I met Deepa on the 6 train in the middle of a downpour last September, and I've been thinking about it all week because we just celebrated a whole year of knowing each other over dumplings in the East Village.
Here's how it happened. It was pouring. We both surfaced at 68th Street with no umbrellas and the same defeated look. She was clutching a fabric swatch that was getting ruined, which is how I knew she was one of mine, a fashion person.
I had a scarf. She had a MetroCard and a bad attitude about the weather. We ended up huddling under a scaffolding on Lexington, complaining about our commutes, and forty minutes later we were still there, rain be damned.
I almost didn't say anything to her, is the thing. I was tired. I had my headphones in. I was one polite nod away from never knowing her.
Nobody warns you how hard it is to make friends in your twenties in this city. Everyone's busy pretending they're not lonely. We all move through the 6 train and the office and the grocery line so armored up that we forget people are right there, wet and grumpy and dying to talk to someone too.
Deepa is the kind of friend I'd have prayed for at seventeen. She calls me out. She knows I take a good hour before I actually say what's wrong. She sends me voice notes ranting about her boss that are basically radio dramas.
When I'm homesick she doesn't try to fix it. She just orders too much food and lets me be quiet.
We joke that the 6 train is our origin story, our meet-cute, except it was a friendship and honestly those are the meet-cutes that last.
This week over dumplings she said, casual as anything, that I'm her family here. I nearly cried into the soup.
A year ago I had a scarf and she had a bad attitude and we made a whole friendship out of a rainy 6 train morning.
Say hi to the stranger. You never know who's your person.
Love,