It happened on the 2 train, of all places. Uptown, around 6PM, packed shoulder to shoulder, the kind of car where you're breathing someone else's day.
Ma called. Video, because she refuses audio, because she needs to see my face to believe I'm eating. She was in the kitchen. Behind her I could see the pressure cooker, the one with the dent, and the little Ganesha on the ledge that's been there my whole life.
She held up a bowl. Undhiyu. She'd made undhiyu, my favorite, for no reason, on a random Tuesday, and she wanted to show me even though I'm eight thousand miles and one ocean away and cannot eat it.
And I lost it. Right there. On the 2 train.
Homesickness doesn't come when you expect it. It doesn't come on Diwali when you're prepared, when you've bought the diyas and called everyone. It comes on the 2 train at 6PM when your mother holds up a bowl of vegetables you can't taste.
I turned my face to the window, which does nothing on a subway because the window is just a black wall and your own reflection crying back at you. The man next to me pretended very hard not to notice. New Yorkers are gentle like that. They let you fall apart in public and grant you the mercy of looking away.
Homesickness on the 2 train is a specific flavor. It's guilt, mostly. The guilt of the daughter who left. Who chose fashion and New York and a fifth-floor walkup over Sunday lunches. Who says "I'm so happy here" and means it, which somehow makes it worse.
By 96th Street I'd stopped. I told her the undhiyu looked perfect. I told her I loved her. She told me to carry an umbrella, always the umbrella, as if rain were the danger and not the distance.
I got off at my stop and the summer air hit me warm and thick and I stood on the platform for a second just breathing.
You can build a whole life in a new city. You can love it fully. And still your mother's kitchen will find you underground and take you apart.
I'm calling her back tomorrow. This time I'll ask for the recipe.
Love,