I called my mummy from a rooftop in Astoria last night and she was already in tomorrow.
That's the thing nobody tells you about being nine and a half hours behind your whole family. When it's my Thursday night, it's her Friday morning. She's drinking her chai in a day I haven't met yet. She's living in my future and reporting back.
My friend Dev has this walk-up near the Ditmars stop on the N, and the roof has a view of the Hell Gate Bridge and the whole glittering mess of Manhattan across the water. We were up there with wine in plastic cups and I just — needed to hear her voice.
So I stepped away to the corner of the roof and video-called home.
She answered in the kitchen. Behind her, morning light. The same steel plates I grew up eating off. Papa somewhere off-screen asking who it was. And I just started crying, which, embarrassing, because I didn't even know I was sad.
Calling mummy does this. One minute you're fine, living your big New York life on a rooftop that looks like a movie, and the next you're twenty-four going on four, wanting someone to tell you that you're doing okay.
She asked if I was eating properly. She asked if it was cold. She asked, gently, when I'm coming home for Diwali, and I said I'm trying, Mummy, I'm trying.
The truth is the flights are expensive and work is busy and I feel guilty every single day about the distance I chose. Nobody made me move to New York. I wanted this. I still want this. And it still breaks something in me to see her in a day I haven't reached yet.
She told me to go back to my friends. Said don't waste the party crying to your old mother. Then she said, softer, call tomorrow too.
I went back to the roof. Dev refilled my cup without asking. The city kept glittering, indifferent and beautiful.
Love across nine and a half hours is just faith that tomorrow will arrive. For both of us.
Love,