It rained like the sky had a grudge on Monday, and the 1 train gave up entirely.
I was stuck at 137th Street in Harlem, up on the elevated platform, watching the water come down in these thick silver sheets. The announcement said delays due to flooding at multiple stations and the whole platform did that collective New York groan. You know the one. Half exhaustion, half theater.
Here's the thing about the 1 train and rain. That platform is exposed. So we were all wet, all stuck, all in it. And something happened that this city pretends never happens.
We got nice.
A man shared his umbrella with a woman he'd never met. Someone's tote bag ripped and three people helped scoop up her spilled oranges. A teenager gave up his spot under the little shelter for an older woman with a cane and she called him beta before she caught herself, and then laughed, and so did I.
I think New Yorkers are only rude when we feel like we have the luxury of being rude. Take away the schedule, the AC, the illusion of control, strip us down to just a bunch of soaked humans waiting for the same delayed 1 train, and suddenly we remember we're neighbors.
It reminded me of monsoon season back home. The way the whole city of Ahmedabad slows down and everyone crowds under the same awning and someone always, always shares their pakoras. Rain makes a community out of strangers. I don't think that's specific to any one place. It's just a human thing that the weather knocks loose.
The train finally came 40 minutes later. Everyone quietly went back to being strangers, headphones in, faces closed.
But for those 40 minutes on the 1 train platform, wet and stranded and briefly soft, Harlem felt like the friendliest place on earth.
Bring an umbrella. Or don't. Sometimes the flood is the point.
Love,