Working to one common purpose — money

Gone To Look For America GAUTAM BHATIA The Times of India, January, 2006

For most immigrants to New York, anonymity is perhaps the greatest gift of the city. The first sighting of the frail blue skittles of the Manhattan skyline changes everything, for there, right in front, is the single most potent symbol of achievement and successful human endeavour. A compressed island, so completely man-made, with structures stretched to the very edge of water and sky, it is hard to imagine that inside it are porous cells, filled with people, with natural urges — people who live and shout and scream and whisper and die everyday, just like people in Guatemala and Indonesia and Bangladesh. Within the extended frame of this 12-mile island, survive neighbourhoods still so ethnically pure, it is difficult to believe they are located in the world's most cosmopolitan city. The minor ghettos belong to communities as old as the Italians of 200 years and the Haitians of 20. The tired multitude's first port of entry had to be one where everyone belongs, where everyone can live together and still carve a separate enclave for themselves. Yet, there isn't one country that hasn't in turn contributed to the cosmopolitan cesspool of this city. Even if it is a Greek sidewalk food stall in Washington Square Park, or the frying of curry and oil in Little India, or the sale of cheap Chinese watches along Canal Street. There may be a formal, unworkable United Nations headquarters on the East Side, but all around there is a messier, functional one — of Souvlaki being sold to a Puerto Rican, pasta being packed for a Pakistani family, or curry for a Jewish couple.

Nations upon nations, people desperately poor, some unimaginably rich, idealists, bigots, refugees and millionaires all stuck together, working to one common purpose — money. Money cuts across all barriers of race and religion, caste and class. The newly arrived Vietnamese couple selling fresh fruit outside Madison Square Garden have the same rights to the American dream as the Mayflower executive purchasing plums from them. Every immigrant has visions: Two car garages, second mortgages, third marriages, a speedboat, three-martini lunches, a house in East Hampton. The restless migrant is already ruled by the instinct before he enters the Kennedy Airport immigration line. To be brought up among people who occupy only an eleventh of the world's surface but consume a third of its resources, is a new-found privilege. Harish Desai, whose uncle owns an Upper West Side vending franchise, set up his nephew in a booth at 86th and Broadway. In less than six months, Harish had been joined by his brother; in less than two years, by the rest of his family. This is the way of America.

More than half the residents of the city are of foreign descent, a third of foreign birth. Unwilling to assimilate like the older immigrants of Ellis Island, they are no longer united by the old desire for a new identity. Flag, Mom and Apple Pie, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are strangely Anglo-Saxon symbols and ideals. The new migrants have no doubt about their national identity or allegiance. They are united only by the singular obsession of the dollar. So they remain happy where they are, plying their trades in their own languages, living among themselves, reading their own daily language paper, discussing the politics of their own countries, eating their own food around dining tables of familiar relatives. Carrying on, as if the New York skyline in the distance was just an extension of Canton or Calcutta or Cairo. How has New York sustained its spell? Why do immigrants land here in such large numbers? Why indeed do so many Americans leave their small Christian homes in Iowa and Montana and South Carolina — their insular truck-driving, God-fearing, beer guzzling and steak chomping — for the known crises and sins of a depraved city? Is New York hype, an effective ad?

It is no wonder that people go mad in the place. Just as often as an Iowan would have to face 'Have a nice day', a New Yorker must similarly put up a brave face to 'f*** you, asshole'. There is no reason to take this personally — as many Iowans visiting New York do. After all, 'f*** you' is only a harmless greeting from a man who has spent the greater part of the day licking the garbage can outside McDonald's and peeing against a subway wall. Just having been denied a dollar for a cup of coffee gives him every right to call you an asshole. There are many like him — frazzled faces, pale and unshaven, shrouded in Parka jackets, peering out of every possible crevice and uttering some foul-mouthed grumble at whoever passes. Twitching eyes, shuffling tennis shoes, neurosis is written on their faces. Quite unlike the mild beggars of Delhi, the New York lot, I discovered, were a violent breed. Confronted with a "Hey man, spare a dollar for some coffee", I always handed the man two, and pointed him in the direction of Starbucks. The writer is an architect.