I took the 7 out to Jackson Heights on Saturday because I wanted mithai and I wanted to hear Gujarati spoken by strangers.
There's a shop on 74th Street with trays of kaju katli lined up like little diamonds, and the aunty behind the counter called me "beta" without looking up, and I nearly cried into the ghee.
Homesickness is sneaky. It doesn't come when you expect it. It skips your birthday and your sad Sunday nights and then it ambushes you at 2pm on a Saturday over a box of soan papdi.
I recorded a voice note to my mother right there on the sidewalk. I told her about the shop, about how the jalebi looked exactly like Kandivali's, about how I'd been fine, really fine, until I smelled cardamom and my whole chest folded in half.
I didn't send it.
I stood there on 74th Street with my thumb hovering and I deleted it instead. Because if I sent it she'd hear the crack in my voice and she'd worry, and she'd tell my father, and then every phone call for a month would begin with "beta, are you eating properly."
So I ate the mithai on the train home instead. The homesickness didn't go away. It just sat next to me quietly, like a friend who knows when not to talk.
This is the thing nobody tells you about moving across the world. You don't miss home in some grand cinematic way. You miss it in the smell of a sweet shop. In the way an aunty says beta. In the exact shade of orange of a jalebi.
That night I called my mother and talked about nothing. The weather. My cousin's engagement. What I had for dinner.
I didn't play her the voice note. But I let her voice fill my apartment for an hour, and somehow that was the same thing.
Some love you send. Some love you just carry.
Love,