I was looking for my winter boots and instead I found my grief. Classic Tuesday.
The suitcase under my bed still smells like home. Two years in this Harlem apartment and I have never fully emptied it. There's a corner of it that's still Ahmedabad — a folded dupatta, a tin of my nani's fennel, a receipt from a shop in Law Garden that has probably closed by now.
I pulled it out from under the bed and the smell hit me before I even opened it. My mother's cupboard. That mix of naphthalene and cotton and something floral I have never been able to name. The smell of being small and safe.
Homesickness doesn't arrive when you expect it. It doesn't come on Diwali when you're braced for it. It ambushes you on an ordinary evening while you're just trying to find your boots.
I sat on my floor. The radiator was clanking. Someone downstairs was playing bachata too loud. And I just held that dupatta to my face like it was a person.
The thing about the suitcase under my bed is that unpacking it feels like a decision. Like admitting I live here now. Fully, completely, no return ticket in the side pocket. And some cowardly homesick part of me isn't ready to say that yet.
I called my dad. He was watching cricket, of course. He didn't ask why my voice sounded thick. He just talked to me about nothing for forty minutes — the neighbor's new car, the monsoon being late, my cousin's engagement. The ordinary music of home.
There's a scene in every Bollywood film where someone leaves the village for the city and the mother stands at the door. I always thought that was dramatic. I understand it now.
I didn't unpack the suitcase. I pushed it back under the bed, boots still unfound, and I let myself keep that one small unfinished thing.
Some bags you carry so you don't forget where you started.
Love,