The sky cracked open over the Upper West Side yesterday like it had a personal grudge.
I was walking to the 1 train on Broadway when it started. Not the polite drizzle that lets you find an awning. The biblical kind. The kind where umbrellas surrender and turn inside out and everyone just laughs because there's nothing else to do.
So I ducked into a bodega near 79th. You know the one. Every bodega is the one.
And here's the thing about a sudden August storm in NYC. It smells exactly like the monsoon back home. That specific smell of hot pavement meeting cold rain, petrichor, whatever the poets call it. In Ahmedabad we'd run to the terrace when the first rains came. Here I run into a bodega and buy chips I don't need out of guilt for using the shelter.
The bodega cat, whose name turned out to be Biscuit, watched me from atop the ice cream freezer with total contempt. Fair. I was dripping on his floor.
The guy behind the counter and I made small talk about the weather, which is the great equalizer. "Crazy, right?" "Crazy." That's the whole conversation. It's enough.
I stayed maybe fifteen minutes. Watched the rain sheet down Broadway. Watched a man sprint past with a garbage bag over his head, improvising. Watched a couple share one tiny umbrella badly, both getting soaked, both smiling.
There's a scene in every Bollywood film where the rain forces two people together. I got the rain and a cat named Biscuit and a bag of chili chips. Not quite Chopra romance. But honestly, comforting in its own way.
When it eased I made a run for the 1 train, shoes squelching, feeling ridiculous and alive.
Got home soaked. Wouldn't change it.
Let the rain catch you sometimes. It smells like everywhere you've ever been.
Love,