Guest Author
By Khanjari Joshi
All photos by Khanjari Joshi.
The universe, which I am learning, has a peculiar sense of humor. Or perhaps it’s a very strict teacher, and I am a very slow student, destined to repeat the same lesson until it finally sinks in. My lesson, it seems, is about patience, and my final exam was this trip.
It was all supposed to be so perfect. For weeks, the thought of it had been a warm light in the back of my mind. It had been five long years since I’d seen my mom in India. Five years of phone calls and video chats that never quite bridged the distance. This trip wasn’t just a vacation; it was a homecoming. A chance to breathe, to be someone’s daughter again, to finally claim some well-deserved rest. I was so ready. Bags packed Thursday night, a picture of efficiency. Friday, February 27, 2026, 11:30 am, I started the drive to Atlanta, my heart lighter than it had been in months
A mosque outside the airport.
I was on the way to India. The flight to Abu Dhabi was smooth. They served dinner, and as usual, I put on a movie, The Intern. And as usual, those who know me well will not be surprised to hear, I was asleep within the first thirty minutes. I woke up disoriented, having missed a chunk of the plot. No matter, I thought with a smile, rewinding it. This was my time. I could restart movies. I could do anything I wanted. An hour outside Abu Dhabi, I felt a wave of contentment. I got up to brush my teeth, ready to land refreshed.
That’s when the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom. The words were muffled, distorted by the tiny bathroom speaker. I caught only the tone: serious, urgent. I rushed back to my seat. My neighbor’s face was pale. “Abu Dhabi has closed its airspace,” she said. “Political unrest. We’re being rerouted to Istanbul.”
My heart didn’t just sink, it plummeted, a cold stone dropping into a vast, dark well. An hour and three minutes. That’s how long we had left to fly. It felt like a lifetime. Every minute was a battle to simply feel the solid reassurance of the wheels touching the ground. When they finally did, it wasn’t relief I felt, but a new, sharper kind of chill. It wasn’t just the cold Istanbul air that hit me as we deplaned onto the tarmac, stairs leading down to a waiting bus. It was the chill of uncertainty. We were on the ground, yes, but this wasn’t home. This wasn’t even where we were supposed to be. Anxiety, the fear of traveling alone in a suddenly volatile world, it all wrapped around me.
The bus ride to the terminal felt endless. Inside, the atmosphere was thick with confusion. Then came the instruction: “Stay with your group. The police will be performing their duties.” Police. The word was a jolt of ice water. We weren’t criminals. We were just people, travelers – pieces scattered mid-game on a global board. In that moment, the deep blue of my American passport in my bag felt like a tiny, warm Sapphire. Gratitude. A strange thing to feel, but there it was. All I needed was a stamp, a bureaucratic blessing to exist here legally. It could be worse. It wasn’t, yet.
The wait for our bags was an agonizing, hour-and-a-half-long test of faith. But they came. Good thing number one. Then began the march. Following officials, we trudged what felt like five miles through the biting cold, a long, straggling line of displaced souls, until we were herded onto coaches. After a 45-minute ride, we were deposited at the Holiday Inn Express. Chaos at the check-in counter. Gnawing hunger. A leftover dinner buffet of salad, rice, bread, and lentil soup. It was fuel. We ate it silently.
Jetlagged, stressed, and deeply insecure, sleep was a foreign concept. I called home, my voice – a mix of exhaustion and forced calm. My family, ever the optimists, offered the only comfort they could: “You are safe and that’s all that matters!” My friends, ever supportive offered the viewpoint… “When life gives you lemons… enjoy lemonade (maybe explore Istanbul?)” It felt absurd, but the idea took root. Maybe this was an unplanned adventure. Maybe I could get those famous swing pictures I’d always dreamed of, a Bollywood-style moment in a beautiful saree against a stunning Istanbul backdrop. I actually looked up sites, made a mental plan. Hope, it seems, is as stubborn as fear.
The next morning, breakfast was another study in peculiarity: onion rings, potato wedges, bread and jam, and a plate of sliced veggies. We ate, we mingled, we constantly refreshed flight apps. Then the calls started. One by one, some fellow travelers were summoned to the reception with their luggage. A flight out may have been found. The receptionist’s warning to us all was clear: “Don’t go anywhere. You could be called at any moment.”
And just like that, my dream of Swing pictures in Istanbul evaporated. We were prisoners of possibility. I tried to nap, snatching maybe two hours of restless sleep. We ate another weird combination of food for lunch. Just as the weight of it all was becoming unbearable, a small miracle: someone discovered a shop selling fresh baklava. A small group of us walked there, the sticky-sweet pastry, a brief, tangible comfort in a world of abstractions.
