My building in Astoria has a roof you're technically not allowed on. Which means everyone is always on it.
Sunday evening I went up with a chai and a folding chair I bought off a stoop for four dollars. The N train rumbled past in the distance. The Manhattan skyline sat there being smug and gorgeous in the gold-hour light, like it does.
Three people I'd never met were already up there. A guy named Marcus with a speaker playing old Marvin Gaye. A couple sharing a slice from the place on 30th Avenue. We did the New York nod — the one that says I see you, I'm not weird, this roof is big enough for all of us.
Then Marcus asked what I was drinking and I said chai and he said "like, real chai or basic chai" and I laughed so hard I almost spilled it. Real chai, Marcus. Boiled with ginger. I'd made a thermos. I shared.
And somehow forty minutes later the four of us were just talking. About rent. About the heat coming. About how the Astoria rooftop is the only place in this whole city where you can actually breathe.
This is what nobody warns you about New York. You'll feel alone for weeks and then a stranger on a roof in Astoria will compliment your chai and the loneliness just quietly leaves the room.
Back home in Ahmedabad we had a terrace. Evenings there meant aunties drying papad and kids flying kites and everyone in everyone's business. I missed it more than I admitted. This Astoria rooftop isn't that. But Sunday, with Marvin Gaye and warm tar under my chair and three strangers becoming slightly-less-strangers, it was close enough to make my chest ache in the good way.
The sun went down behind the skyline. Somebody's mom called somebody home. The N train kept passing.
I didn't get their last names. I might never see them again. That's okay.
Some verandahs are temporary. They still count.
Love,