Mayank Shekhar: A love letter to the Big Apple

New York city is perhaps designed to intimidate. REPRESENTATIONâu00c2u0080u00c2u0088PIC/THINKSTOCK

What's that common first impression of New York City for anyone? That when you show up, you simply can't look straight - the head automatically wanders towards scrapers merging with the sky, while you gaze in equal wonderment that some of these gigantically vertical structures came up as early as the early 1900s.

The city is perhaps designed to intimidate. New York is equally awe-inspiring for other Americans. Until you observe it at eye-level, where the mass of humanity passing by offers such instant confidence and relief that you, no matter who you are, can merge into the crowd. Nobody, race/ colour wise, looks like the other. So, you never feel like the foreigner. Is there any other city like that?

Perhaps London is as ethnically diverse. But it has a vast reservoir of history that organically excludes the new migrant. NY is perennially present-continuous. There's little time for the past. And so, all that matters is where you live; who you love; what's new; and how you manage to make a living to be here in the first place (because that part's never gonna be easy enough to genuinely enjoy a city with infinite choices, and a logically consequent FOMO).

I distinctly recall thinking all of this while visiting NYC for the first time 17 years ago. Much about the world has changed, especially over the past eight years since I came here last. But exactly the same thoughts re-emerge when I look at my Indian screenwriter friend, who's been abroad only once before, as he walks un-self consciously - in a city that gets equalised by walking - with a spring in his step, desi swag, smelling out other Indians off the pavement, asking them whatever the hell comes to his head. Yeah, it's probably been a week max, and Manhattan is his hood already. He doesn't need to adjust his accent to suit pucca locals, because there's a good deal of Yankee 'Americanese' in the Indian English to begin with (it's far less British for sure).

My female friend, who recently moved from Bombay, says she'd finally regained/rediscovered her own body - feeling proud of it rather than constantly being pried on by ogling eyes of the frustrated, suppressed. But that'd be true for any place with more equal gender ratios, on streets, workplaces. It's certainly true for most of the West.

NYC, strictly speaking, isn't typically the West. It's almost every country assimilating in pockets - much like the United Nations, aptly headquartered on 42nd Street. And, therefore, the September 2001 terror attack in New York was quite simply an attack on a world that anchors its values on humanism, and better livelihood, regardless of where you supposedly come from, or whom you pray to.

I spotted these multi-ethnic names of people who died - walking around a massive crater with stream of water flowing in, that has been created in place of the World Trade Centre (WTC), which was attacked by planes carrying passengers from all over the wor­ld, 16 years ago.

A new WTC, equally imposing, has come up right behind the one that was destroyed. At no moment does it occur to me that someone or the other might confuse the colour of my skin with those who annihilated WTC, and may randomly vent their anger. This sort of nutty stuff is possible at a place solemnly memorialising an act of unimaginable violence, but it's impossible here.

It's not a surprise that while America used terrorism as an excuse to launch attacks on other unrelated countries/peoples, there was hardly any random act of violence in the city that was originally attacked. I guess hard work and tremendous amounts of play, keeps NYC happy and gay.

Bombay once aspired to be New York. It does have a lot in common, starting with a Protestant work ethic, unpretentious working man's bars, back-breaking prices for tiny apartments, people at kissing distances from each other, besides the innately coastal cosmopolitanism. That aspiration is however, at best, a dream; since the ideal condition for a dream is sleep. And Bombay has been progressively coerced to sleep (early), and hate the day, by those who don't get the city at all.

So yeah, this is an unabashed paean to NYC. Why am I stating things that appear slightly obvious, if you ask me? That's because Donald Trump, on the back of an unprecedented hate campaign, became the President of the United States, shocking most of the relatively sane world. At least around me, Trump appears omnipresent in the Gotham City of America, only as a real estate surname, unless you get on mainstream/social media.

This city, I suspect, will eventually stand against his bigotry, make him irrelevant (as it does already), and see him off for good. It's seen the worst. If not, of course, we're all screwed - so better appreciate, celebrate, and hang on to the olive branch standing firm, unperturbed.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com