I called my mom from the 1 train on Tuesday, the way I do when the day has been too much and I need a voice that knew me before New York did.
The 1 train is good for this. It goes above ground around 125th Street in Harlem, and for those few stops your signal holds and the city opens up and you can actually hear someone breathe on the other side of the world.
"Beta, you ate?" she asked. First question. Always first question.
I said yes. It was a lie. I'd had an oat milk latte and a granola bar that tasted like cardboard's sad cousin.
"You sound tired," she said.
"I'm fine, Mummy. Just busy."
We both let that lie sit there like a third passenger on the seat between us.
Here is the thing nobody warns you about homesickness. It doesn't arrive with drama. It arrives at 96th Street when a girl gets on wearing your cousin's exact perfume. It arrives when the 1 train climbs into the Harlem light and you realize your mother has aged a year you weren't there for.
She started telling me about the neighbour's daughter's wedding, the sangeet, who danced badly, who wore what. I closed my eyes and let her narrate Ahmedabad to me stop by stop. 116th. 125th. 137th.
By the time I reached my station I wasn't fine, and that was okay. Calling mom from the 1 train doesn't fix the homesickness. It just reminds me the missing goes both ways, which somehow makes it lighter.
"Eat something proper," she said before we hung up. "Real food. Promise me."
I made dal that night. Stood in my tiny kitchen on the Upper West Side stirring it with a wooden spoon, crying a little, not in a tragic way. The good kind. The kind that means you still have somewhere to be from.
Distance is just love with a worse commute.
Love,