Homesickness never announces itself. It doesn't knock. It just sits down next to you on a stoop in Harlem on a Tuesday night and refuses to leave.
I was on 129th, waiting for a friend who was running late, sitting on someone's steps I had no business sitting on. My phone lit up. Missed call from Dadi. Then a voice note in Gujarati asking if I'd eaten, always if I'd eaten, like the entire ocean between us can be crossed with one hot roti.
And somewhere from an open window above me came the smell of dinner. Cumin, maybe. Something frying. Not even Indian, honestly — could've been anything — but my brain filed it under home and my chest just caved.
That's the trick of homesickness. It borrows the wrong smells and makes them mean everything.
I've lived in New York for three years now. I know the 2 and 3 trains up here by heart. I have a bodega guy on Frederick Douglass who saves me the good bananas. I have made a life. And still, a voice note undoes me.
Here's what I've learned about homesickness, if anyone's searching for a cure: there isn't one. You just let it sit with you on the stoop. You don't rush it off. You call your dadi back and you lie a little and say yes, you ate well, and you let her scold you for the AC and the boys and the not-sleeping.
My friend showed up eventually with two mango lassis from the spot on Lenox, sweating in plastic cups. She didn't ask why my eyes were pink. She just sat down on the stoop with me.
We drank them there while Harlem carried on around us, someone's music, someone's argument, someone's kid on a scooter refusing to go inside.
Homesickness in a city this loud is a strange thing. You're never alone and you've never felt farther.
But then a lassi shows up, and a friend sits down, and the ocean feels an inch narrower.
Some nights, that inch is enough.
Love,