From Rickshaws to River Towns - Frenchtown, New Jersey: A Memoir

Rivertown Bridge Scene Happy Place Dish

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If someone had told me twenty years ago that I would trade the symphony of Indian traffic—horns, rickshaws, chaiwallahs shouting “chai! chai! Coffee”—for the slow hum of crickets in a New Jersey river town, I would have laughed so hard I’d have choked on my samosa. Chennai and Hyderabad in India, had chaos in every sense: you weren’t just living in the city, you were colliding with it.

But life has a way of nudging, whispering, sometimes shoving. And so, on a foggy fall morning that looked more like a movie set than actual weather, I found myself—suitcases, spice tins, and stubborn optimism in tow—moving to a tiny dot on the map called Frenchtown, New Jersey.

Cities in India ( and for that matter, Jersey City as well, which I called home for over a decade) moved like a dance—you are either in step or you’re crushed. Frenchtown, by comparison, moved like a pause button had been pressed. The first night, I lay in bed straining to hear something—anything—beyond the rustle of leaves and crickets. Silence, I discovered, has a flavor. It tastes like discomfort.

In India, on several occasions I have witnessed farmers herd goats across a four-lane intersection while simultaneously talking on his Nokia and balancing a sack of veggies on his head. In Frenchtown, traffic was slower, calmer... so much so that on some days the most traffic I encountered was deer taking their time crossing the tow path. As for honking, I forgot what it sounded like.

I lived in Jersey city for a while before I made this leap and there, no corner store clerk ever remembered my name, or even recognized I had been there before. Here, the shopkeepers and restaurants remembered not just my name, but what I ordered last time and also how I wanted it. "Not spicy and with garlic sauce, "one said , sliding my entree on my table like she’d known me since childhood. I nearly cried into it.

In Frenchtown, everyone is always friendly. People greet one another on the townpath, often having time to exchange a few lines; the mailwoman always waves when I pass and Max at the community flower garden wishes me with a namaste.

Of course, there were days when I missed home or the idea of home, a city, India or some place familiar, so fiercely it ached in my bones, especially when it is cold, and it gets dark at 4:30PM. I miss just walking out and getting good India food. So I cook a lot. I fill my little kitchen with turmeric, cumin, coriander, and lots of other spices.

But just at that moment, the universe knows what I need and sends help from my sweet, small town. A neighbor stops by with a tray of cookies, or a little kid on his way home from school, waves to me calling my name or a neighbor invites me to a meal.

There’s a peculiar thing about being an immigrant in a small town: you are both invisible and impossible to miss. People notice you, but not in the suspicious way they might in bigger cities. They ask where you’re from with genuine curiosity, not bureaucratic suspicion.

It is accepting and is allowing me to keep my identity while helping make new memories, alongside its own. Frenchtown is not asking me to conform. It just pulled up a chair and said, “Tell us your story.” And so, somewhere between spice jars and snowfall, jazz nights and chai mornings, I stopped feeling like I was visiting. I started to belong.

Indian and Jersey City made me loud, fast, resilient. Frenchtown is making me quiet enough to hear myself. And sometimes, when I walk along the D&R Canal trail ( the tow path) and sunlight catches the maple leaves just so, I think: this isn’t the life I imagined....

But maybe it’s the one I needed.

Frenchtown's Race Street Dish

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