Dear Zohran!
First things first: Congratulations for a well-deserved, well-earned and emphatic victory! Against all odds, against entrenched hostility (institutional and motivated), you prevailed. Before you get ‘bogged’ down in the ‘pedestrian’ affairs of the mayoral office, allow me to state and belabor the obvious: you assume office at a critical juncture in US history; the country is at that ‘inflection point’ where able, prudent and moral leadership is the need of the hour.
The ground swell of support you received, the trust that New Yorkers have reposed in you is humbling it comes at a time when the global, local, the regional and so on mesh together in a curious mélange. Your work is cut out for you Zohran. As a starting point, a cardinal one, you must beseech God and ask him to help you and then begin your work with all humility and grace. Post this private and introspective moment, you must govern (or serve) as the mayor for ALL New Yorkers.
Here I must interpose with a personal experience, a memory that has remained with, and will remain with me as the cherished one from and of NYC. In 2007-8, during my travels (with attitude), to gain multiple vantage points on the US, as a conscientious Muslim, I chose, to experience life in the streets of the United States.
As I lay huddled in an NYC shelter, a weird space where the ‘wretched of the earth’ congregated in quasi Dickensian conditions, where wisps of marijuana smoke mingled with half rotted food, where men of different ethnicities jockeyed and jostled for space, where the human condition lay bare in all its eloquence, a ‘thief’ who I shall call ‘Steve’ took me under his wing. Steve had become a ‘thief’ after losing his middle-class status to his binge and manic investing in stock markets.
Now a ‘serial state hopping thief’, Steve was in NYC for a few days. We ‘hit off immediately’. ‘I can smell a packet of food when I see one. You are not a thief. What are you doing here?’ Steve asked me. Over the next few days, when Steve returned in the evenings, he would treat me very well, ‘the food in the shelters, who would call it food?’ Steve would grunt. Here’s a sandwich and salad I got for you’.
On the penultimate day of his departure from NYC, he said, ‘It’s risky for me here now’. Handing me a wad of dollar bills, he said, ‘buy yourself some nice clothes, my boy and find yourself a missy. I have to go now’.
In a very short period, we had developed a such a bond that tears welled up in our eyes. I bid farewell to Steve the next morning, just before daybreak, when the shelter managers, were emptying it of its nightly inhabitants. There was if memory serves me well only one toilet in the shelter.
You had a couple of minutes or so to empty your bowels, dob some water on the face and leave. The shelter inhabitants shouted at each other to exit the toilet, as they stuck sandwiches, granola bars and pieces of fruit in their pockets.
The day ahead would be a long one, whiled away in street corners, or NYC’s terrible parks where cops would shoo away the homeless if they sat too long on a park bench. Food had to be foraged for and saved to get through the say.
As the mighty, glistening skyscrapers of NYC cast their long shadow, on the streets of the city, ‘ate’ up people who were reporting for work and then spat them out in the evenings, overburdened transport systems creaked and groaned under the weight of the mass of peoples going home.
The homeless waited at the doors of shelters, arguing among themselves, shouting at each other, asking to be let in as the setting sun gave way to the autumn chill in the evening.
There’s more to the city, Zohran, than this. But this portrait of NYC is what has remained with me. It is to these people that you must turn to first. They need you as much as the saddled assorted men and women – ‘white’, ‘brown’ and ‘black’ who have been abandoned not just by society but fate itself.
You owe them a ‘good life’, Zohran. This, however, is not all. The streets of NYC, after dusk are not a picture-perfect portrait of safety. How you do it, I don’t know Zohran, but a NYC corner and street must, at midnight, be like one where a woman bedecked in jewelry can feel absolutely safe.
But, Zohran, NYC is – being reflective of the human condition - is a space where ALL choose to call it their own. Be it a man or a woman in a business suit concluding a Merger and Acquisition deal, a homeless beggar, a blue-collar working-class woman or woman, the Gyro seller, the street cleaner, the cop at the beat - all must be New York City.
You, Zohran, have to make each of these feel part of something grander, something greater than themselves. The sum, as they say Zohran is greater than its parts. Again, how you do that, I don’t know.
One way may be to make NYC a more investment friendly place; where these investments help the millionaire dream of becoming a billionaire, where the Gyro seller dreams of sending his child to do quantum mechanics or high-end AI development degree at the NYU, where the street cleaner dreams of and can make it ‘big’.
In short, Zohran, make NYC a city of dreams, a city where anyone can become anyone. I don’t know how you do that, but you’ve referred to hope as the centre piece of your politics. Build upon this Zohran and make hope mesh with dreams.
It is thus that NYC can be redeemed. But for this to happen, you need to create the future on the pedestal of the present, a present that is chaotic, full of “unknown unknowns”. You would need support, good wishes and prayers for this Zohran. For this you must take a turn to Lord Almighty again, ask for strength, more courage and humility to take on the humungous tasks that await you.
The great Lord and the people are the bedrock of your support, and strength. Roll your sleeves, Zohran and get your hands calloused. The time is now.
Make NYC the dreamy, dreamlike city where homeless rebuild their lives, where the addled get clarity, where the poor dream big and where the rich have no fetter to make halal or kosher money.
Make NYC a city for and of ALL. Go Zohran Go! The Time is now!
God speed!
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