The forecast said clear skies. The forecast lied.
A July thunderstorm caught me in Tompkins Square Park on Tuesday, right as I was walking through the East Village after work, thinking about nothing, eating a dosa I'd grabbed from a spot on 1st Avenue.
One minute it was gold and humid. The next, the sky went that bruised green-grey and the trees started thrashing like something out of a Yash Chopra rain sequence.
Everyone in the park had the same idea at once. We all bolted for the big elm near the dog run, this random collection of strangers suddenly huddled together — a guy with a skateboard, two NYU kids, an older man with a chess set he was frantically shielding.
The thunderstorm in Tompkins Square Park was the good kind. Warm rain. The kind you can't be angry at. The kind that makes the whole city smell like wet pavement and possibility, that mitti-scent that isn't quite the Indian monsoon but is close enough to make my chest ache a little.
Nobody spoke for a minute. We just watched it come down.
Then the chess man offered me half his newspaper to cover my head, and I offered the NYU kids the rest of my dosa, and just like that we were friends for the length of one storm.
This is the thing about a thunderstorm in Tompkins Square Park, or anywhere in this city really. It forces a pause. New York never lets you stop, so sometimes the weather has to do it for you.
We stood there maybe fifteen minutes. Someone made a joke about the L train flooding again. Everyone laughed the way you do when you're all soaked and slightly delirious.
Then it broke, the sun came back like it had never left, and we scattered. Back to being strangers. Back to our separate Tuesdays.
I walked home along Avenue A completely drenched, sneakers squelching, grinning like an idiot.
My planned evening was ruined. It was perfect.
Let the storm rearrange your whole afternoon. It knows something you don't.
Love,