A Love Letter to New York

New York, New York. A city so nice, they names it twice. As a teenager growing up in the 2000s in India, New York represented everything I grew up with, and paradoxically, everything I grew up without.

That was an era with a trickle of an access to a globalized world. Plenty of books, some TV and the beginning of internet. Enough that you knew all about Mac 'n' Cheese and pot roast from Baby Sitters club. Learnt that Bryant Park housed the most exclusive fashion shows from Lipstick Jungle. You wanted to shop in Barneys and Saks because Rachel said so. You wanted a corner office, complete with decanter sets like you saw on Boston Legal. You could rattle off “your” rights courtesy Castle, and Law and Order. The blocks of Manhattan were imprinted in your head thanks to Jeffery Archer, S and B.  Above all, you would never, ever be caught dead in a scrunchie.

It would be fair to say New York held stardom status in my head, with its own soundtrack (Empire state of mind, what else?).  People had role models and wanted to be like them. New York was my role model, and I wanted to be New York.

In early 2016, I landed in the city for the first time, bright-eyed and sportshoe-ed. It was love before first sight, before the skyline became visible, before the   wheels on the plane touched tarmac.

It was fascinating! The glass buildings glinting in the afternoon sun, the cycles that you could rent at Central Park, the well-oiled frequency of the subway , the ability to walk into a grocery store at 3 am and buy a packet of potato chips. The pink glow of Times Square made everything seem desirable, and I couldn’t wait to ride the wave of plenitude. Rockefeller, Chrysler, the One World Observatory, I did it all.

It was liberating! I loved walking down the grey-blue roads, with no one paying attention to whether your skirt was too short. You could sit on a bench at Brooklyn Park, and indulge in some rewarding people watching, or disappear into a book. I struck up many random conversations – with a pretzel cart owner, a cab driver, a bunch of people I met in a brewery and a group of enthusiastically turned-out parade-goers (to this day I have no idea what the parade was for), and a dear old lady at MoMA.

It was beautiful! My biggest takeaway was feeling connected, to a bigger purpose, and the feeling of drunken hope – you know what I mean, when you believe you can do absolutely anything, you just have to try. If there was glamour in this world, it lived permanently in a penthouse in New York City.

I went back home, with a bunch of little magnets. For the next few years, those magnets were resolutely affixed to my office desk, a small reminder that despite the drudgery of a 9-5(6,7,8) and mindless tasks, somewhere out there, was New York, all her lights shining bright just for me.

Fast forward to 2024. Eight years, scores of travels, and one pandemic later, I went back to New York.

It was different. The buildings wore a look of disrepair and neglect. To-let signs hanging on the facades and doors and the smell of decay, mixed with marijuana hanging to the air. The crumbling subway seemed more Gotham-esque than a serendipitous rom-com setting.

It was different. It didn’t feel all that wonderful to walk on the streets, now taken over by street vendors selling cheap knick-knacks. The generously festooned tricycle taxis blaring loud music seemed out of place and jarring. Times Square too felt like a tired, obsolete billboard that was having a mid-life crisis.

It was different. A notice in a popular diner warned against “staying back after you were done eating”. Supermarkets now had little padlocks on items in some aisles, you had to ring a bell to call someone to unlock products for you.  The streets emptied themselves by 9 pm, leaving behind a trail of crushed tin cans, overflowing garbage bins. The heart of the city seemed to just be lines of tourist queuing up at popular spots to pose for pictures.

A little deflated, I sat down to examine what had changed – perhaps it was my perspective that  morphed, or perhaps a beautiful metropolis was indeed burning out, under the pressure of world events, catalyzed by disappearing ideals of romanticism.

All great cities must die, to make way for relevance. Maybe it was time to let go, but, my inexplicable love running strong on the fumes of nostalgia, refuses to consider a season finale of New York. Waist up, New York is still a glittering, precious, little gem - the golden rays still dance off the Chrysler Building, and the Hudson still holds up a chaotic reflection of the city.

Sitting at a desk, watching the rain etch little streaks of dirt on the window, it hit me. Perhaps I did turn into my role model after all these years. I am closer to New York than was a decade ago. Cakey concealer slapped over questionable bedrock, dressed to the nines in non-sustainable fast fashion, painting loopy stories that no one is listening to, but holding it all together with unmistakable, inimitable spirit.