I've been missing Navratri from a Brooklyn rooftop all week, and nobody warned me homesickness could sound like dandiya sticks.
In Ahmedabad right now, the whole city is awake until 2am. The grounds are strung with lights. Everyone's in chaniya cholis that took three fittings. My cousins will post forty blurry videos where the music is clipping and everyone's spinning and sweaty and radiant, and I will watch every single one twice.
There are garba events here, of course. New Jersey does it huge. There's always something in Queens. But this year my friends were busy and I didn't have anyone to go with, and the thought of doing garba alone in a rented hall felt worse than not going at all.
So I did the next most Pooja thing. I went up to my rooftop in Crown Heights with a bluetooth speaker and I played the old songs. The ones my mum plays. And I did a slow, embarrassing, one-woman garba under a Brooklyn sky with the water towers for company.
Missing Navratri from a Brooklyn rooftop is its own strange ceremony. Nobody saw me. The claps felt wrong without the circle. Garba is not meant to be done alone — the whole point is the turning together, the way you catch a stranger's rhythm and give it back. I had no one to give it back to.
But my feet remembered everything. Fifteen years of muscle memory. My grandmother taught me the three-clap before I could spell. That doesn't leave you just because you crossed an ocean for a fashion degree and a career and a life you genuinely love.
I called Mummy after. She put the phone near the speaker so I could hear the real thing playing in our living room, 8,000 miles away. We didn't say much. We just let the song play across the distance.
That's the trade nobody tells you about. You get the city of your dreams and you give up the ordinary nights that were never ordinary at all.
Missing Navratri from a Brooklyn rooftop didn't fix the ache. But it reminded me the dance is in my body no matter where I stand.
Next year, I'm finding a circle. Save me a spot.
Love,