I called my mummy from the fire escape last night because the apartment felt too small for both me and the feeling.
Homesickness in New York is sneaky. It doesn't come during the big moments. It comes when a stranger on the N train wears a kurta and for one second you smell home that isn't there.
Astoria helps and hurts. There's a Greek family below me who cooks at 8pm sharp, and the smell of garlic and oregano floats up like an apology. It's not my mother's kitchen, but it's somebody's mother's kitchen, and on bad nights I'll take it.
So I sat on the metal steps with the phone propped against a planter, and there she was. 6:30am her time, already done with her chai, already telling me I look thin and tired and what is this hair.
Homesickness is realizing you'd give anything to be nagged in person.
She held the phone up to the window so I could see the gulmohar tree in our lane, the one that's flowering now. Orange everywhere. I forgot it does that in June. I've been in New York three summers and I forgot.
We didn't say anything deep. She told me Sharmila aunty's son got engaged. I told her I styled a shoot this week. She said "good, good" the way she does when she's proud but won't make it weird.
Then the line went quiet and we just looked at each other, 12,000 kilometers and one cracked phone screen apart.
After we hung up, I stayed on the fire escape. The Q train rumbled in the distance. Someone in the building was watching a cricket match, the commentary leaking through a window, and I laughed because of course, of course, even in Astoria.
Homesickness isn't only sadness. Sometimes it's just love that hasn't found its way back yet.
I texted her a heart. She sent back fourteen. She always wins.
Call your mother. She's pretending she's not waiting.
Love,