It was 98 degrees in Astoria and my phone died on 30th Avenue like it had personally given up on me.
I had one thought, and it was not rational, and it was not about the samples I was supposed to pick up. It was: I need to hear my mother's voice.
Homesickness does not knock. It ambushes you between a halal cart and a Greek bakery, on a sidewalk melting under your Bata sandals, and suddenly you are twelve years old and want your Mummy.
I ducked into a cafe on Ditmars and asked a woman if I could borrow her phone. She looked at me, saw whatever was on my face, and just handed it over. New Yorkers pretend to be cold. They are not.
I called Ahmedabad. It was late night there. Mummy picked up on the second ring, half-asleep, and said "Pooja beta, what happened, why this number" — and I said nothing happened, I just missed you, and then of course I cried a little in a stranger's cafe in the Astoria heatwave.
She told me it was raining back home. Monsoon. She could smell the wet earth from the window. I could almost smell it too, four thousand miles and thirteen years of that exact smell filed away somewhere in me.
We talked for six minutes. She told me to drink chaas, not cola, in this heat. She told me to eat something with salt. She told me the neighbor's daughter got engaged and I made the appropriate sounds.
Here is what nobody tells you about homesickness when you move for your dream: it does not shrink. You just get bigger around it. You build a life so wide that the ache becomes one room in a very large house.
I gave the phone back. The woman said, "Moms, huh." I said yeah. Moms.
I walked home slower. The heat felt kinder. Somewhere it was raining in Gujarat, and my mother was awake because of me, and that was enough to hold.
Call your mother. That is the whole post.
Love,