It must have been a good decade ago that this Karan johar
movie got released. Apart from the typical NRI culture, tear jerker dialogues
and a ‘love triangle’ between a dying hero, a damsel in distress and an
impossibly understanding friend, the movie also happened to feature ‘The
city of New York’. Each frame, chosen with care and diligence, has since grown
iconic, and the City that was initially chosen to play the unsuspecting backdrop,
quietly emerged to become the fourth protagonist.
Like many around, I fell in love with it at the very first
sight. It was exceedingly beautiful but the fact that it was halfway across the
world from my home rendered it a charm that only dreams can have. Who could
have imagined then that one day I would indeed set foot on the city of dreams.
Luckily, I have a colleague from New York who visits there every weekend. So I made a hasty plan, stuffed my backpack and hitch-hiked
with her after work on a rainy Friday, a couple of weeks ago. We drove through
three states, for five hours before finally reaching New Jersey where my
friends having flown down from other places were already waiting for me.
New York is actually a collection of five islands, and the
one that I or most of us are familiar with is the vertical Manhattan. It is home
to the tallest skyscrapers, the most gorgeous of parks, the biggest brands on the
5th Avenue, the Times Square and the Wall Street. My journey however
started with the New York Penn station which is a central station connecting
the Subway/Metro, the Amtrak and the New Jersey transit trains. The Penn
station caught me by surprise. With its old structure, Asian smells and shoving
crowds, for a while I felt transported back to Kolkata, to my nearby DumDum
metro. the station is built over multiple levels and has signs all over. It made no sense to me
and if left alone, I am sure I would have cried my way out or through it. For a
while I wondered, if the tag of ‘city of dreams’ is just another carefully
constructed image. But the moment I made it to an exit, I landed in
another world.
I do not recall the name of that street, as I don’t for the
rest of the landmarks I visited over the next day and half, but it had few very
tall buildings. There was this one particular building in steel grey, which was
so tall that I had to strain my neck 60 degrees back to look at the sky and as
I did I saw the building shake left and right. I was scared out of my wits and
it took me few seconds to realize that the cottony clouds had pulled out a
trick on my poor eyes. My next stop was the central park, which was neither
green nor dressed up in the fall colours, yet every bit as gorgeous. And
because the sun was out after a long winter and the spring was crawling in,
people were out in hordes…people with pets, with kids, in couples, in groups,
alone, white people, black people and everyone in between. Funnily I recognized
a couple of frames exactly as I had seen them in the movie and I felt
goosebumps at realizing I was actually there.
From there we walked across the city, cutting across streets
and avenues, halting only to take pictures which would soon become memories. On
our way we traversed many of the famous attractions before ending up in Brooklyn,
hopping over the Brooklyn bridge. We
made our way through the wall street, around the Empire state building , to the
Trinity church and around the new World trade center.
The East river that flows under the Brooklyn bridge and four
more bridges separates Manhattan from Brooklyn. There is a gorgeous promenade in Brooklyn on the river front from where you can see the ‘Statue of Liberty’
as a tiny spot on the extreme left, the Brooklyn bridge on the right and the
Manhattan skyline in front. One can sit there for hours, watching the golden
sky turn progressively purple and then a stark black, a stream of sparkling lights replacing blue bars of manmade wonders. Its
often breezy there, drifting leaves and fluttering skirts and ferries sailing
amidst rolling waves. Time stops, or you feel so, like a silent spectator in a
3D movie, frame after frame unfolding before you, each one prettier than the
before.
I would have perhaps spent the rest of the day there had my
friends not dragged me to the Times Square, which they said is a must see after
dark. It is a neighborhood in Manhattan adorned with dazzling billboards and
advertisements, which is located at the crossroads of Broadway and Seventh Avenue.
This is where the annual ritual of ball
drop happens every new year’s eve when a time ball located on the roof of One
Times Square, descends 141 feet in 60 seconds. At first sight, the ambience
feels forced and mechanical but the place has an infectious vibe and the more
time you spend there, the more it envelopes you. On any given night, Times
Square is choc a bloc with tourists and locals alike, clicking pictures with
clowns and men dressed as cartoon characters, not to forget genial cops and
horse carriages…
You must have gauged from the length of my post, the length
of my day. Physically I was tired down to the bones, but my spirit was still
raring to go. I still had half a day left and I have to come back again to tell
what’s more is in store. Till then Hasta la vista.
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