Nobody told me it would feel like this.
Not my mother, not my cousin Priya, not the woman from the scholarship office who shook my hand and said good luck like she really meant it. They all said New York was big. They all said it was loud. But none of them said that the moment you land, the city looks right through you. Like you are not there at all.
I had just flown fourteen hours from India with a dream, two suitcases, and a cheese sandwich I had not eaten. I was twenty-two years old. I had a full scholarship to one of the best medical schools in the United States. I had worked my whole life for this moment.
And New York had already lost my luggage.
I stood at the baggage carousel for forty minutes. Every single bag came out except mine. A red duffel, A pram, A man's golf clubs, three times, which made no sense at all. I watched it all go around like I was watching a show I had not paid for.
When I finally went to the lost baggage desk, the man behind it looked at my form, looked at his screen, and then looked at me in a way that said he had done this a thousand times and was tired of all of it.
"We'll have it to you in two to three days," he said.
"Two to three days," I said back.
"Yes ma'am."
I nodded like that was fine. It was not fine. Everything I owned was in those bags. But I said thank you, took my claim slip, and walked out.
The arrivals hall hit me all at once. The noise. The people. The smell of coffee and something fried and cold air conditioning all at the same time. I stopped walking and just stood there with my carry-on beside me, people rushing past on both sides, nobody looking at me.
This was it. I was here.
I waited to feel something big. Some kind of joy, or excitement, or at least relief.
What I felt was hungry.
My apartment was in Queens. I found it after one wrong train and one wrong turn, dragging my bag over broken pavement in the August heat. The sun was going down and turning everything warm and orange, and I stopped to take a photo for my mother. Then I stood there trying to think of what to write and could not, so I sent it without a caption.
The building buzzer did not work. A man named Gerald came out from behind the postboxes and took me upstairs without saying much. I was grateful for that. I had run out of words somewhere over the Atlantic.
The apartment was small. I had known it would be small, I had seen the photos. But photos have a way of lying. The walls were a tired shade of white. There was a window that looked out onto a metal fire escape, a kitchen that was also the dining room, and a radiator in the corner that Gerald slapped twice with his hand.
"Kicks in by October," he said.
It was August.
"Perfect," I said.
He left. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. This was the room I would study in, cry in, eat in, sleep in. This was where the next few years of my life were going to happen.
I had pictured arriving here feeling like someone who had made it.
I felt like a girl who needed a shower, a real meal, and maybe a long cry. In that order.
I called my mother at eleven. Back home it was seven in the morning, and she picked up on the second ring. That meant she had been awake for a while, waiting.
"How is it?" she said, before I had even said hello.
"It's amazing," I said. "Really, really good."
I was sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, looking at the wall in front of me. I ran through everything I could not say. That my bags were lost. That the apartment was smaller than I had thought. That I had eaten nothing but a sad plane sandwich all day. That I had stood in the middle of one of the busiest airports in the world and felt completely, totally alone.
I said none of it.
"You look thin in the photo," my mother said.
"Mum. I sent you a photo of a sunset."
"I could still tell."
I laughed, and it surprised me. For a moment the room felt less strange.
"I'm fine," I said. "I'll call you properly tomorrow when I've slept."
After I hung up, I sat there in the quiet. Outside, the city kept going. Sirens. Music. Someone shouting something two floors up. New York does not stop for anyone. I had known that. But sitting in it now, I did not find it scary the way I had expected. It felt like company. Like the city was busy being itself, and I was allowed to sit in the corner of it.
I got up, brushed my teeth, and ate the cheese sandwich from my bag. It was squashed and warm. It was the best thing I had tasted all day.
I was asleep before ten.
In the morning, the sun came through the window and lay across the floor in a long yellow stripe. I stayed in bed and listened to the sounds of the building. Pipes. Footsteps above me. Someone's TV through the wall.
Six days. I had six days before orientation. Six days to learn the subway, find a grocery store, buy a pillow that was not flat as a piece of paper.
My phone buzzed. The airline. My bags had been found. They would arrive that afternoon.
I smiled at the ceiling.
I did not know yet what this city was going to do to me. I did not know about the nights I would spend crying over textbooks, or the friends I would pull close and then push away, or the boy who would make me feel like the most important person in the room right up until the moment he did not.
I did not know any of that yet.
All I knew was that my bags were coming, the sun was out, and I had six days.
I got up.
New York was waiting.