There is a science to the 6 train in August, and I have been failing the exam all week.
Here is the thing nobody tells you about the 6 train AC lottery: the cars are not created equal. You step onto the platform at 59th, sweat already gluing your linen shirt to your spine, and you have exactly eight seconds to guess which car will save you.
Monday I guessed wrong. I got the car where the AC had clearly given up sometime around the Bloomberg administration. It was hot the way my nani's kitchen used to be hot in July, when she'd be frying puris and refusing to open a window because "the air will spoil the oil." No air. Only oil. Only suffering.
Tuesday I got the Antarctica car. Full parka weather. A man across from me had goosebumps and the serene face of someone who had won something.
By Wednesday I developed a system for the 6 train AC lottery, and I am sharing it because I love you. Watch the people already inside. If they look damp and defeated, that car is broken. If they look smug and slightly cold, board immediately and do not question your luck.
Also: the middle cars, generally, run colder. The conductor's car near the front is a coin toss. Never trust an empty car in August. Empty is a warning, not an invitation. Empty means the AC died and everyone fled.
I think about how in Ahmedabad we just accepted the heat. You wore cotton, you drank chaas, you moved slowly and you did not fight it. Here we fight everything. We fight the heat with machines that break, and then we fight the machines by playing a lottery every single morning.
Today I got a good car. Cold, not cruel. I sat down, put my earphones in, and felt genuinely, embarrassingly grateful. A whole mood shift over a functioning vent.
New York gives you nothing for free, but sometimes it gives you a cold car on a hot day.
May your next 6 train be freezing.
Love,