October

The light changes before anything else does. You notice it on a Tuesday, in the middle of the afternoon, and it's different somehow — a little lower, a little more gold, like the sun has decided to stop performing and just be. Delhi in October feels like an apology. After the monsoon's theater and the September humidity that makes you want to shed your skin, suddenly: air you can actually breathe. The jasmine sellers at the traffic lights. The evenings that cool just enough to sit outside. I go to Lodhi Garden in October and nowhere else. I don't know why I save it. Something about the tombs in that light, the parakeets being loud in the dhak trees. People doing their evening walk in the quiet, unhurried way of people who have lived here long enough to not feel they must explain themselves to the city. This city asks a lot of you. October is when it briefly gives something back.