The 6 train at 96th Street in August is not a subway. It is a slow-cooked biryani and we are all the rice.
I stood on that platform yesterday at 5:40pm with my hair glued to the back of my neck, watching the countdown clock lie to me. Three minutes became six became a philosophical concept.
When the train finally came it was already full. But this old Puerto Rican man near the door did that thing New Yorkers pretend they don't do — he shifted six inches, caught my eye, and nodded me in. Six inches in August is a love language.
I got squished between a girl reading a battered copy of something French and a guy whose AirPods were leaking drill music into my left ear. We were all pretending not to touch while completely touching. Very intimate. Very New York.
My mother would have a heart attack if she saw the 6 train at 96th Street at rush hour. In Ahmedabad, even our rickshaws have more personal space. But there's something I've started to love about this forced closeness. You cannot be lonely and squished at the same time. The city won't let you.
By 86th the crowd thinned. By 77th I got a seat and felt like I'd won a small war. I texted my roommate: made it, barely, smell like a subway platform, love you.
The thing nobody tells you about the 6 train at 96th in summer is that it teaches you patience the hard way. Not the pretty meditation-app kind. The kind where you stand in your own sweat and decide not to cry about it.
I got off at 68th and the air outside felt like air conditioning by comparison. Small victories.
Stay cool out there. Or at least stay upright.
Love,