To Go Back

“I am going back,” she said.

“Wait, have dinner,” I blurted.

“No, I am going home for good. To India, silly,” she said.

I could not believe it. My sister wanted to go back to India. She wanted to leave New York.

My sister, Neera Dugar, 24, is a Carnegie Mellon graduate. For the past two years, she worked at Goldman Sachs, and as the financial markets collapsed in the wake of the credit crisis of 2008, was one of the few that chose to leave, rather than asked to leave.


It was a crisp April evening. Winter was finally on the retreat. Like the weather, the economy was on a rebound too. President Barack Obama had committed $787 billion to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. New York, bruised and battered from its exalted position as the epicenter of American finance, was finally finding its feet. Though unemployment numbers would get worse, the worst was over.

“It isn’t just the economy,” she maintained. “It’s not like I have lost my job.”

“And I am not alone in this,” she said.


I stared blankly at her for a while. Then it struck me. She was right. She wasn’t alone in this. Why would anyone ever want to trudge back? Wasn’t the miracle, the American dream, in America?

This after the United States had served some of it’s finest to her, whether it was her education or the corporation she worked for or the city she lived in. She had the better part of the American dream. And that wasn’t enough.

Or was it just that a bigger dream was unfolding back home in India?


In the coming months, I seek to understand history as history itself changes course. Anand Giridharadas wrote in the New York Times, “it is a milestone in any nation’s life when leaving becomes a choice, not a necessity.”

But is the moment enough? “Not living in New York after having lived there is living with a vague feeling that you are missing out on a great party somewhere,” Craig Ferguson, host of the “Late Late Show” on CBS wrote in his memoir “American on Purpose.”

The stories will be personal, of people having to choose. Migration often gets enveloped in statistics, but it is the human story that needs to be told

And New York City is the theatre of this ebb and flow. The city is home to about 600, 000 Indians, the largest such community of any metropolitan area in the United States.

While at it, I might just understand how my sister manages to get by back home without the sample Tory Burch sale.

(Please send your feedback and possible ledes that might develop the story. A similar story on diaspora did for Holding Willey is here)

Something's wrong? And not just on Wall Street.

There is something wrong with me.

I am actually deriving this perverse pleasure seeing the financial world collapse. And not because I resent it in any way.



Matter of fact, it is quite the contrary. I believe if you can make a living selling paper for paper, taking long and short positions on them, calling them something fancy like a derivative, good on you. I believe in Wall Street. I don't necessarily agree with the backlash against, say, short selling. And I would have markets deregulated than the other way round. The more cushion the Fed gives, the better it is. And I literally cannot stand John McCain or Barack Obama be so shallow on the campaign trail as they talk about greed, and the how apparently how Main Street has been sold short by Wall Street, as paychecks for CEO's have gone fatter. All while Joe Bloggs works three shifts to afford healthcare for his ailing mom.

But why this urge to check on Nikkei 225 before I sleep? Read Floyd Norris in the New York Times, browse the new Journal, get the European view in something like FT, and then look at slideshows of Wall Street bankers with sullen faces and hot bodies outside, say Lehman, in the Daily Intel? Why would I look down upon you if you did not know who Chris DesBarres was? Why does it get my tongue wagging when on Bloomberg, they literally put "the worst since the Great Depression.." on repeat. All day long.

Ken calls it the quarter- life crisis.

I reckon it is a sitcom like sitcoms dream to be, with each character with a story, and each story with a lot of such characters. Give me Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Bob Diamond, Blankfein and a certain W., who realizes rather Fed's billions of dollars than a speech that lasts more than a 120 seconds to cuddle a country in distress, over say, Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgely or a Chace Crawford. Or just that I am about twenty blocks, or two stops on the Pelham Express (4,5) to the Financial District in a city called New York.

Or maybe it is the quarter- life crisis. Because it is a Thursdsay night, but I am sitting with a Walgreens pint of orange juice, still not over Floyd Norris's post on short selling, and there is no place I rather be.

I might want to get better orange juice though.

Or maybe because I had no idea who Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgely or a Chace Crawford were till I looked Gossip Girls on IMDb.

Face it, the summer is over.

I hate to admit it. I am bit of a weather dork. I mean, to an extent that sometimes I find myself checking weather in Anchorage or say, something even more random like Somalia. Trust me, those places always manage to make you feel better.

Apparently I should be careful with Anchorage. Specially with Sarah Palin.

Either how, today was literally the first day of fall in New York. And like it or not, it is autumn in New York. I am excited. I will get corny and cheesy with this picture of the West Village now.



It is time to reclaim the New York of the proverbial romantic comedy. Check the 10- day forecast here. The summer is over.

And look to your right. The latest addition to The Antifits- Our own embedded real time Weatherman. Now be excited. Tell Your friends about it.

Face it, this is the place to be seen checking weather. How could you be anywhere else!

New York, I love you. In 16 sentences.

“Everybody’s gonna love today”

“Anyway you got to”

“Love me”

“This is what I have always liked about New York. These little moments on the sidewalks; you can watch the buildings, you can feel the air. You look at the people and sometimes meet somebody who you feel you could talk to”

“Stop it, I feel naked”

“Everyone came from somewhere else”

“This is the capital of everything possible”

“Have a nice night”

“You think we are getting married”

“Are you an actor or something.
You know, what about you? What do you do?
I am a hooker.”

“Make a wish”

“Sometimes you just gotta yell in the city for people to hear you.”

“I quit”

“You know, New York ain’t such a big place.”

“Why you telling me all of this?
Because tonight I want things to change”

“Ahh God, I love New York”

Watch the theatrical teaser of New York, I love you here on HD.

Manhattan's on sale, and we ain't invited.

(Illustration courtsey: Gary Hovland for The New York Times.)

Look at the illustration closely. And then read this.