I caught a summer flu, which is the most insulting kind. It's July. The city is a sauna. And there I was in my Harlem apartment, wrapped in a blanket, feeling sorry for myself and very far from home.
When you're sick alone in New York, you understand loneliness in a new grammar. There's no mother appearing with a tray. No Ba pressing her hand to your forehead. Just you, the ceiling, and the sound of the 2 train somewhere below.
I texted Neha almost by accident. I'm dying, dramatic, ignore me. She lives all the way out in Bushwick. I didn't expect anything.
Two hours later my buzzer rang. She'd taken the J, then transferred, then walked up from the station in this heat carrying a warm container of khichdi she'd made from scratch. Yellow, soft, exactly the way my mother makes it when I'm unwell. With a little bowl of ghee on the side because she knows.
I cried. Obviously. I'm always crying in these posts, I know.
We don't choose our families back home. But out here, three thousand miles from Ahmedabad, you build one from scratch. From girls you met at fashion week and never let go of. From the people who ride the J train across the city because you said you were dying, dramatically.
Neha sat on my floor and made me watch a terrible Bollywood movie until I fell asleep mid-song.
Chosen family doesn't replace the one that raised you. It just makes sure you're never actually alone.
Send the text. Someone might show up with khichdi.
Love,