The J train at 7AM is its own country and I am a loyal citizen. Nobody talks. Everybody knows the rules.
We rise up out of the tunnel at Marcy Avenue and suddenly there's sky. The whole car goes gold when the sun hits the East River right, and even the guy asleep against the pole looks a little holy.
I ride the J from Bushwick into the Lower East Side most mornings. It's slower than the L, and everyone in Williamsburg will tell you I'm doing it wrong. But the J gives you the bridge. The L gives you a tunnel and a headache.
There's a woman who gets on at Hewes with a rolling cart of samosas she sells to a restaurant near Delancey. She smells like my nani's kitchen and I could cry every single time. I never say anything. That would break the rules of the J train at 7AM.
My first winter here I hated this commute. I thought New York was punishing me for leaving Ahmedabad, where my mother still handed me chai in bed like I was royalty. Now I've learned that the J train at 7AM is a kind of chai too. Bitter, hot, and somehow exactly what you need.
We cross over Delancey and the light shifts again. A teenager fixes his hair in the black of the window. An old man does the crossword in pen, which is either confidence or madness.
I used to think belonging meant everyone knowing your name. Turns out it can also mean forty strangers agreeing, silently, to let each other be tired in peace.
I got off at Essex Street and the samosa lady got off too, wheeling her cart into the morning. We nodded. It was the whole conversation.
Some mornings the city holds you without ever touching you.
Love,