It is ninety-six degrees in New York today and I have made a decision: I am not built for this. My people are, technically. Ahmedabad summers laugh at ninety-six. But Ahmedabad has ceiling fans and my LES apartment has one window unit that sounds like a dying helicopter.
So I did what any reasonable person does during a July heatwave. I fled to the bodega on Ludlow Street.
The heatwave has turned my whole block into a swamp. Everyone moving slow, everyone shiny, the F train platform at Delancey basically a sauna with advertisements.
But the bodega is cold. Blessedly, aggressively cold. And Biscuit, the bodega cat, was sprawled across the register like he owned the deed, which he functionally does.
I bought a mango. Two dollars. Perfectly ripe, the kind you press gently and it gives just a little. The guy at the counter, who knows me now, wrapped it in a paper bag and said stay cool, beti, and I nearly cried because nobody has called me beti in this city in weeks.
Surviving a heatwave in New York is a genuine skill. You learn the cold buildings. The subway cars with working AC. The exact shady side of the street. The bodega with the good freezer.
I walked home along Rivington eating that mango over the paper bag, juice down my wrist, not caring who saw. It tasted like the ones from the tree at my chachi's house.
The heatwave will break Thursday, they say. I will believe it when I feel it.
Until then: cold fruit, cold bodega, warm strangers.
Love,