‘You start looking up to God when nothing else works out in life, isn’t it? I think that’s going to be my perspective from now on,’ I say.

I sit there in Shahnawaz’s home, lost in my thoughts and unable to wrap my head around all that happened in the past hour. I can hear the faint traces of country music playing somewhere in the apartment, but I can’t focus on the words. All I can think about is that everything had unfolded too quickly, like a single clap, and that sometimes, the world turns around in the duration of a clap. You can never plan what goes around and what comes around. Maybe Neer has left me today because at one point I had left Nirvaan. If we delegate the task of settling scores to the universe, it does its job best. Leaving it to God, as they say!

‘You can always count on me!’ Shahnawaz breaks the silence.

‘Thank you for the free therapy session,’ I say, smiling to lighten the mood. ‘Shall we go to the grocery store now?’ I ask him. ‘I could sure do with the walk.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ he replies.

We quickly wear our overcoats and step out into the cold. It’s freezing, but the fresh air does me good. I take Shahnawaz to the local stores near our apartment that are run by some Indians so he could find the right supplies easily. Once I’m back in my apartment, I get swept up in work again, and much later in the evening, I find myself standing by the huge glass window and looking at the moon.

In a couple of months from now, India will launch Chandrayaan 3, a lunar mission with the objective of landing on the dark side of the moon. I wonder how things will change after that. Of course, this mission will raise India’s international standing even further, but for me, will it change the way I look at the moon? Will it become less mysterious for me?

And if the mission lands perfectly this time around, will I have the courage to call my dad and tell him that my country’s future isn’t as doomed and bleak as the mentality of the people around me, people like him?

There was a time when I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer and work at ISRO. But with my family situation, I knew it was not going to happen. Even Kalpana Chawla had to move to the West to pursue her ambitions.

Things are different today. Even as I think about the lunar mission, I feel a sense of pride in being Indian. I might be living and working in the US, but I still hold an Indian passport. And in spite of all my years here as a resident alien, an immigrant, I have never felt a sense of belonging.