Some weeks the homesickness doesn't announce itself. It just sits down next to you on the couch and stays.
This was one of those weeks. So I did what I always do when it gets loud — I took the 7 train to Jackson Heights.
If you've never done the ride out to 74th Street-Roosevelt, let me tell you: the 7 train above ground in Queens is its own kind of therapy. Rooftops, water towers, the city sprawling wide and un-glamorous and real. Astoria, then Woodside, then suddenly the platform smells like something frying.
Jackson Heights is where I go to feel less far from home. I don't think I've ever said that out loud. But it's true.
I walked down 74th Street past the jewelry shops with their gold catching the sun, past aunties bargaining in three languages, past a sweet shop where I bought jalebi still warm and dripping. I ate it standing on the sidewalk like a person with no shame, which is the only correct way.
There was Gujarati floating out of a store speaker. My language. Just casually existing in Queens. I stood there pretending to look at a display of bangles and I got a little teary, which, embarrassing, but here we are.
Homesickness is a funny thing. It's not that I want to go back exactly. It's that I want to be held by something familiar for an afternoon. And Jackson Heights holds me. The smell of it. The noise. The way an uncle at the sweet counter called me 'beta' without knowing me.
I FaceTimed my mom from the train back and held up my box of mithai. She said I looked thin. I said I looked fine. We were both lying and it was perfect.
By the time the 7 dipped back underground near Court Square, the heaviness had loosened. Not gone. Just quieter.
Home isn't one place. Sometimes it's a warm jalebi eaten on a Queens sidewalk.
Love,