New York City is home to the world's boldest financial delinquents: the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and the most mismanaged international organization headquarters, the United Nations. New York has an estimated Gross Domestic Product higher than Saudi Arabia, and almost twice that of Switzerland. It has had a billionaire as a mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and larger than life unofficial multi-millionaire mayor of the blacks in the city, Sean John Combs aka Puff Daddy. Everything is glamorously portrayed in vivid 4k, except such things as the cityâs rodent problem and crime ridden bloodbaths in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The poor exist everywhere and the rich are hardly there, and hardly better off. They exist among the towers in self-delusion that living higher up the concrete structure in a gilded cage with fingerprint ID for entry makes them better off somehow. Why is the city not able to take care of the poor?
As I pushed amongst the crowds, the seemingly too busy to stay still, what I kept bumping into on every corner were the beleaguered faces of the poor. It is a constant draconian knot to my mind how a city awash in capital is not able to find a humane solution to the disparities of its inhabitants. Some walk in ragged shoes while other leap off the top of the skyscrapers in helicopters only to land at private airports and fly away in private jets to private islands to do private things if known would bring scorn and reproach upon their heads. Is this not poverty? Poverty of the mind, the soul, the flesh-eating disease from within that consumes them along with the physical diseases they keep contracting that only their wealth allows them to fight with antibiotics. If the trickle-down theory can ever be successful it must surely begin as dew, or rain, and start at the top would find minds less consumed with tower living, helicopters and private jets.
I find it torturous walking out of the New York City central station, dodging the overlooked mentally ill, and avoiding eye contact with those who are laying on the floor. This morose spectacle has turned me into a good priest passing the Eucharist or in my case, my lunch money. When winter came, I realized that there were fewer and fewer beggars around my usual crucifixion path. At last, I could get a decent meal without the burning guilty sentiment lodged in my gut. I was unable to silence my suspicions for long and questioned where the lava of homeless had gone that I had become accustomed to. In reality, no miracle had happened - just the weather. As ol'man winter makes its grim appearance, the homeless try to find warm shelters and, inevitably, have to retreat into invisibility.
In 2013, alarming news emerged of the spike in the number of homeless arriving at shelters, and due to housing's limited capacities, adults and children alike had to be turned away every night. What to say about the number of the United States veterans who are homeless? If the United States, currently ranked as the wealthiest nation on Earth, doesn't move Heaven and Earth to care for those who have answered the call to honorably serve the country and abandon noble beings who have put their life at risk to protect the nation, I can't think about anyone else it can show empathy to.
Not to pick on the United States alone the World Bank estimates that more than half of Mumbai residents live in slums that are otherwise by any standard unsafe and uninhabitable, and yet 11 million souls exist day to day1. The "Slumdog Millionaire" is how most people of the western world got a sense of life in Mumbai, and several scenes from the movie were recorded there. Mumbai is a city of contrasts, which is home to some of the country's wealthiest businessmen and Bollywood film stars. I cannot help but wonder if the archaic caste system and deep-rooted religious faith have made the common Indian susceptible to accept disparity in their society as a work of divine force: destiny.
I could not find any public outcry against the Indian space program's (I.S.R.O) budget that gradually boosted up to 1.3 billion dollars in 2013. The I.S.R.O. budget figures triggered countries such as India's former colonial power, the United Kingdom, and one of the nation's best buddies, the United States, to cut aid fund to India. The amount is evidently small compared to the I.S.R.O budget, but it was a huge hit taken by diverse programs that provide needed services to an estimated 421 million of poor Indians. This number is higher than in the twenty-six poorest African nations. What was India's response to the aid cut? "We do not really need the aid," said Palaniappan Chidambaram, India's finance minister at the time.
In November 2013, my Indian-American friends celebrated when India's space program confirmed that the Mars Orbiter had debuted the planned ten-month journey. The Indian Mars probe has raised some of my most profound suspicions. It was orbiting the Earth for some time. I imagine that Indian scientists got depressed looking at the Indian slums and decided to turn their telescopes away. Is the mission's real goal to find a new hide-out for the Indian elite or a dump/final solution for the poor inhabiting places like the slums of Mumbai? If it happens to be the latter, the few clauses on the ratified agreement between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and India about space programs regarding slums scattered around Abuja should be fascinating!
Now try to Google the most expensive house in the world's history. Surprisingly, it is not located in Manhattan or anywhere in Paris, but it is in Mumbai, India, and is valued at more than one billion USD! The twenty-seven-story skyscraper has six underground parking levels, one level dedicated to a health center and requires about six hundred staff for its maintenance. This gargantuan residence is home to the Indian billionaire, Mukesh Ambani, his wife, his two sons and one daughter. It does not pain me as much that in a nation where many children go hungry and live in slums as much as he chose to spend a billion dollars building his residence on land owned previously by an orphanage. The land was allocated to educate underprivileged children. I guess that he wanted to have a beautiful view of the city, and its slums.
Talking about a beautiful view, the Gulf of Florida has some of the most immaculate beaches on the planet. Anyone who desires an urban lifestyle and quick access to splendid beaches, the city of Tampa is the right place to live, because of its proximity to the coastal city of Saint Petersburg. Now, any tourist is going to have a lovely time wandering around under the caressing sun, tasting some authentically fattening American gourmet food at the center of the town and stopping by the beach for ice cream.
Once the sun goes down, it is advisable for any caring soul to avoid venturing into the vicinity of the city center. I have found myself downtown late at night, waiting for the Greyhound bus to take me back to Tampa. I swear criminality is not what people have to worry about. The upsurge of homeless laying their boxes down, trying to find shelter around the imposing local Catholic Church building and the central park is heartbreaking. Adding to that humiliation, the homeless are constantly being harassed by the police on patrol, enforcing what I call a zero-tolerance of the poor decree passed by the local council. As a tactic to get rid of the poor, once arrested and released, they are given a Greyhound ticket out of Saint Petersburg to any destination of their choice, which is usually Tampa. I do think it is one of the most creative and diabolic measures taken with the goal of safeguarding the city's quixotic image.
When somebody says quixotic image, for some reason my mind centers on the city of Burma, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. My enchanting depiction was, for a long time, the result of a leaked video of the General Than Shwe's2 daughter wedding in 2006. There were strings of diamonds and tons of champagne bottles on display. It was estimated that she received tens of millions of dollars' worth of gifts, including luxury cars and houses. I can remember being so envious of the groom, watching him pouring