My mother called me at 9pm on Tuesday, which is 6:30am in Ahmedabad, which means she was awake before the sun to ask me if I had eaten.
"Haan Mummy, I made dal and rice."
This was a lie. I had eaten a handful of trail mix standing over my kitchen sink in my Astoria apartment, and the dal I was gesturing toward was a packet of MTR ready-to-eat I hadn't even opened.
I don't know why I lie about dinner. She can't see my kitchen. She can't smell that there's no tadka happening. But some part of me wants her to picture me the way she raised me — fed, warm, capable. Not a 24-year-old hunched over a sink eating cashews like a raccoon.
Homesickness is a sneaky thing. It doesn't announce itself. It waits until your mother says "beta, you sound tired" in that exact voice, and suddenly you're blinking very hard at your own ceiling.
I moved to New York for the fashion. For the Garment District and the rooftop sample sales and the version of myself I could only become here. And I don't regret a single subway swipe of it.
But homesickness doesn't care about ambition. It just wants to know who's making sure I eat.
After we hung up, I actually opened the MTR packet. Heated it. Made rice in my tiny pot. Sat at my actual table instead of the sink. And I ate it slowly, the way she would've wanted, scrolling through old photos of our kitchen with the pressure cooker that whistled three times before Mummy would even look up.
The dal wasn't hers. It was never going to be. But it was warm, and I was sitting down, and for once the lie I told my mother was almost true.
I texted her a photo. She sent back eleven heart emojis and one random thumbs up.
Call your mother before you've figured out what to say. The saying-of-it isn't the point.
Love,