My closest friend in New York flew back to India this week. Not for a visit. For good.
We met at a kitty-party-adjacent Diwali thing in Jackson Heights three years ago, both of us standing awkwardly near the samosas, both of us refugees from the same loud small talk. By the end of the night we'd decided we were sisters. That's just how it works when you find your people in a strange city.
And now she's gone. I took her to JFK on Thursday, both of us crying on the AirTrain like two ridiculous Bollywood heroines, mascara absolutely destroyed by the time we hit the terminal.
She chose home. A job in Bangalore, her parents getting older, a fiancé she actually likes. She made the brave decision, the one I keep filing under "later."
Because here's the thing about being a diaspora kid that nobody says at dinner parties. We're all carrying a question we refuse to open. Are you staying. Forever. Is this it. Is the J train and the bodega cat and the eight-dollar sari blouse the whole life now, and is that enough, and what about your mother's knees, what about Diwali alone, what about all of it.
She answered her question. I haven't even read mine.
The ride back from JFK alone was the loneliest hour of my year. The AirTrain, then the A, then home, watching the city reassemble itself around me, this enormous beautiful machine that I chose and that doesn't need me at all.
I'm happy for her. I mean that with my entire chest. She gets to eat the mango with the whole committee now.
I just have to figure out what I'm doing with my own question. Eventually. Later.
Some goodbyes aren't endings. They're just somebody else answering first.
Love,