My friend has a rooftop in DUMBO, the kind with the Manhattan Bridge framing itself perfectly so every photo looks like a postcard you didn't earn. We were up there at dusk and I stepped away to call my Ba.
It was already morning in Ahmedabad. She was in the kitchen. I could hear the pressure cooker whistling behind her, that three-note song of my entire childhood, and something in my chest just folded in half.
Calling my grandmother is a logistics problem and a heartbreak at the same time. The time zones mean I catch her at the edges of her day — her early morning, my night. She holds the phone too close so I mostly see her forehead and the ceiling fan.
She asked if I was eating. I said yes. She asked if I was eating properly. I said yes, Ba. She asked, again, if I was eating real food and not just "that bread," and I laughed and didn't tell her about the $4 bagel I'd had for dinner.
Behind me the bridge lit up. In front of me, six thousand miles away, the morning light was hitting her white sari.
Here is what nobody warns you about homesickness. It is not a longing for a place. It is a longing for the person you were inside that place. The Pooja who knew where every spice jar lived. The one who never had to translate herself.
When I hung up, my friend asked if I was okay. I said yes. I am, mostly. But calling my grandmother always leaves me standing in two cities at once — one glittering in front of me, one warm and far behind.
The Manhattan Bridge kept glowing. I let myself miss the cooker's whistle for exactly one more minute, then I went back to the party.
Some love doesn't get smaller with distance. It just gets louder on the phone.
Love,