The 6 train at 7AM in July is a special kind of humid. The kind that makes you understand, deep in your bones, why my mother refused to leave the house between noon and four in Ahmedabad.
My car had no AC this morning. Of course it didn't. The whole train sighed as one when the doors closed at 68th Street and nothing cool came out of the vents.
But here's the thing nobody tells you about the 6 train at 7AM. There's a rhythm to the misery. A togetherness.
The man in the pressed blue shirt fanning himself with a folded Post. The girl in scrubs already asleep standing up, swaying like she's on a boat. The auntie clutching a tote bag from Trader Joe's on 72nd who caught my eye and just shook her head, like, can you believe this heat, beta.
I could believe it. I nodded back. We were family for exactly four stops.
I got off at 51st and walked up into the light like a diver coming up for air. Midtown was already loud and cologne-soaked and impossible, but at least the air moved.
There's a chai cart near Lexington where the man remembers I take mine with extra ginger. He doesn't know my name and I don't know his and somehow that feels like the most honest relationship I have in this city.
I drank it too fast and burned my tongue. Classic Pooja.
People romanticize NYC summer like it's rooftop spritzes and the High Line at golden hour. Nobody puts the 7AM 6 train on a postcard. But this is the real one. The sweat, the shared suffering, the auntie solidarity.
We survive it together, and then we scatter into our separate days like we never met.
Summer here doesn't ask if you're ready. It just shows up sitting on your chest.
Drink your chai. Nod at your auntie. Get off at your stop.
Love,