I called my nani at midnight this week, sitting on a cold stoop on 30th Avenue in Astoria, because it was 9:30 the next morning for her and she'd already had two cups of chai and opinions to match.
Calling my nani from Astoria is a whole ritual. I wait until the city goes soft. The 24-hour spot across the street hums. A cat sits in a window like it's paying rent. And I dial, and the connection lags, and we talk over each other for a full minute before we find the rhythm.
She asked if I'm eating. She always asks if I'm eating. I told her about the daal I made last Sunday, and she immediately told me I was doing the tadka wrong, which is the most loving thing she knows how to say.
Here's the thing about calling my nani from a stoop in Astoria. The distance is 12,000 kilometers and 9.5 hours, and somehow her voice makes my whole railroad apartment feel like it has a courtyard.
She told me about the neighbor's wedding. About the new sabziwala. About her knee. I told her almost nothing about my week — the work stress, the guy who stopped texting, the loneliness that comes with the first cold air. Not because I was hiding. Because just hearing her list the small ordinary details of home was the medicine.
We watched an old film together once, her and me, years ago — Mughal-e-Azam, her all-time favorite — and she cried at the same scene she's cried at forty times. I thought about that on the stoop. How some love just repeats itself and stays tender anyway.
Before we hung up she said, beta, come home soon. I said soon, Nani. We both knew soon is a flexible word.
I sat on that stoop a while after. Love mostly sounds like a laggy connection and a lot of listening.
Love,