The 6 train at 7AM is not for the weak. It is a moving box of people pretending they are not touching each other while absolutely touching each other.
I got on at 68th-Hunter College because I had a fitting uptown, and the car was already at that specific density where you breathe in rhythm with strangers. A man was eating a bacon egg and cheese with the confidence of a king.
But here is the thing that saved me. My roommate Ananya had made chai the night before and left it in the fridge, and I poured it into her steel thermos on my way out the door. The one with the dent from when she dropped it in the sink.
So there I was on the 6 train at 7AM, wedged between a backpack and a pole, sipping chai that tasted exactly like my mummy's, and suddenly it was okay. The elaichi did what three years of therapy could not.
The 6 train at 7AM will humble you, but a good thermos will hold you together. I have learned this the hard way, standing over people's shoulders reading their group chats.
By 42nd-Grand Central the car cleared out a little and I got a seat, which felt like being handed a small trophy. I finished the chai around 51st Street and felt genuinely sad, the way you feel when a song ends before your stop.
There is a woman I see almost every morning near the doors, always in a perfect trench, always calm, and I want to be her when I grow up. This week she saw me clutching my dented thermos and smiled. Small city miracle.
We do not talk about how much of NYC survival is just liquids. Coffee, chai, the seltzer you buy from the bodega because it is 94 degrees and your soul is leaving your body.
I got off at 59th and the air hit me like a wall, and I still had the thermos warm in my hand.
Carry the chai. The city takes enough.
Love,