Let me be clear: the Trader Joe's on 72nd is not a sad place. It's chaos. It's a line that wraps around the entire store like a snake eating its own tail. It's a sample station and a guy ringing a bell for reasons no one questions.
And yet. I cried there on Tuesday.
I was holding a box of their frozen paneer tikka masala. You know the one. The orange-y sauce, the suspiciously cubed paneer. I've bought it a hundred times because at 9PM after work I am not, in fact, going to soak dal and temper cumin like a functional adult.
But Tuesday I just stood there. And I thought about my Nani's kitchen. The way the pressure cooker would whistle three times and she'd say "bas, ho gaya" without even looking up. The smell of ghee that lived in the walls.
And this box in my hand tasted like a memory photocopied too many times. Close, but never the thing.
Homesickness is sneaky like that. It doesn't come on the festival days when you expect it. It comes in the frozen aisle of the Trader Joe's on 72nd, between the cauliflower gnocchi and the orange chicken, when you're tired and your feet hurt and you just want someone to feed you.
So I let a few tears go. A woman saw me and very kindly pretended she didn't, which is the most New York act of love there is.
Then I bought the paneer anyway. Because homesickness and hunger can coexist, and because tomorrow I'll FaceTime Nani and she'll walk me through her rajma over a shaky video and I'll get it 70% right and that's enough.
The thing about missing home is that you can't fix it in a grocery store. You can only carry it, gently, like the bruised mango you still eat because throwing it out feels like betrayal.
I walked out onto Broadway and the evening was warm and the city didn't care that I'd just cried, which somehow helped.
We heat up the photocopy. We call our grandmothers. We keep going.
If you've ever cried in a grocery store, you're my people.
Love,