There is a man named Sami who runs a coffee cart on Lexington and 77th, and he has decided that I get extra ice without asking. This is the closest thing I have to family on the Upper East Side.
My 7AM iced coffee ritual is non-negotiable now. I get off the 6 train one stop early just to walk past his cart. Even in June, when the platform already smells like warm metal and someone's leftover halal, I want the cold cup in my hand before I face the office.
Sami calls me "beta" sometimes, which makes me want to cry into my own coffee. He's from Bangladesh, I'm from Ahmedabad, and somehow on a Manhattan sidewalk we became neighbors.
The 6 train was delayed this morning, of course. Signal problems at 86th. A whole car full of people doing that silent NYC bargaining where we all pretend we're not going to be late. I sipped my iced coffee and watched a toddler in tiny Crocs lecture his mother about pigeons.
This is the part nobody tells you about the my 7AM iced coffee ritual: it's not really about caffeine. It's about having one thing that is the same every day in a city that changes its mind constantly.
Back home, my mummy made chai at exactly 6:30, the steel cups, the elaichi, the loud commentary on the neighbors. I rebelled against routine my whole life. Now I cross a street for a stranger's iced coffee like it's a temple visit.
By the time I hit 51st Street, the cup is sweating, my kajal is probably already migrating, and I feel, briefly, like I have my life together. The illusion lasts until roughly 9:15.
But for those 20 minutes on the 6 train, with cold coffee and warm light coming through grimy windows, New York feels like mine.
Tell me your ritual. The small one. The one that holds you together.
Love,