My friend Ritu is moving back to India next month and we had our last real dinner in Jackson Heights on Monday, and I've been quietly wrecked about it ever since.
We took the 7 to 74th Street–Roosevelt Ave, which if you've never done it is like stepping through a portal straight into a Delhi lane — the sweet shops, the aunties, the smell of frying, the sound of four languages at once. It's the closest thing to home either of us has out here.
We ate momos at the little Himalayan place we always go to, the one with the sticky menus and the best chili sauce in the borough. Ritu ordered too much like she always does. I let her. It felt important to let her.
Here's the thing nobody warns you about New York City: it's a city that keeps taking your people. Everyone's here temporarily, even the ones who swear they're not. The visa expires, or the parents need them, or the rent finally wins, and one by one the people you built your life around move back home.
Ritu was my first real friend here. She's the one who taught me which pharmacy in Jackson Heights sells the good Parachute coconut oil, who sat with me the night my first job fell through, who never once made me explain why I was sad.
At dinner she said, "You could come back too, you know." And for a second, over the momos, I let myself imagine it. Ahmedabad. My mother's kitchen. No more heat-wave subway platforms.
But we both know I'm not done here yet. That's the cruel arithmetic of it — she's ready to go home and I'm not, and loving each other doesn't change the direction we're each facing.
We walked to the subway and hugged for too long by the turnstile, the way you do when you know the next goodbye is the big one. She got the 7 back to her side. I got mine.
Jackson Heights will still smell like home. It'll just have one less person in it who feels like mine.
Hold your temporary people close. Everyone here is temporary.
Love,