It rained properly in Astoria this week. Not the sad New York drizzle. The real kind. Fat, warm, sideways rain that came out of nowhere on a Tuesday evening like the sky had been holding it in all day.
I was on my friend Reshma's rooftop off Ditmars when it started. We had every intention of leaving. We did not leave.
Instead we dragged a sad plastic chair under the little overhang and watched the rain hammer down over the rooftops, the N train rattling past in the distance, and it smelled like wet concrete and that earth smell, petrichor, that exists in every country but hits different when you're missing one.
Reshma put on Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham on her laptop because of course she did. The wifi reached just barely. We've both seen it forty times. We still cried when SRK lands the helicopter. We are not strong women.
This is the part of life in New York nobody puts on a postcard. Two Indian girls on a leaky Astoria rooftop, wrapped in a single damp blanket, sharing earbuds, watching a movie about a family we both left behind, in a city that doesn't know either of us.
The monsoon back home meant something. It meant the whole city slowing down at once. Here the rain is just an inconvenience people complain about. But for one Tuesday in Astoria, with the N train and the petrichor and Reshma singing every word wrong, it meant the old thing again.
We got soaked walking to the train. Didn't care. My sandals are probably ruined. Worth it.
Some rain you run from. Some rain you sit in until you remember who you are.
Love,