Every few Sundays I make the pilgrimage. I take the 7 train out to Jackson Heights, Queens, and I come home with a paper bag that costs more than my dinner and is worth every cent.
Mango season. Alphonsos. The kesar variety if I'm lucky. There's a shop on 74th Street near Roosevelt Avenue where the man knows exactly how to pick them — he presses gently, sniffs the stem end, and hands you the ones that'll be perfect by Wednesday.
Going to Jackson Heights is the closest I get to going home without a passport. You come up from the 7 train and suddenly there's Hindi and Punjabi and Bangla and Nepali all braided together in the air. Gold shops. Sari stores with mannequins in bridal lehengas. The smell of samosas frying and jalebi and someone's incense.
I did my whole run: Patel Brothers for the essentials — toor dal, jeera, a fresh bag of curry leaves that the New York grocery stores charge a crime for. Then the sweet shop for a box of kaju katli, because my flatmate had a hard week and mithai fixes 60% of hard weeks.
Jackson Heights on a Sunday is chaos in the best way. Families arguing over which vegetables. Aunties in salwar kameez cutting the line without apology, which honestly I respect. A little girl crying because she wanted the pink mithai, not the white one. I've been that girl.
I ate a mango standing on the sidewalk like an animal, juice down my wrist, no shame. That's the correct way to eat an Alphonso and I won't be taking questions.
The 7 train back was packed and slow and I didn't mind. I had my bag of home on my lap. Mangoes, dal, sweets, curry leaves, and the specific tiredness of a good errand done.
Jackson Heights doesn't fix the homesickness. But it turns the volume down for an afternoon, and sometimes that's enough.
Go where the mangoes are. Eat them over the sink.
Love,