There is a specific kind of heat that only exists on a subway platform in July, and I have decided it is a punishment for a sin I committed in a past life.
I catch the N at Astoria Boulevard, transfer to the 6 at 59th, and by the time I'm underground the air feels like someone breathed on my neck. Wet. Personal. Rude.
The 6 train at 7AM in July is a lottery. You either get the car with working AC or the car where a man is fanning himself with a folded copy of the Post like it's 1997. Yesterday I lost. Today I won, and I nearly cried with gratitude.
Back home in Ahmedabad, the heat is dry and honest. It announces itself. Here the humidity sneaks up like an aunty at a wedding asking why you're not married yet.
I've started carrying a little steel bottle of chaas — buttermilk, salted, with a curl of ginger — because Gatorade tastes like a candle and my grandmother would disown me. I sip it on the platform. A woman asked me what it was last week. I said "Indian survival juice" and she nodded like that explained everything.
The 6 train at 7AM in July teaches you patience. It teaches you to stand near the door, not the middle, because the middle is where hope goes to die. It teaches you that 51st Street has a breeze that comes from somewhere holy, and for three seconds you are reborn.
By 51st I'm almost human again. I press my forehead to the pole — I know, I know, don't tell me — and let the cold metal do its work.
Summer in this city is not glamorous. It is sweat in places you didn't know could sweat. But there's something about surviving it with eight million strangers that makes me feel less alone.
We are all just trying to get to work without dissolving.
Stay hydrated, and never trust the middle of the car.
Love,