Every Sunday I walk to Astoria Park and call my mummy. It is the one appointment I never cancel.
There is a bench near the water, under the Hell Gate Bridge, where the wifi from my phone holds steady and the light is soft enough that she can't tell when I haven't slept.
This Sunday she could tell.
"Beta, you look thin," she said, which is mother for "I miss you" and also sometimes for "I am worried" and occasionally for "eat something."
I told her work was busy. I told her New York was hot already, that summer came fast. I showed her the East River, panned the camera so she could see the bridge, the kids on bikes, an old uncle doing his stretches like he was back in a Vadodara park.
And then she did the thing she always does. She held the phone too close so I got mostly her chin, and she said, "You don't have to be brave with me."
I cried on a bench in Astoria Park. A jogger looked over and looked away, because this is New York and crying on a bench is just another Sunday.
The homesickness here is sneaky. It doesn't come during the big festivals when I expect it. It comes on an ordinary Sunday when my mother tells me I look thin and I realize no one in this city would know to say that.
I told her about the gulab jamun I attempted last week that came out like rubber bullets. She laughed so hard she dropped the phone. For a full minute I was looking at her ceiling fan, the same one from my childhood, slowly turning, and I missed it like a person.
We hung up after an hour. I sat on the bench in Astoria Park a little longer, watching the water, feeling lighter and heavier at the same time.
Love across an ocean is just this — a bench, a chin too close to the camera, a ceiling fan you can hear from eleven thousand kilometers away.
Call your mother this Sunday. The bench will keep.
Love,