I felt Vishnu relax into his seat when the plane took off and wondered if he too felt the excitement that had started to manifest in my stomach, creeping up through my chest. I had never been on a plane before, and I took in the sound of clicking seat belts around us and the cold air blowing at my temples. I listened intently to the airline hostess describe in Hindi what to do in the event of an emergency. When she switched to English, I tried to listen for the phrases I knew, but she spoke so quickly that I soon gave up. I leaned back and imagined all the differences awaiting me in a new land.
I had packed the letter Nani wrote to us before passing, the one with her bangles, one for each of us. Never leave each other’s sides, it said. I cried for hours when I first read it. Now I kept it close to remind myself I would return. It was comforting, in a way, but I still felt that I was betraying Asya by leaving India. Searching for her was all I had done for over a year, but we hadn’t come close to finding her. What if she thought I had forgotten her? Was she even still alive?
I looked around us at the English signs I recognized—No Smoking, Exit, Emergency—and thought of all the new words I would need to learn to navigate my new city.
A woman in the row behind us was discussing her wedding plans. She spoke of the flowers, saying that they were “simply gorgeous.” She placed emphasis on the first syllable of gorgeous, which I practiced saying silently to myself.
I thought of the marigold and rose-petal garlands used in the weddings I had seen at home, with our whole village flooding the streets. I thought of how different Asya’s and my life would be had we accepted the marriage proposals Dadi had planned to arrange. Would it have been better to stay? At least then we would be together.
I could not sleep, so, like the young child in front of me, I stared out the window as we moved swiftly past the patterns of night clouds. I wondered about the family in front of us, whose dialect I could not understand. Possibly South Indian. I heard the sounds of Telugu when the boy pointed out the window and asked his mother something. Through the seats I saw the boy holding on to her shawl, curling his fingers at the fringed ends as I touched my belly. This would be me soon. A mother.
I closed my eyes as I felt the plane descend. When the wheels touched the ground, I waited for my heart to finally stop pounding. We were here. In the terminal, everyone moved fast, like in Mumbai, and so we kept our pace but stayed close. At immigration and customs, the officials asked us questions and inspected our passports and visas, looking down at our photos and then to our faces. I was smiling slightly in my passport photo. Vishnu had made me laugh when it was taken, both of us overjoyed to finally get through the process, which had been difficult without proper documents. When we passed the baggage area, I took a deep breath in and released. I was here.