I have started leaving for work at 7AM, not because I am responsible, but because the 6 train at 7AM is a different animal than the 6 train at 8:30.
At 7 it is quiet in that holy, half-asleep way. Construction guys with thermoses. A nurse already done with her shift. Me, clutching a paper cup from the bodega on Mott and Spring.
The man there knows I take chai now, not coffee. He doesn't call it chai. He calls it "the tea, extra hot, you put the cinnamon." Close enough. It is nothing like my mummy's adrak chai that could resurrect the dead, but at 7AM on a Tuesday it does the job.
The bodega chai is the cheat code to my whole day. Two dollars. Warm hands on the platform. The little hiss of the train coming.
The 6 train slides in and I get my favorite spot, the corner by the door where you can lean and pretend you are in a moody music video instead of going to a fashion office.
Somewhere around Union Square the car fills up. By 23rd Street it is shoulder to shoulder and the spell breaks. But for those eight minutes between Spring and Union, with my bodega chai and the morning light coming through the windows as we briefly surface, I feel like the city belongs to me.
In Ahmedabad mornings were loud — pressure cookers, the temple bell, my dad's radio. Here the loud comes later. The morning, if you catch it early enough, is yours to keep.
I used to think you had to escape the commute to enjoy New York. Now I think the commute is the city showing you its face before it puts on makeup.
So I keep waking up at 6:40. I keep buying the tea, extra hot, with the cinnamon.
Come find me on the 6. I'm the one leaning by the door, pretending I'm in a video.
Love,