GOODBYE MANHATTAN

Chapter 1

GOODBYE MANHATTAN

?'JFK, Terminal 3,' I tell the cabbie as I shut the door. Punjabi MC is blaring on the radio and the incense smoke is almost thick enough to mask the fact Michael Schumacher behind the wheel hasn't quite showered in about three weeks. The cabbie shield proclaims that Malkot Singh is the operator of this particular vehicle. Malkot's wearing a baseball cap on top of his turban. Hmm, what kind of an Indian is he, I idly wonder... perhaps one from Cleveland?

As the cab races up the ramp to the toll booths of the Triboro Bridge, I take one glance back at the Upper East Side, silhouetted by the bright sunshine of a brutally cold wintry day. ?'Goodbye, I'll miss you,' I whisper to the place that I called home for the past twenty five years. I shake my head in amazement that I decided to leave the city I love to go to another place so far removed from everything I took for granted almost all my adult life. But there's not much I can do now, I've already given up the rent controlled apartment, gave away all my furniture and even cancelled my Blockbuster card. My on again off again flame Audrey was seriously pissed off at me while the wicked witch, er, I mean the ex-wife was ecstatic that I was moving to another continent many time zones away. Besides, the airline ticket was non-refundable. Oh, well, off to new adventures, I thought as I gagged on the incense.

?'Acha baba, are you from India?' yells the driver as he races away from the toll booth. ?'You can smoke if you like dude,' he smiles a toothless grin while lighting up a Marlboro. So much for the Taxi & Livery Commission's much vaunted anti-smoking campaign. I smile and light one up myself. After all the flight to Rome is non-smoking, so better smoke while I can. ?'Nope, I'm from the upper-east side,' I mindlessly repeat the old mantra the wicked witch always used whenever somebody asked her about her nationality.

?'Psha, but your family, they're Indian, no?' What the hell I think, won't be seeing too many Pakis in Italy, so why not chat with the bugger. ?'Actually I was born in Sri Lanka.' I tell the cabbie. ?'Are you Sinhalese or Tamil?' the sod is quite the probing sociologist. Wouldn't be too surprised if he asks if I got my green card yet, which is usually about the third question that comes out of every tri-state area south Asian's mouth. But Sherlock Holmes here must have figured my papers were probably in order since I'm going to the airport, so he starts to discuss the state of the city after the incident. By this he means the little hullabaloo where some middle-eastern retards flew two planeloads of passengers into the twin towers.

?'You know my son works in the World Financial Center at Merrill Lynch and saw everything from his office window' Malkot Singh says. ?'He's an investment banker.' My ears perk up when I hear this ?'cos it's not everyday you meet an unwashed cabbie whose son is a big mucketymuck down on Wall Street. ?'Oh yeah, where did your son go to school?'

?'Acha baba, he went to NYU. Graduated 5 years ago and he's now a VP' Malkot glances at me through the rearview mirror and smiles proudly. ?'And my daughter's at Columbia Medical School.'

'That's pretty cool' I reply, ?'I went to NYU myself' I tell him. Life in the big city is funny that way ?'cos things ain't always what they seem to be. ?'So if your son's a VP at Merrill, how come you still drive a cab?'

?'Baba, I used to be a lawyer in Srinagar before I came over here twenty five years ago. Couldn't find a job so I started driving a cab and today I have 3 medallions' Malkot says proudly. That probably puts him in the highest tax bracket in the borough of Manhattan. ?'So where you off to anyway?

?'I'm going to Rome,' I tell the cabbie who is busy swearing at a limo driver on the van Wyck expressway. ?'******* limo drivers just don't know how to handle the morning traffic,' he snarls as he dodges an SUV and shoots past the Interboro exit and onto the home stretch before hitting JFK.

?'Rome?' the traffic has thinned out considerably and he's cruising towards JFK. ?'Going on vacation? You know baba there're thousands of Indians in Italy,' he says. ?'People from my village they all go to Rome nowadays because it's hard to get visas to come to England or America.' Why am I not surprised about this, I wonder. ?'Nope, I'm leaving NY ?'cos I found a job there.'

?'Good for you my friend,' Malkot swerves onto JFK expressway. ?'This city is for **** after the towers collapsed. Some idiots were giving me **** right after nine eleven and said I should go back to ******* Saudi Arabia. So I told them that I was a ******* Sikh and that I hate Moslems just as much as they do and to please get the **** off my cab,' he cackles at the idiocy of the thought that he could be lumped together with the infidels. ?'You Moslem?' he asks as an afterthought. I shake my head no. Billboards whiz by and soon Malkot sidles up to the curb and pops the trunk. ?'Here you go my friend.' He smiles at me. ?'International departures.'

The lines at the International terminal at JFK are interminably long. The never ending terminal renovations don't help matters either. The flight doesn't leave for another 3 hours but the security checks are so long and tedious I wonder if I'll make it through in time. The newly appointed Federal Security agents, who in an innocent pre-nine eleven era were merely minimum wage security guards now seem to take their jobs rather more seriously and treat every passenger like a potential mass murderer. Two Hasidic men in front of me got the royal treatment because, as everybody knows, all men with long flowing beards are terrorists. ?'Das ist ja aber ?'ne Schweinerei,' protests one of them, ?'Ve're Israelis. Vy would ve carry bombs?' The obese guard motions to her supervisor who waddles over and says, ?'Sir, could you please come with us?' and drags the protesting Hasid inside a covered cubicle, most likely for a full cavity body search. The guard gives me the bent eye, ?'You Moslem?' she asks me. ?'No, actually I'm Jewish' I lie with a straight face. ?'Oh really? didn't know there were Indian Jews' she smiles and waves me through. ?'Oh yeah, Bombay is full of them,' I smile back as I pick up my bags and run into the terminal. That was pretty painless and I've got enough time for a last cigarette or two before I board the Alitalia flight to Fiumicino.

My name is Frog. Of course it's not my real name but in Latin, my name means exactly that. My buddies in high school biology class thought it was rather funny that I should be so named and it stuck. My mamma says that I was named after an astral constellation but I think dad was just being a witty sod by naming me after an amphibian. I'm a prince among men and all my life I've been waiting for my princess to come kiss me and take me away from all this shite. So far I've kissed a lot of wenches who've turned out to be witches…or worse. Practice makes perfect I suppose. And as it is the case with most things in my life, I'm off to the eternal city, partly because of a woman.