gabi na naman

Amma calls from Chennai while I'm in New York, the evening settling into darkness here, morning breaking there. She speaks Tamil, her words wrapping around me like jasmine incense. I haven't been home in two years, yet her voice carries every memory: grandmother's kitchen, monsoon streets, festivals I now celebrate alone. "Gabi na naman," she sighs. Another evening without you. I promise to visit soon, knowing the diaspora's weight. My children ask what she said. I translate love into English, but something dissolves in conversion. Yet teaching them Tamil prayers feels like planting seeds across oceans. Here, in this foreign darkness, I'm keeper of something precious, tethered to roots that somehow still nourish us all.