It was Father's Day and I was on a rooftop in Astoria, holding a paper plate of souvlaki, trying to call my Papa across eleven time zones.
The connection was bad, the way it always is. His voice arrived a half-second late, like he was speaking from underwater, like the ocean between us was personally interrupting.
Father's Day isn't even a thing back home, not really. We don't have a Sunday for it. But I called anyway because I've started borrowing American holidays the way you borrow a sweater — not yours, but warm.
He asked if I was eating properly. I said yes, looking down at gas-station souvlaki, lying through my teeth like a good Gujarati daughter.
The Astoria rooftop had that golden light, the kind that makes even Queens look like a film. The Manhattan skyline was glittering across the water, and behind me my friends were laughing about something I'd missed, and my Papa was telling me about the new tree he planted in the back, and I felt the homesickness arrive all at once, uninvited, like it always does.
When I left Ahmedabad two years ago, my Papa didn't cry at the airport. He just held my face in both his hands the way he did when I was small and said, jaa, beta. Go. Like he was giving me permission to leave him.
I think about that a lot. How love sometimes looks like letting someone walk away from you.
On the rooftop I couldn't tell him I missed him. We don't say it like that. Instead I said, take your blood pressure medicine, and he heard it for what it was.
The call dropped twice. Astoria's wifi is no match for the Arabian Sea.
When we hung up I stayed at the edge of the roof for a while, the N train rumbling below, the smell of charred meat and the river in my nose. Somewhere a DJ was playing old Kishore Kumar and I almost laughed at how the universe shows off sometimes.
I miss him in the specific way you miss the people who made you. Not loud. Just always there, a low hum under everything.
Call your people, even when the line is bad. Especially then.
Love,