There is a very specific thing that happens on the 6 train in early October around 5:45pm, and I need you to know about it.
I was coming back from a fitting near 68th Street, dead on my feet, holding a garment bag like it owed me money. And then the train came up out of the tunnel for that one stretch near the Bronx-bound curve, and the light came in sideways through the windows.
Golden. Actually golden. The kind of light that makes everyone look like the final shot of a movie they didn't know they were in.
A man was reading a water-damaged paperback. A kid was asleep on his mother's arm. The whole car went soft and orange for maybe ninety seconds, and nobody said anything because what is there to say.
I think about how my Ba used to open all the windows in our Ahmedabad flat at this exact hour, this exact light, and dare the heat to come in. She called it "god's own tubelight." I laughed at her then. I get it now.
The 6 train in October does not care that you're tired. It just hands you this little gift and keeps moving toward 86th Street.
I didn't take a photo. For once I just sat there and let the golden hour on the 6 train happen to me. The garment bag slid off my lap and I let it. Some things you ruin by reaching for your phone.
By the time we hit 77th the light was gone and we were all just commuters again, pale under fluorescent tubes, pretending the moment never happened.
But it did. I was there.
Go catch the 6 at golden hour. Thank me later.
Love,