flâneur

New Jersey-Delhi

neall.substack.com · 736 words · saved by 1 readers

Field notes from the motherland

New Jersey has Indians of a sort I rarely see. I'm writing from Edison: a place with no shortage of Indian blue-collar business owners, operating barefoot in spartan textile shops, with entrances adorned with garlands and ceilings stained by incense. I walked into one such shop this morning to get a sari adjusted for my mom. The elderly proprietor peered at me over her bifocals, reluctant to part with the drama playing on her phone. I relayed my mother's request in broken Hindi and received a quote so low that it felt unseemly to haggle. I was raised in Ashburn, Virginia — one of a few DC…

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