There's a rooftop in Astoria my friend Dev pretends he's allowed to be on. Tar paper, a broken lawn chair, the N train screeching past like it's tattling on us. From up there you can see the whole glittering nonsense of Manhattan lying to you about how close it is.
I went up alone last night. Couldn't sleep. The kind of homesickness that doesn't announce itself, just sits on your chest like a cat that doesn't like you.
Ahmedabad is nine and a half hours ahead. Which means my midnight is my mother's mid-morning, which means she was already three cups of chai in and yelling at the pressure cooker when I called.
"Beta, why are you awake?" First thing she always asks. Not hello. The concern comes pre-installed.
I told her I was on a rooftop. She was scandalized in the way only an Indian mother can be about her daughter being anywhere with a nice view and no railing. Then she softened and told me about the neighbor's wedding, about the rains, about how the gulmohar tree outside my old bedroom is flowering again.
Homesickness is a strange math. You'd think ten thousand miles would make it abstract. It doesn't. It makes it precise. I can tell you exactly which tile in our kitchen is cracked. I can hear the specific creak of our front gate.
I held the phone up so she could see the skyline. She said, "Very nice," the way she says it about things she doesn't fully approve of. Then: "Same moon, na."
Same moon. That old Bollywood line, the one every separated lover in every film I grew up on used to say. Chand toh ek hi hai. I always thought it was corny.
On that Astoria rooftop at midnight, it wasn't corny. It was the only geography that made sense. My mother and I under the same moon, her in morning light, me in the dark, both pretending the distance is smaller than it is because the alternative is unbearable.
We hung up. I stayed a while. The N train came again.
Missing someone is just love with nowhere to sit.
Love,