Big Apple

New York, Feb 12, 2009: Its 1.00 A.M and Times Square , that magical junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue is throbbing with life, in this city, which they say, never sleeps.
Gigantic neon lit hoardings stare down from Skyscrapers to create a towering illusion for visitors and New Yorkers alike. Down below on the street, a coloured sax player is playing away, with eyes shut, deep in concentration, oblivious of the appreciative audience who surround him.
A Bangladeshi streetside vendor is hawking bagels, burgers and cokes, the staple fare here. An Iraqi waiter is serving drinks at the Hard Rock café where NY's Yuppies meet to gyrate and gossip away the night.
Deep below the ground, the 104 year-old subway which is the lifeline of the city rattles on. Leaks from underground pipes carrying steam to heat New York apartments and offices, comes out as smoke to envelope the entire place, making it all look like a modern impressionist painting.
With over 8.2 million residents, living in an area of 830 square km, New York City or the Big Apple as it is affectionately called by New Yorkers, is possibly the most densely populated city in the world. This giant megapolis is divided into a number of different districts. The 12 miles long by 3 miles wide, Mannhattan Island, the commercial and business heart of New York City, however is what is called the `City' by New Yorkers.
But if Manhattan is the heartland of NYC, then within it, Times Square , is the city's nerve centre. The world's biggest news organisations' offices, the fashion district which dictates what the world's garment industry churns out, the mega stock exchange Nasdaq, the global ad agencies which hardsell Coke, Burger Kings and WalMarts to the world and the Broadway musicals to which the world throngs to, are all within a stone's throw from the square.
Crowds throng here from dawn till late into the night. For work, theatre auditions, show tickets, a good time or just for the heck of it. New York , as New Yorkers love saying, is a city of immigrants. East Europeans, West Asians, Africans, Latinos from South America , South Asians, Chinese, all jostle for space in this city and heighten the myriad colours that colour the Square.
And colourful it is. Calvin Klein jostles for space with underwear brands, splashed over several stories. The departmental chain Target has a huge 23,000 sqft ad with its logo in red all over one wall of a huge building, which is reputed to cost it $10 million a year. Air India has an Yellow-Red-Black four story high and quarter of a block long billboard which says `Non-stop Comfort JFK-Mumbai'. In all, Times Square is believed to generate more than $ 100 million in billboard advertising a year.
But the `Big Apple's' soul lies in the numerous districts which criss cross the huge mega-city each with its distinct community flavour. Two square miles of houses and shops, located on the lower east side of Manhattan with Broadway bounding it on the west, comprises the largest Chinatown outside Asia. Home to some over 2 lakh Chinese immigrants, the colourful district with its Chinese language signboards has also become home to Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Burmese, Vietnamese, and Filipinos among others.
A subway ride away lies Jackson heights, NYC's own little India -- a South Asian neighborhood which Indians, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis call home, and come to, to shop and eat, if not to live in. Indian food, masalas, Bollywood films, saris and jewellery all vie for space in the neon lit suburb, a part of the Queens district home to diverse immigrant communities.
Little Italy, which at one time sprawled over most of lower Manhattan, has shrunk as propserous immigrants moved out of their "ghetto" to buy houses in more prosperous parts of the city and as newer immigrants especially the Chinese and East Asians bought up their properties. Today, only a section of Mulberry Street within the China Town, lined with Italian restaurants popular with tourists, remains distinctly recognizable as Little Italy. As Tarun Basu, a frequent visitor to the city says "Its a city which grows on you ... its a city like none other." .... (unfinished)