Baklava shop displaying baked goods.
Sitting there, chewing on honey and nuts, the uncertainty became too heavy to ignore. I started weighing options in my head, a frantic pros and cons list. The political situation felt like a powder keg. I don’t choose war, I choose peace. I don’t choose chaos, I choose calm. And staying in limbo was neither. With a heavy heart, I joined a WhatsApp conference call with my family.
We made the decision. It was time to go home. I booked a flight back to the USA immediately. A wave of exhausted relief washed over me. Finally, an end was in sight. I slept decently that night.
The next morning, I ate a quick breakfast and headed to the airport with a newfound sense of purpose. Check-in was smooth. I even made it to the lounge with a fellow traveler, allowing myself a small sigh of relief. This was it. I was going home.
Then, my body betrayed me. As the boarding time approached, a violent wave of nausea hit. I rushed to the bathroom, vomiting repeatedly, my flight time slipping away with each heave. By the time I stumbled out, weak and dizzy, the gate was closed. They refused to open it. And just like that, the universe had closed another door. The flight was gone.
Standing there, sick and defeated, I felt the full, crushing weight of the universe’s joke. I tried to hang in, tried to pivot, tried to make the safe choice, and at every turn, there was another unpleasant surprise waiting. Another door slamming shut.
But as I waited to rebook, shivering with a fever and frustration, I thought of my missed swing. And I pulled out my phone. If I couldn’t be there in body, in a beautiful saree on a picturesque Istanbul hilltop, then by God, I would be there in spirit. I opened an AI app and started typing. A few seconds later, there it was: a picture of me, on a swing, overlooking the Bosphorus, clad in a flowing saree, a perfect, cinematic smile on my face.
It’s not real. I know that. But looking at it, I feel a flicker of the warmth I’d been chasing. It’s a small act of defiance. A reminder that even when you feel like a nameless blip on a geopolitical radar screen, you still have an inner world they can’t touch. The trip was a failure. The chaos was real, and it was terrifying. But I am safe. My stomach will settle. I will see my mom. And I have a ridiculous, beautiful AI-generated picture that, for now, is enough. It has to be. Because even in the midst of this mess, stripped of all illusion of control, I have to believe that there’s a larger picture I’m just not seeing yet.
And this is why I’m sharing this. Not just to vent, but because this experience is important. It’s one thing to hear a sanitized, politically curated news report about “regional instability” or “airspace closures.” It’s a tidy headline, a thirty-second soundbite. It’s entirely another to be inside that headline. To be the human in the headline whose life is suddenly, violently disrupted by a decision made in a room you’ll never see, by people who will never know your name. It gives you a stark, terrifying perspective on how little you are in the grand scheme. Big countries, political blocs, they make decisions that ripple outwards, and they don’t care that one of those ripples just capsized your long-awaited trip to see your mother. Your carefully laid plans, your well-deserved time off, your personal dreams – they are collateral damage in a game much larger than yourself. In that moment, you’re not a person with a story; you’re just a variable, an anonymous inconvenience to be processed and managed.
All these thoughts, the frustration, the fear, the reflection, the desperate search for gratitude, they all swirled through my mind as I sat in the Istanbul airport, sick and exhausted, waiting to board the next flight home.
The night felt endless. But mornings have a way of arriving, and with the morning came a small but stubborn hope. I boarded the plane. The flight was long, but smooth and uneventful. My prayers, it seemed, had finally been heard.
When the wheels touched down in Atlanta, I didn’t feel the same chill I had felt in Istanbul. I felt warmth. I didn’t wait a single minute longer. I drove straight home to Charlotte.
Walking through my front door, I was met by the one voice that could truly melt all the residual ice from this ordeal. My daughter. She ran to me, wrapped her arms around me. “I am sorry that you couldn’t see your mumma,” she said softly. “But I am so happy my mumma is back,” tightening the wrap with every word.
And just like that, the larger picture I had been straining to see finally came into focus. It wasn’t the one I had planned. It wasn’t the Bollywood-style swing pictures in an Istanbul sunset.
It was simply this: a warm home, a child’s embrace, the quiet reminder that I am someone’s ‘mumma’. For now, in the aftermath of a trip derailed by forces far beyond my control, that is more than enough.
Khanjari Joshi is a 20-year Charlotte resident, now working in Raleigh. A mother, an artist and a dessert creator, she finds joy in blending flavors on a plate, colors on canvas and moments of joy and cherishment with her daughter – much like she blends resilience and gratitude in everyday life. Contact: rang.colorfulstrokes@gmail.com.
