A thunderstorm caught me in Tompkins Square Park on Tuesday, the kind that gives you no warning, the sky going from muggy-grey to biblical in about ninety seconds.
I had a five-dollar umbrella from a Duane Reade. It lasted exactly one gust before it inverted into modern art and I had to admit defeat and run.
I ended up under a bodega awning on Avenue A with four strangers. A man with a bike. A woman holding a dog inside her jacket, just the head sticking out. Two teenagers who were filming the rain for some app I am too old to have.
Nobody spoke for a while. Then the dog woman said, this is the third time this week, and everybody laughed, because the thunderstorm in Tompkins Square Park had become a shared enemy and shared enemies make instant friends.
The rain came down so hard the gutters gave up. Avenue A turned into a river. A guy waded across it in Crocs like a prophet.
I love this about summer here. Winter New Yorkers do not speak. But a summer thunderstorm dissolves everyone's armor. Under that awning we were just five wet mammals waiting it out.
It reminded me of monsoon in Ahmedabad, when the whole city stops pretending it has anywhere better to be. When the power cuts and my mother makes chai and pakoras and everyone just surrenders to the water. There is a Hindi word for that surrender that I cannot translate cleanly. It is not giving up. It is agreeing.
The thunderstorm in Tompkins Square Park lasted maybe twenty minutes. Then it stopped like someone turned a tap. The sun came back, steam rose off the pavement, and my little group broke apart without saying goodbye.
The dog woman nodded at me. I nodded back. That was the whole friendship. It was enough.
I walked home along Avenue A with wet sneakers making that noise, and I did not mind. My hair was ruined. My mascara was gone. I felt cleaner than I had in weeks.
Buy the cheap umbrella. It'll break. That's the point.
Love,