The 6 train at 7am is its own civilization. People perfecting the art of not touching anyone while touching everyone. I had my earbuds in, pretending to be a woman who has her life together, which is the main thing I pretend on the morning commute.
Then I smelled it. Cardamom. Ginger. That specific sweetness that lives in my chest somewhere.
An uncle, maybe sixty, sat across from me at 96th Street with a steel thermos. The exact kind my mother packs, dented in the same places. He caught me staring like a creep and instead of being weirded out, he smiled and tipped the cap toward me. "You want?"
Reader, I do not accept chai from strangers on the 6 train. Except this once, I did. He poured a tiny capful and handed it across the aisle like it was nothing. It tasted exactly like 7am in Ahmedabad, my mother yelling that I'd be late for college.
We talked for ten stops. He's from Hyderabad, been here thirty-one years, drives for a car service now but used to teach math. His daughter is a nurse in Jersey. He makes the chai every morning because "the coffee here is sad water."
This is the thing nobody tells you about the morning commute in New York. You armor up. You make yourself small and unbothered. And then the city hands you a capful of someone's home and the armor just slides off.
He got off at 51st. Told me to drink water and call my mother. So I did call her, standing in the office bathroom, and she asked why I sounded strange, and I said allergies.
The morning commute is mostly noise. But sometimes it's a stranger deciding you look like someone who needs chai.
Drink your water. Call your mother.
Love,