I am home and it’s..hmm....more gay!

Ahem, I meant metro sexual! After a gap of few years I returned to NYC, it's one of that cities that immediately gives me a feeling of being at home, I get that when I am in Mumbai too! I know you are thinking it's the love of the stench or rats or people or all of it, but the other cities that gave me that feeling were London to some extent and Tokyo, Tokyo even had a banner saying welcome back, and Tokyo is very clean. May be it's got something to do with lots of people being packed into an old mass transit system or may be just the energy of people desperately trying to ignore each other. Cities like Delhi do not have that, there you get the constant feeling that no one is ignoring you, many are judging you and the most are trying to think of ways of screwing you.

Anyway moving back to one of the greatest cities that believe in letting you live your life. NYC is always cutting edge as far as US is concerned and when you see its buildings, people, infrastructure you can very easily attach superlatives like tallest, smelliest, most crowded, most fashionable, richest, costliest, weirdest, etc,. I came in on a cold snow-covered Sunday into JFK and took a taxi to Jersey City, the ride to Manhattan took 25 minutes (about 20 miles) and last 5 miles of city and tunnel took 45 more minutes. The taxi driver an elderly American broke every written and unwritten rule to get me to my hotel, maybe that's another link to the 'home' cities …mad cabbies!

I love walking through the streets of the city and watching the sheer wealth and power hidden in those buildings, walking through the Times Square which they have now completely made a tourist attraction with chairs, elevated platforms and HD displays. The other place that I love walking through is under the constellations of the grand central station, its New York cheese cake serving concourse and of course the fifth avenue it gives you the pulse of the fashion, changing times and unchanging times all at once. The unchanging ones are the Rockefeller Center ice rink, Saks on fifth, the string of designer shops, Crowne Plaza Hotel at the base of Central park and the changing ones like the arrival of upstart jewelers, Best-buy and the ownership of Crowne Plaza hotel. My favorite buildings on the fifth are the St. Patrick's cathedral, the crown building (home of playboy) and now the glass cube of the apple store.

The thing that struck me this time was the overall impression left by the New Yorkers, not the tourist or new migrants is that they have started to look more feminine. The briefcases have become hand bags, the umbrella styles, the high strung twangy girly speech that you see on so many TV shows.... It's reality. The clothes are too fashionable ... body contoured shirts, jackets trousers 'slim look' as they are known. The other thing is everyone’s carrying a brown paper bag at all times... not sure it’s for snack or panic attacks though and well women, fortunately are looking even more feminine, I wish the Indian ladies would take some hints on that :)

I saw a similar trend in Tokyo too, it's like the big city men are frustrated with fashion being a feminine word and are getting back with their own versions of it. With the guys wearing layers of colorful clothing, sporting hats, chains on their belts, clutch type wallets and the works. In US the music and pop culture is not helping either the rock music, metal and grunge are gone , all we hear now are Katy Perry with Snoop Dogg doing a feat in California girls and Akon singing in his not so masculine voice, the only male amongst them seems to be the ironically named Lady Gaga! Hollywood too has been left in the arms of ageing Denzil Washington to stop trains, while rest of it is stuck on asexual aliens, rom-coms, and all other comedy is relegated to booze infused men caught in some sort of overtly gay situations.

With the much prophesied end of the world next year we will seemingly be left with women, some more so than the others. How will New York survive?