There's a bodega cat on my corner in the West Village named Laddu — I named him, the owner just shrugged and let it stick — and Tuesday morning he knew it would rain before I did.
He was curled up behind the register where it's dry, refusing his usual perch in the window. I should have read the sign. Instead I walked out in linen and zero umbrella, optimistic and stupid, the way I am most mornings.
Three blocks later the sky opened up.
A rainy Tuesday in New York City has its own choreography. The collective groan. The instant origami of newspapers held over heads. The umbrella vendors materializing out of thin air like they were summoned by the first drop, selling five-dollar umbrellas that will turn inside out by the next gust and we buy them anyway.
I ran for the 1 train at Christopher Street, soaked through, and the whole platform was a steam room of wet New Yorkers all making the same face. There's something almost tender about it. We're all ruined together. Strangers exchanging the little rueful smile that means: yeah, this is biblical, huh.
I thought about how in Ahmedabad the first monsoon rain is a celebration. People go up to terraces. Kids run out. There's pakoras and chai and the smell of wet earth that has a name — petrichor, but we just call it the smell of relief. Here, rain is mostly an inconvenience to be sprinted through.
But on that crowded 1 train, dripping, I decided to be Ahmedabad about it. I let myself like the rain. The way it makes the city smell briefly washed. The way every window goes impressionist.
A rainy Tuesday in New York City is not a tragedy. It's just the city being honest about its moods.
I got to work looking like a drowned thing. Worth it.
Next time, I'm trusting the cat.
Love,