I caught the 6 train at 7AM on Tuesday and I almost missed it because I was running down the stairs at 116th like my life depended on a swipe.
It did not. The next one was two minutes behind. But there is something in me that treats every closing door like the last train out of a Karan Johar climax.
Anyway. I made it. Wedged between a man eating a bacon egg and cheese and a woman doing a full eyeliner wing without spilling her coffee, which is a New York talent I will never possess.
And then I smelled them. Marigolds.
The 6 train at 7AM does not usually smell like anything good. It smells like metal and someone's cologne and the ghost of last night. But there was an uncle, maybe sixty, holding two huge garlands of orange marigolds wrapped in newspaper. Genda phool. The exact flowers my Ba strings for every puja in Ahmedabad.
I didn't ask where he was going. A temple, a pooja, a memorial, a grandchild's something. But for four stops between 96th and Grand Central, my whole sad Tuesday morning commute smelled like my grandmother's hands.
I got off at 23rd for the Flatiron office and I almost cried into my tote bag. Over flowers. On the 6 train. At 7AM.
This is the thing nobody tells you about moving to New York. Home doesn't leave you alone. It ambushes you on the Lexington Ave line dressed as a stranger.
The uncle didn't know he did anything. He was just carrying flowers across Manhattan before most of the city was awake.
Some mornings the 6 train hands you a small miracle and asks nothing back.
Love,