Nine years ago today, I landed at EWR with two suitcases and one very large idea of what America should be. Pooja at sixteen: this letter is for you.
You will not live on the 35th floor. You will live on the 6th floor of a walk-up with a bathtub in the kitchen. You will love it more than you ever thought possible. The window faces a brick wall but the light, somehow, finds you anyway.
You will not date anyone who runs to you across the Brooklyn Bridge. You will, however, walk it alone and understand why the movies use it. That's better. I promise.
You will cry in public. You will eat dumplings by yourself on a bench. You will, once, miss a flight home and sit in the terminal and call Mom and not say anything for twenty minutes and that will count as a conversation.
You will become very good at something. Not the thing you thought. Adjacent to it. More yours.
You will stop measuring your life against the Bollywood version you packed in that second suitcase. The real version is better. The real version has Victor the laundromat man and the pianist in the park and a pot of chai on a Sunday morning and more love than your sixteen-year-old self knew how to ask for.
Keep going. Don't shrink. Post the blog.
Love,