There is a specific light that happens in New York in the first week of October, and I am not emotionally prepared for it every single year.
I was on the 1 train Tuesday evening, coming back from a fabric run near 14th Street, half-dead, phone at 3 percent. And somewhere between Houston and Christopher Street the sun came in sideways through the windows and turned everyone gold.
The man eating a halal gyro. The teenager asleep on his backpack. A woman's grey hair lit up like someone had haloed her on purpose.
The October light on the 1 train does this. It lasts maybe eleven minutes and then the tunnel swallows it and you're back to regular fluorescent misery.
I got off at Christopher Street even though it wasn't my stop. I just wanted to stand in it a little longer. Walked up into the West Village where the trees are doing that early almost-turning thing, not fully red yet, just thinking about it.
Back home in Ahmedabad, October meant Navratri. Garba till 2am, feet destroyed, that specific exhaustion that feels like belonging. Here October is quieter. It's light on a train. It's a season changing without asking me first.
I bought a coffee I didn't need from a cart near Sheridan Square just to keep standing outside. The barista — cart-ista? — told me to have a blessed one. I meant it when I said you too.
The October light on the 1 train will be gone by the time you read this. It always is. That's the whole deal.
Stand in the gold when you catch it. It won't wait.
Love,