I called Mumma from Astoria Park on Sunday and cried a little, which I will now over-explain so you don't worry.
It wasn't a bad cry. It was the kind that comes out sideways when your mother asks if you're eating properly and you say haan of course and you both know the daal you make is nothing like hers.
Astoria Park has these benches facing the East River, under the Hell Gate Bridge, and on Sundays the whole neighborhood shows up. Greek families, Bangladeshi aunties, kids on scooters who have zero fear of death. It's the closest thing to a proper Indian evening walk I've found in this city.
Homesickness is a strange tenant. It doesn't pay rent and it never leaves, it just gets quieter for months and then knocks loud on a Sunday for no reason.
Mumma was making chai when she picked up. I could hear the pressure cooker in the background, that specific whistle, and I swear my whole nervous system exhaled.
She told me about a wedding I'm missing. My cousin. The mehndi, the sangeet, all of it happening 7,000 miles away while I sit on a bench in Queens in a thrifted jacket watching a man teach his daughter to ride a bike.
This is the part of homesickness nobody warns you about. It's not missing a place. It's missing being present for the small ordinary Tuesdays that turn into someone's whole life without you.
I moved here for the fashion, for the ambition, for a version of myself I couldn't build in Ahmedabad. I don't regret it. But choosing a life means un-choosing another one, and Astoria Park is where the un-chosen one comes to visit.
Mumma said, beta, you sound tired, go home and sleep. I said okay. I stayed on the bench another twenty minutes anyway.
The Hell Gate Bridge doesn't look like anything from home. But the light on the water did, just for a second.
Some distances you don't close. You just learn to sit with them by the river.
Love,