METROPOLITAN DIARIES: MEMORIES OF ANOTHER LIFE, ANOTHER TIME

I remember getting on the Number 6 train at 98th Street and Lexington Avenue. I lived on 99th and 1st, and after walking a few avenues and a couple of blocks, I was always rushing—heart already racing—to swipe through the Metropolitan turnstile and leap into the train just before the doors closed.

That morning, I was heading uptown to medical school.

I grabbed the cold metal pole with my hand to steady myself, then hooked my elbow around it—an awkward choreography perfected over months of commuting—so I could still hold my morning coffee and read my novel at the same time. Yes, this was before Audible and eBooks. Back when books were heavy, coffee lids leaked, and multitasking required physical commitment.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a middle-aged man of Indian descent standing nearby. He was holding a newspaper wide open, aggressively rustling the pages as if searching for something worth his attention. Maybe that’s what drew my eye. Or maybe it was the way his mouth was moving.

At first, I thought he was talking to someone. I glanced up from my book, curious. Then I realized—he wasn’t speaking. He was chewing paan.

I recognized it immediately. Paan—an Indian treat folded into a betel leaf, packed with cloves, cardamom, chopped areca nut, coconut, dates, sugar, and other ingredients—has a very particular signature. It stains the mouth a deep burnt orange-red, impossible to miss once you know it.

I returned to my book, mentally filing the observation away, just another face in a crowded subway car.

And then it happened.

Without warning, the man sneezed.

I didn’t fully register the sound at first. What I registered was the sensation.

My entire hand.

Part of my forearm.

My book.

All of it was suddenly coated in a thick, slimy saliva—warm, viscous, unmistakably textured—with visible bits of chewed, partially digested paan embedded throughout.

Time slowed.

Only then did I realize what had occurred: the man had deliberately moved his newspaper away from his mouth and body before sneezing—redirecting the full force of it onto me—ensuring not a single drop of that orange-red mess landed on himself.

I stood frozen. Shocked. Mortified. Horrified.

The man looked at me, mumbled an apology, stood up quickly, and at the very next stop jumped out of the train car. He vanished into the crowd as the doors closed behind him.

I remained there, gripping the pole, my coffee untouched, my book ruined, my arm slick with the evidence of a stranger’s calculated self-preservation.

And the train kept moving uptown—toward medical school—while I stood there, stunned, wondering how a morning could derail so completely in just one sneeze.