The Tale of Three Cities — Manhattan
After moving to the United States, I decided that I should start traveling as soon as possible, unlike my time in Europe where I began exploring beyond Spain only at the very end of my stay. Naturally, NYC was going to be the first place I would visit after having romanticized this city by consuming all the propaganda that Hollywood, 2000’s Bollywood, and SRK spewed. When I told people that I was going to New York, they asked me to set my expectations low. Full of grim and squalor, the place was going to be, they said, infested with giant rodents scurrying with their tiny little feet all across the five boroughs. So I booked my tickets, packed my bag, and set my expectations very low and boarded a red-eye to what my friend Yoyi ma’am describes as the capital of the world. As I stepped out of the flight and got into the MTA system, the availability of a train at 6:00 a.m. in the morning to ferry me across all of Queens and Brooklyn and right into the heart of Manhattan while costing less than $11 made me reminisce about the pocket-friendly omnipresent public transport systems of Europe. This is probably a reference only my Indian friends would get, but as I stepped out of that metro station into the streets of midtown Manhattan, I looked up at the buildings that seemingly reached the skies and even further and exclaimed exactly like Shashi Godbole from the movie English Vinglish did. Starting from that moment, it was love at first sight for me with New York.
One of the very first things I did immediately after coming out of the daze (of being in with Manhattan) was to find the closest bagel shop and get myself an everything bagel. I thought this was going to be as easy as a walk in Central Park, but oh boy, was I wrong. Firstly, you are confronted with more options than you can ever imagine. More importantly, you have to wait in line with an army of humans who were out that day to conquer the world and its free markets. Clad in Armani armor and donning Apple ear-pods, they will intensely stare down any slacker who dares to slow them down in their quest for world dominance by asking too many questions if the bagel they ordered or the cream cheese is vegetarian or not. This green knight survived and finally got his bagel and coffee, and as he dug into the tofu cream cheese-filled bagel layered with some tomatoes and onions, he forgave all the glares he received. His soul transcended into another dimension from another time as the cacophony around him melted away and blended itself into Miles Davis’s — “So Blue.”
As I take the last bite of my bagel, I stop floating in mid-air; life zooms back into focus, and I get busy finding my hotel, checking in, making my way to Times Square, and from there, finally landing up at the MET, where I have an appointment to keep with some of the artistic world’s who’s who. I treated myself by walking around these halls filled with ‘acquired’ art from all over the world, including the Temple of Dendur, a couple of Fabergé eggs, Water Lilies by Claude Monet, Van Gogh’s self-portrait, and the poignant Death of Socrates painted by Jacques-Louis David, with a devastated Plato at the end of the defiant Socrates’s bed. Despite seeing these great works of art, I searched to find Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware River. You may wonder why this painting, depicting an important event in the American Revolution, is dear to me. To answer that question, I must tell you a silly anecdote. As I was waiting in the lounge of the airport in Atlanta while moving to San Diego, I found a heads-up quarter and picked it up to woo lady luck. I noticed the painting and proceeded to read up more about it like the good nerd I was. I realized that, like my current juncture in life, where I was hauling myself across continents for the second time, George Washington’s endeavor was a bold maneuver that sought to provide a renewed sense of hope and determination. It was, in essence, a risky yet necessary revitalization of efforts in search of a bold new direction.
For the next few days, I loitered around New York, playing make-believe that I was a resident of the Big Apple. I walked all over DUMBO and some parts of Brooklyn, crossing the bridge over the East River into Manhattan while simultaneously clicking a thousand pictures. I also wandered aimlessly in the streets of Manhattan on as many occasions as I could, and every time I looked up to see the little opening between the skyscrapers that we call the sky, I realized I was looking up at a different city. If I was in midtown Manhattan and I looked up, I was looking up at either the global scourge of skyscrapers from the post-modern era or at the art deco fever dream from the roaring ’20s and pre-war America along Fifth Avenue. If I was looking at the distant giants on the horizon while being surrounded by post-war red brick, brownstone buildings, I am either in Brooklyn, Greenwich, or downtown Manhattan. If I was deep in the bowels of the great MTA-run subway system and could only see wrought-iron pillars around me, painted over in a shade of red that was hardly discernible from the natural rust that would have formed over them, I am looking at the brutalist underbelly of the city. This secret little third city exhibits some really interesting characteristics of decay common to late-state capitalism. The dwellers of this secret subterranean city that isn’t are victims of systematic and systemic greed and negligence in the richest country in the world. A country with an abundance of land, capital, and organization that refuses to wave a magic wand and make all these problems go away in the blink of an eyelid.
On one of the nights in New York with having nothing to do, I stepped into a Jazz bar not far from my hotel. While I waited in line for almost an hour to get in, this hour would probably be one of those core memories that are etched into your consciousness and will play in front of your eyes as you slip away one day into eternal slumber. To me, this is what New York sounds like. An eclectic orchestra of jazz slipping in from Tomi Jazz behind me, the spitter-spatter of the drizzle on the canvas over my head, the chatter of the other patrons who were queued along with me, and the distant rumble and roar of the city that never sleeps. Even when I am back in sunny San Diego, whenever I am reminded of New York, the aforementioned orchestra’s invisible composer reads the cue and signals the orchestra to begin playing, weaving an overture that transports me back to the bustling streets and skyscrapers of the city that never sleeps, and the world around me blends away.
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