The 6 train at 7AM is not a place for feelings. It is a place for elbows, for that one man who stands directly in the doorway like a human traffic cone, for pretending you didn't just make eye contact with someone eating a bacon egg and cheese two inches from your face.
But this Tuesday was different.
A woman got on at 33rd Street holding an armful of marigolds. Bright, aggressive orange. Wrapped in newspaper the way they wrap everything in the Jackson Heights markets.
And the smell hit me before I even turned around.
Because marigolds don't just smell like flowers. They smell like my nani's puja room in Ahmedabad. That specific sharp green sweetness that means someone is about to light a diya and mutter a prayer while yelling at a grandchild in the same breath.
I grew up thinking that smell was just the smell of Sunday. Turns out it fits in a subway car too.
The whole ride down to Union Square I just stood there breathing it in like a weirdo. Nobody noticed. On the 6 train at 7AM, nobody notices anything, which is either the loneliest thing about this city or the most freeing, depending on how much sleep you got.
I wanted to ask her what the marigolds were for. A wedding? A pooja? Just because? But New York has trained me to keep my mouth shut, so I just gave her a small smile when she got off at 23rd, and she gave me one back, and that was our entire relationship.
Here's the thing about the 6 train at 7AM. You think it's the most impersonal part of your day. Just a tube you get funneled through before the actual living starts.
But sometimes home finds you between stations, wrapped in newspaper, and you carry it with you into the office elevator, and nobody knows why you're smiling at the fluorescent lights.
Some mornings the city hands you a marigold. Take it.
Love,