Wednesday tried to break me.
I won't bore you with the details, but it involved a client, a collection that got scrapped at the eleventh hour, and me holding it together in a bathroom on Seventh Avenue until I could get on the train.
I got off at Astor Place with no plan except not going home yet. Home is where you cry, and I wasn't ready to admit the day had won.
So I walked. Down toward 6th Street, which if you don't know, is the little stretch the whole city calls Curry Row, though half of it is Bangladeshi and the labels are a longer conversation than I have room for tonight.
And I found dosa. A midnight dosa, technically 11PM, in a narrow place with fluorescent lights and a TV playing something loud and Tamil in the corner.
I ordered a masala dosa and a coffee and sat alone in the East Village feeling sorry for myself, and then the plate came out — this enormous crispy golden thing hanging off both sides of the plate like it had somewhere better to be.
The first bite. The sambar, the coconut chutney, the potato spiced exactly the way it's supposed to be spiced.
And I felt my shoulders come down from my ears for the first time all day.
There's something about eating your childhood food alone in a foreign city at night. It's the loneliest and least lonely thing at once. Nobody knows you're there. But the flavor knows exactly who you are.
An older uncle at the next table saw me eating like a woman starved and said, "Good, no?" I nodded. He said, "Everything is better after dosa." Then he went back to his phone like he hadn't just dropped a whole philosophy on me.
He was right. A midnight dosa in the East Village did what no amount of self-help could.
The collection is still scrapped. I'm still fine.
Some days you don't need a fix. You need a plate that's too big for the table.
Love,