I did not plan to cry in a thrift store in Greenpoint. I planned to buy a lamp.
I took the G train, which everyone loves to complain about but which I secretly adore because it does not go to Manhattan and therefore feels like a private club. I got off at Greenpoint Ave and wandered toward Manhattan Ave with no real agenda.
The thrift store was one of those cramped, gloriously overstuffed ones that smells like other people's grandmothers. I was flipping through a rack of scarves when I felt something heavier than fabric.
It was a sari. Silk, deep maroon, with gold zari work along the border, hand-embroidered, the kind that takes someone weeks. Someone had donated it. Someone had folded up an entire ceremony and dropped it in a bin in Greenpoint.
And I just stood there in this thrift store, holding a stranger's sari, thinking about my nani teaching me to pleat, thinking about how far six pins and nine yards can travel from home.
That is the sneaky thing about homesickness. It does not knock. It ambushes you in a Greenpoint thrift store on a Sunday afternoon when you are supposed to be buying a lamp.
I bought the sari. Obviously. It was fourteen dollars, which felt both like a steal and like a small sin. Fourteen dollars for something someone poured their hands into.
I called my mom from the sidewalk on Manhattan Ave, and she asked why my voice was funny, and I said allergies, and she said Pooja beta and I started laughing because she always knows.
Homesickness is not always crying at Diwali or missing the food. Sometimes it is a maroon sari in Brooklyn reminding you that you carry Ahmedabad in your body whether you booked a flight or not.
I got dumplings after, because grief makes me hungry, and sat by the water in that little park where you can see Manhattan pretending to be a postcard.
The sari is hanging in my closet now. I do not know when I will wear it. But it found me for a reason, and I am done arguing with the universe about that.
Some things you buy. Some things claim you.
Love,