The 6 train at 7AM is a specific kind of quiet. Not peaceful, exactly. More like everyone agreed not to make eye contact until at least 28th Street.
I was standing near the doors, half-asleep, clutching my cold brew like it owed me money. And then I saw her.
A woman, maybe sixty, sitting near the conductor's window in a saree. Mustard yellow with a thin maroon border. The exact saree my Ma wears for Diwali pujas back in Ahmedabad. I'm not exaggerating. The exact one.
The 6 train at 7AM is not where I expected to feel homesick. I expected it on Sundays, on holidays, during long phone calls. Not wedged between a man eating a bacon roll and a teenager asleep on a backpack.
She caught me staring. I panicked and smiled like a lunatic. She smiled back, the unbothered smile of someone who has raised children and survived them.
I wanted to tell her my mother has that saree. That I FaceTimed Ma last night and she held up three different blouses asking which one for my cousin's engagement. That I miss the smell of our kitchen at 6AM, ghee and cardamom and the pressure cooker hissing like a small angry pet.
I said none of this. This is the 6 train. We do not speak.
But at 33rd Street she got up, adjusted her pallu with one practiced hand, and as she passed she said, "Beta, your bag is open." Soft. Casual. Like an aunty anywhere.
My tote was, in fact, open. My wallet inches from freedom.
She was gone before I could thank her. Swallowed by the platform crowd at 33rd like she'd never existed.
I stood there for the rest of the ride feeling weirdly held. By a stranger. On the 6 train at 7AM. In a saree the color of my whole childhood.
Some mornings the city hands you your mother in a stranger's clothes. You just have to be looking.
Love,