I caught the 6 train at 6AM this week because we had an early fitting downtown and I am, apparently, a person who agrees to early fittings.
The car was almost empty. Just me, a sleeping construction worker, and an Uncle at the far end with a steel thermos. The kind of steel thermos that has survived three decades and one international move.
He unscrewed it and the whole car suddenly smelled like cardamom. Like my Ba's kitchen on a Sunday. I must have made a face because he looked up and said, in Gujarati, "You want?"
Reader, you do not offer a homesick girl chai on the 6 train at 6AM and expect her to keep her composure.
I said yes. He poured a little into the thermos cap and passed it down the row of orange seats. We didn't really talk. He was getting off at Brooklyn Bridge, going to a building he's worked in for twenty years. I was going to fold sample garments and pretend I'd slept.
The 6 train at 6AM is a strange, holy place. The light through the windows at Astor Place comes in gray and gentle. Nobody is performing yet. Nobody has their armor on.
This is the thing about a New York commute that nobody tells you. You will be lonely on these trains a hundred times. And then once, randomly, somebody's grandfather will hand you the exact taste of the home you left and ask nothing back.
I gave him the cap back, said thank you twice, and meant it three times.
He got off at Brooklyn Bridge without looking back. I rode two more stops smelling like cardamom and feeling, for once, completely held.
Drink the chai when the stranger offers it.
Love,