It rained today the way it never rains in New York. Fat, warm, theatrical drops. The kind that flatten your hair and make you stop pretending you have anywhere important to be.
I had gone to Jackson Heights to buy mangoes. The Patel Brothers on 74th Street had a crate of Kesar mangoes by the door, and I bought six even though I live alone and they will absolutely rot before I finish them.
The sky cracked open while I was waiting for the F train. The platform smelled like wet concrete and ozone, and somewhere underneath that, the mangoes in my tote. And I swear, for ten full seconds, I was nine years old standing on our balcony in Ahmedabad during the first monsoon, my Ba yelling at me to come inside.
Nobody tells you that homesickness can arrive through your nose.
The F train came late, of course. A man with a saxophone played something slow and a little out of tune while we all dripped onto the seats. I held my mangoes on my lap like a baby. A monsoon in New York is a different animal than a monsoon back home, but the heart does not always check the postal code.
This is the thing about the F train and a sudden storm in June. It collapses distance. I went to Queens for fruit and came back with a memory I did not order.
When I got off at my stop in the LES, the rain had already stopped. New York summer storms are commitment-phobes. The street was steaming, the bodega cat was back on his stool, and the air felt scrubbed clean.
I cut a mango open standing over my kitchen sink, juice down my wrist, no plate, no shame. It tasted like the version of summer I keep trying to recreate and never quite can.
Some days the city hands you your childhood for the price of a subway swipe.
Love,