I Called My Mom Crying From a Williamsburg Rooftop

I was at a rooftop party in Williamsburg on Saturday, the kind with fairy lights and someone's overpriced natural wine, and I started crying next to the guacamole.

Not cute crying. The ugly, silent kind where you pretend you're texting.

Homesickness is such a strange thing. It doesn't come when you'd expect. Not on Diwali, not on my birthday. It came at a party where I knew half the people and the Manhattan skyline was showing off across the water like it does.

Someone had put on an old Kishore Kumar song as a joke, ironically, because it's 2026 and everything is ironic now. And I just — cracked.

My dad used to hum that song shaving in the morning. Bad, off-key, gloriously. And there it was, playing over a Bluetooth speaker in Brooklyn while people I barely knew talked about their startups.

So I went to the far corner of the roof, near the water tank, and I called my mom. It was already Sunday morning in Ahmedabad. She picked up on the second ring like she'd been waiting.

I didn't even say hi. I just said, "Mummy, I miss home."

Homesickness makes you honest in a way daylight never allows.

And she didn't panic or tell me to come back. She just started talking. About the neem tree outside. About how the monsoon was late this year. About my cousin's terrible new haircut. Ordinary things. The texture of a life still happening without me.

I stood on that Williamsburg rooftop, the L train rumbling somewhere below, and let her voice fill the empty part of me.

Here's the thing about homesickness nobody tells you. It's not a sign you made the wrong choice. It's the tax you pay for having two homes. For being loved in two places at once.

I moved here for a reason. I built this. The fashion job, the tiny apartment, the friends who put on Kishore Kumar as a joke but slow-danced to it anyway when they saw my face.

Before we hung up, Mummy said, "You can be sad and still be exactly where you're supposed to be."

Then she told me to eat something and stop skipping breakfast.

I wiped my face and went back to the guacamole.

Two homes means twice the missing. I think I'll take it.