My friend Reza lives in Astoria off the N/W, and his building has a rooftop that technically we are not allowed on. So obviously we go up there constantly.
Last night I sat on the ledge with the Manhattan skyline glittering across the river, and I called my mother in Ahmedabad. It was already morning there. She was making chai. I could hear the pressure cooker whistle in the background, that specific three-note scream that is more home to me than any song.
Homesickness in NYC is a sneaky thing. It doesn't come when you expect it. It doesn't come during Diwali or your birthday. It comes on a random Tuesday on an Astoria rooftop when your mom says beta, have you eaten, and you lie and say yes.
We talked for forty minutes. She told me about the neighbor's daughter's wedding, about the monsoon finally breaking, about my father's knee. I told her about work, edited down to the parts she'd approve of. Normal stuff. The stuff that stitches you to a person across ten thousand miles.
Then she said she had to go, the milk was boiling over, and she hung up.
And that's when it lands. The homesickness. Not during the call. After. When the screen goes dark and you're just a girl on a roof in Queens with the F train rumbling somewhere below and a city that doesn't know your Nani's name.
I think people expect homesickness to feel like crying. Sometimes it does. But mostly it feels like standing between two lives and not fully being in either. Like I'm too Ahmedabad for New York and slowly, terrifyingly, too New York for Ahmedabad.
Reza came up with two cutting chais he'd made badly on his stove, too much sugar, exactly how I needed it. He didn't ask why my eyes were pink. He just handed me the cup and pointed at the Empire State Building, lit up green for some reason neither of us knew.
That's the whole trick of surviving homesickness in NYC. You find the people who hand you chai without asking questions.
I drank it. The skyline blurred. I let it.
Some nights the distance is just a phone call. Some nights it's the whole river.
Love,