New York City BluesSpring-time in New York is not much of a warm affair. Especially for a tropics man like me. The temperatures vary from the low teens to the low 20's. But here I am floating several hundred metres above sea level, moving across the Atlantic Ocean towards the famed East Coast of the United States. The temperature was the last of my concerns. It was early in the morning, people must be arriving to assume their duties in their respective offices.
I was descending and approaching the Manhattan skyline, the concrete jungle that conceals the myriad organisms that inhabit it.
I hummed to myself, a slow melancholic sound from my throat. Then I heard two guitarists some distance behind me, one on the right, one on the left strumming their strings in random but making perfect sense, the sounds mixing with each other like a Magician's card tricks. I was already into Manhattan, drifting between the huge blocks of concrete and steel called skyscrapers when I heard a helicopter starting up, its rotors picking up speed on my left. The CEO of the Bank of New York had landed on his headquarters which is the BoNY building. I turned right. More helicopter rotors fanning away. A keyboard player joined the guitarists right behind me. He was weaving magic with his fingers, filling up a void I had created after I had stopped my humming. And he did that with a splendid performance.
I heard more noises. All of them complementing each other. Every sound was individual, had its own charm, its own highs and lows. The rumble of the traffic, the purl of the Hudson river, the overture of some distant opera in Broadway, the cackle of the traders in Wall Street... They made me miss something. They made me miss my dear wife.
How I miss her! Her talk, the way she used to laugh sending me into rapture. Her touch, the gentle kisses we shared, those were unforgettable moments. The sight of Central Park, Manhattan's green blanket reminded me of the times we used to walk together, when she would tickle me with leaves and flowers. But here I was, half the world away from her with a small music troupe behind me, hovering between the Manhattan skyscrapers, stranger to all that surrounds me.
New York, O New York, city of the American Dream, the Big Apple, self-proclaimed Capital of the World, City that never sleeps, can't you conjure up something so that she could be here, so I could show my wife the panorama I was witness to, the great jungle that I was visiting, so she could also be a part of this, my own private safari?
The loneliness is killing, it is torture. I and my wife, two souls that had mixed together like red earth and pouring rain, now so far apart. My horizon was darkening, it was losing its colour, my conceited self threatening to fall into endless night. The girls came then, they appeared from nowhere. Were they trying to console me? They chorused, singing in a haunting pitch, possibly imitating the old siren song that Odysseus and his men were seduced by. They served to accentuate the melancholy.
Their song distracted me and I noticed that the guitarist on my left had gone: I didn't hear him. He must have had enough of me. I was on the right edge of Manhattan, leaving the coffin-box-like skyscrapers behind, about to cross the East River, about to enter Brooklyn. The right guitarist also left me. Only the faithful keyboard player stayed on, at my back. The girls just appeared and disappeared at will, at whatever time they wanted.
Brooklyn was fresh and vibrant, like the red summer flowers of the Gulmohar in Chennai. Brooklyn lifted my spirits, the melting pot of cultures that it was, its diversity was a respite from the dizzying heights and glass boxes of Manhattan. It was a palimpsest of peoples, a mixture of races, a woman unravelling her different qualities in her own style. It invited a queer looking man with beard and braid and a saxophone in his hands. He put the sax to his mouth and what followed was some of the sweetest rendering of Sax that I had heard. He made me follow him. My depression was gone, I was immersed in looking at school kids leaving their schools for home. Hispanics, Whites, Blacks, Indians, Chinese. It was late afternoon.
The Sax man left me. He said he had more important businesses to attend to than just be a cure for my sadness. The guitarist on my right came back, took his place behind me and started his work. There were people leaving the Brooklyn Art Museum, excited, strolling away over the marble; an art exhibition must have been going on in there. The guitarist on the left also took his place. The keyboard player was at his vigorous best now. The three of them were producing a collage of sounds, they were accomplishing the equivalent of calligraphy in music.
It was then that I saw her.
I was turning around, tired of looking around New York, tired of being without a companion who could tag along with me. I had been thinking of leaving Brooklyn, go to Staten Island, may be lose myself in the huge landfill in the middle of Staten. There's a bridge that connects Staten to Brooklyn, called the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. It is said to be the longest suspension bridge in the United States and the only roadway between Brooklyn and Staten. Traffic was roaring, unaware of me - a spectre floating in the air, unable to connect with the world, unable to let memories of my wife leave me.
There she was, standing near a parked car on the upper deck of the bridgeway, looking over the railing pointing out details on a luxury cruiser that was passing below the bridge. She was making excited gestures with her hands, her pretty head. I was standing beside her, leaning on the railing with my chin on my folded hands, unmoving. She hit me on the head and I rose from the deep, momentary, momentous slumber that I had fallen into.
They were all gone - the guitarists, the keyboard guy, the girls, the Sax man. What remained was only a jingling in my head. Tears filled my eyes. I promised myself that I would never leave her. My hands went to cup her face and we kissed the most satisfying kiss ever. She was astonished. She had never seen me cry. She wouldn't know. She needn't.
