I have become the kind of person who wakes up at 6:15 to catch the 6 train at 7AM, and I am not entirely sure how this happened.
Maybe it's the heat. June in NYC has a way of making the afternoon subway feel like a pressure cooker my mother would warn me about. The 6 train at 7AM, though, is a different animal entirely. Cool, half-empty, almost polite.
I get on at 77th and Lexington and there is a seat. An actual seat. In New York. I sit down like I've won something.
The man across from me is reading an actual paper newspaper, folded the way my Papa used to fold the Times of India over his chai. The woman next to me is asleep with her head against the pole, trusting the whole car not to embarrass her. I love her for it.
The 6 train at 7AM gives you the city before it remembers to be difficult. By 8:30 it will be all elbows and AirPods and someone's tote bag in your ribs. But right now it's just us, the early ones, sharing this strange tender hour.
I got off at Union Square and the farmers market was setting up, men stacking strawberries into pyramids like they were building something holy. I bought a bunch of mint I did not need because it smelled like home.
Back in Ahmedabad my grandmother grew mint on the balcony in an old Dalda tin. I crushed a leaf between my fingers on the walk to work and for one second the J train, the heat, the deadlines, all of it went soft.
The city gives you these things if you show up early enough. A seat. A pyramid of strawberries. A smell that folds time.
Set your alarm fifteen minutes earlier. The 6 train is waiting.
Love,