and I are next in line. And yet, vestiges of that past magic linger. The scent of sandalwood still fills every room my grandmother walks into. The vanilla ice cream has diversified into strawberry and butterscotch. My grandparents have painted their house pink because it used to be my favorite color.

The year is 2023 — summertime is no longer when the living’s easy. My matriculation at NYU Abu Dhabi has also brought with it a torrent of conversations on summer internships, and the frantic scramble for summer opportunities. The summer cocktail has now become a Red Bull-like productivity tonic that reeks of junior-year internships that need to be converted to full-time offers of research programs and summer classes. My grandfather is upset that I won’t be visiting Kerala this summer. The sinking unspoken realization that 2022 may have been my last true summer vacation there wedges itself into our conversations over a video call.

I wonder — is the concept of a summer vacation now obsolete, slashed by the hustle culture that permeates our lives today? Or is this piece simply a product of my insistence on clinging to a past where summer could be summer, a momentary interlude in our roles as goal-churning engines?

I’m immensely looking forward to my summer opportunities — they promise to bring with them a host of exciting experiences and new memories. But as I watch the rest of my family packing, my cousins mapping out the places they’ll visit in July, my grandparents hoping I’ll show up on their doorstep, and news reports of rain in Kerala, Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness plays in my mind.