Why I am the sum of two worlds | Eye News

And now, three months away, and I am back. If someone were watching me now, standing at the curbside in the dim early light of February, they might think I had won a million-dollar lotto, grinning ear to ear, cheek to cheek, tooth to tooth. The city pulls me back into its fold, the way a tide reclaims the shore, the way an old song rekindles forgotten emotions. This is the land of the footloose and fancy-free, the soil where so many have planted their dreams, even as those dreams are now uprooted by the callous cruelty of a nation fraying at its seams.

Today’s America, with Trump’s shadow still cast long and looming, is not the one I fell for. It is an America that is deporting dreams, driving out hope, dimming the beacon that once burned so bright. It is a place where walls rise faster than opportunities, where fear festers in the cracks of communities once bound by belief. And yet, in the eyes of my Uber driver — a man from Cuba, who nods at me in the rear-view mirror as he weaves us through the highways of a country that may never fully claim him — I see something I recognise. I see the same spark that flickered within me all those years ago, the same unspoken agreement that we are here not just for ourselves, but for the others we left behind, the others who wait for news, for proof, for a promise fulfilled.

The wheels hum against the asphalt as my mind drifts back, decades folding upon themselves like old letters tucked in a drawer. I was a student at the School of Visual Arts, learning not just graphic design, art history and photography but the architecture of ambition, the scaffolding of survival. There was no sprawling campus, no manicured greens, no lazy afternoons on university lawns. My campus was the city itself, its galleries and gutters, its museums and midnight diners, its rhythm of rush and restlessness. By day, I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift store, a stock boy stacking shelves, a silent observer in the temple of treasures. By night, I was everywhere at once — soaking in the symphony of sirens and street performers, of poetry slams and protests, of underground jazz clubs and overcooked bodega sandwiches eaten under flickering streetlights. I was young and the city was mine.

The city taught me to work, to want, to wait. From stock boy to supervisor, from supervisor to store manager, I climbed, not with calculation but with the sheer force of showing up, of saying yes, of stepping into roles I hadn’t planned for but somehow made my own. I lived in Montclair then, calling car service each morning, riding to Short Hills like a prince without a kingdom, learning how to navigate America in a way they don’t teach in classrooms. I was Indian, I was immigrant, I was instinct, I was ambition. I never lost my accent, never shed my skin to fit into another. I was, and always would be, the sum of two worlds, stitched together by hunger and history.

Thirty years in America have made me who I am, and yet, I do not belong entirely to it. I think like an American, move like a Manhattanite, breathe, pause, dream like a New Yorker. And yet, a part of me still aches for the home I left, for the taste of Bari Matar cooked by my mother, for the scent of okra crisping in a pan, for the warmth of Delhi’s smoggy sunsets bleeding into the bougainvillea outside our old house.

Bari Matar. A winter dish, an incredible dish, an embodiment of time and tradition, a taste of rooftops kissed by the Punjab sun. It begins with dried lentils — hulled and split urad dal —mashed with sweet, golden pumpkin pulp, bound by the fiery bite of black pepper, then sun-dried on terraces where the winter air crisps them into hardened nuggets of nourishment. These sun-dried dumplings, humble yet powerful, are then simmered in a gravy rich with slow-sweated onions and sun-ripened tomatoes, their natural sweetness coaxed out by the alchemy of heat and time. Freshly shelled green peas, plump with the season’s last whispers, are scattered into the broth, their verdant pop a counterpoint to the deep umami of the dumplings. The flavours built, layer upon layer, a symphony of spice, smoke, and slow-cooked comfort.

And yet, even as I sat in Delhi, breaking apart a flaking, crisp haath ki roti, mopping up the rich, velvety Bari Matar, I was already craving a slice of New York pizza, a Sicilian square, the bite of tomato against the chew of dough, the tang of cheese and memory interwoven.

Never fully here, never fully there.

I arrive in America this morning, clueless if I have a home here anymore, and yet, I feel at home. Because the wanderer that I am, I live in wanderlust. My head finds just a surface to rest on for a few hours every night, and in that brief pause between waking and dreaming, I belong. Home is not a GPS location.

“Main apni talash mein hoon, mera koi rahnuma nahin hai.

Woh kya dikhayenge raah mujhko, jinhain khud apna pata nahin hai.”

I am anchored wherever I am, because I am always searching — for myself, for the richer, newer, greater version of me that I know exists just beyond the horizon of today.

Dhobi ka kutta, na ghar ka na ghat ka.

I belong to both, and to neither.

Kabir once wrote:

“Chalti chakki dekh kar diya Kabira roye,

Do patan ke beech mein sabut bacha na koye.”

(“Watching the grinding stones, Kabir laments,

In between two stones, nothing remains intact.”)

And yet, I remain. I am neither crushed nor consumed. I do not seek a single place to call mine, because I carry my belonging within me.

Rumi reminds me: “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

And so I move, again and again, for as long as the road stretches before me.