#73 hometown inertia

do you recognize me, do you remember it?

At home we speak in a language called Marathi, in which my tongue curves around every L and R in a totally different way than it would in my now New York infused English. The inflections change at odd times during conversation, making words like “Diwali” and “Escalator” come out strange, inviting an eye roll or endearing mocking from whoever’s listening. Until a fortnight ago, you’d call me an NRI - bank account and paperwork proving so - but I no longer fit into that bracket. What am I, then? An ex NRI, a pretty little fuck up, a returned prodigal daughter? And who gets to decide?

Once the dragging jet lag wears off and I feel fully awake, I stop to look around my old home, the one in which I spent 24 years, growing from quiet child to angsty teenager to promising(?) young woman. It’s aging but still beautiful - three storeys, big terrace, French windows that let in plenty of tropical sunlight, marble floors, my mother’s crockery shopping addiction displayed behind glass cabinets, mango trees in the garden that burst with fruit in the summer, a big swing in the front yard, magnets from almost every country we’ve ever visited crowding the side of the fridge.

In the two weeks since I’ve returned, I go down a running list of ambiguous and obvious activities - meeting my grandmothers with that sinking feeling you get when you know this might be one of the last times, laughing with aunts and cousins, alternate day sleepovers at P’s house, dinner with my parents, walking through malls and buying things we like but don’t need, getting dressed up for Diwali, splitting drinks and stories at my favorite bar, eating the foods I missed despite the slight softness forming around my stomach, feeling the air in my face in the back of rickshaws, a much needed haircut, reorganizing the contents of four suitcases into closets, tacking up posters and polaroids of my friends, downloading Hinge. I journal a lot but don’t cry even once. There’s a big bleeding gash of sadness somewhere, but being doused in love can be so distracting. If I stay in the moment instead of my head, it’s hard to reach down and touch the wound.

In some ways, the city’s changed - More restaurants have opened, a metro train now runs slowly but steadily over the river to connect neighborhoods, new billboards are inviting you to live further and further away from its center, evidence of an expanding metropolis. In other ways, it hasn’t - worsening traffic still chokes up roads every evening, that judge-first-empath-second attitude still prevails in eye contact, even with strangers, and everyone knows you or someone you know.

In every neighborhood, some clear and sickening memory rises up my throat : 19 and naïve, terrible side part, not yet sure of who I was, letting people break my heart. Failing an exam by 8 marks and crying in a tree lined back alley into my hands. Cigarette smoke billowing through my nostrils from back when caring less for your body was in fashion, and we could all afford to indulge. I articulate to my mother in the back of the car, “My brain remembers who I’ve been in each of these streets, but I feel like the girl I used to be is a stranger now, no longer a resident in my body.” She says I should view the city as a place of respite, and not a stopping point. Saying it without saying it, that’s her specialty. She wants me gone, wings flying again, give them something to brag about, a new trophy to shake in people’s faces that will finally prove why leaving New York was a great idea.

But I can’t seem to put on any kind of performance, can’t wrap my head around a new choice. I stay in bed late, close out of job portals without applying, look away and lie about my feelings often, go out all the time to aid distraction, think about flinging my phone at a wall when I see Central Park emerge in fall colors on Instagram, wonder who I will be if I can’t seem to formulate a plan, slip into insomniac dark blue in the early hours of morning again, go for runs in the night to tire my wired brain into exhaustion but to no avail, and keep putting everything off till tomorrow, even though tomorrow is my least favorite word.

All the love they’re giving me, I want to put into its original packaging and ship back to source. Please don’t love me, because I don’t deserve it, not right now. Hold it back till I’m succeeding again, and then we can set up an installment plan. All the self help wisdom of you are worthy just for existing will never convince me, no, I aim to please, to be loved for accomplishment and perfection and nothing else. My trivial problems are shameful, but they whir to life over and over in my head, chainsaw cutting through bone and no death in sight.

I keep hearing the sound of the New York City subway in my dreams. Someone beautiful I just met says, boldly, “Don’t leave,” because I guess I’ve been talking about leaving ever since I touched down, naming random countries and looking up immigration policies that seem more inviting than others. It won’t be New York again, that’s all over now, but I feel torn apart and angry with myself :

Shouldn’t it feel like home in this town, where everyone knows me, where I’ve spent most of my life, where my family and friends live, where the memories are potent and plastered across miles of familiar roads? And if I want to leave, where am I going? What am I doing about it? Why can’t I get my hands to move? Why must I defy each moment of peace, cause an explosion as soon as the dust settles, live life without my wild mind ever obeying incessant commands that it just fucking lie down and relax?

When I lived in New York, I’d spend entire days without speaking to anyone, just AirPods plugged in and head buried in work. When it got too suffocating, I’d take the subway over the Manhattan bridge, headed nowhere in particular, just trying to get out of my apartment, see a sunset, exist in a third space without engaging in conversation. There were a handful of times on the train when a conversation would waft through noise cancelling music and reach me, for a singular reason : somebody was talking in Marathi, and my brain was wired for the way the words turned and formed and fit into a sentence. An NYU student, showing his parents the sunset against the Brooklyn Bridge. Two best friends, wanting to warn each other about the creepy man across from them, but in code. A family on vacation, frantically trying to figure out confounding subway directions at Union Square.

The sound of language, my language, was a well aimed arrow straight to the heart. It reminded me how no matter how much success and money there was at my disposal in New York, I was hollowing out from the lack of love. In these two weeks, Marathi is starting to bleed into my vocabulary again, more and more words filling the spaces where only Americanized English would fit. I laugh in it, hurl expletives in it, ask questions in it. I still hear the New York City subway in my head when it gets too quiet.

If it’s all about shifting perspective, then gritted teeth optimism demands I be grateful for the opportunity to befriend my hometown again, even if it’s hard to fit into an old mould when you’ve grown haphazardly in other directions. I accept love, seek no applause. But then cynical ambition cuts through my periods of slow rest and shared joy quickly, never afraid to terrorize : Loneliness is the price you will pay for success, which exists outside your comfort zone, which exists in reinvention in a land that isn’t your own. Book a flight to collect the next trophy, and everyone will be clapping in a year from now, asking, “How did you do it?”

Which do I want? Can’t I have both? The angel and the devil, perched on my shoulders, ripping through me so often lately that I’d rather stay frozen in indecision and do nothing than get up and toss the coin in the air, pay attention to which way my heart leaps when it’s on its way back into my palm.