Big City

Vulgarity, poverty, beauty and style. But perhaps the most striking characteristic of this amazing city is its pace. Everyone, fat, thin, man, woman, young, old, dark, fair, tall, short, whatever appears to be running. The man in the well cut suit, the womanin plump trainers, the old woman with the laundry bag, everyone is in a hurry. Everyone’s got somewhere to go. And fast. Spending even a few days there can be like being on a treadmill.

I find a similar sense of raciness in Hong Kong. At least I did before the island was returned to China. Some say nothing’s changed since then, some say everything has. But before the handover it was definitely the city for speedwalking, speedtalking and speeddealing. It was a city in which even lowly secretaries appeared to dress in designer clothes and talk incessantly and importantly into mobile telephones. Greed was good. Shopping was great with every inch of space exhorting you to buy buy buy. Work was glamourous and everyone, from the young guy in the money business to the sweet thing in advertising risked definite burnout working long hours and weekends to later flake out in the bars on Lung Kwai Fung or, a sure sign of success, a floating barge on weekends.

Clearly the common factor in all three cases is money.Money gives a city pace, energy and purposefulness. It usually also confers a sort of cosmopolitanism on places by creating a common goal for everyone to strive for. It can also, as we know, invite crime and violence. But what I like best about these cities is perhaps the professionalism that one finds at various levels. A good indicator is the ubiquitous taxi driver. I can, just off the top of my head recall the cabbie in Mumbai who hearing me despair during a crazy downpour promised to get me to a crucial appointment on time – and did. Then there was one in New York who seeing me struggling with a heavy bag on the street paused to ask where I was headed, radioed a colleague to get me before driving off to wherever his own passenger wanted to go. And then there was a taxi driver in Hong Kong who reduced his fare because he hadn’t known the shortest route to my destination, this even though he was aware that as a stranger to the city I wouldn’t have known the difference.

Besides money, another factor thattends to give a city a certain identity is power. If New York and Mumbai share a common pace, then the other comparison that is usually drawn is between New Delhi and Washington DC. Physically there are certain similarities. The hub of fine looking structures in the centre, the comfortably low slung skyline, the green spaces, the feel of relative neatness and prettiness all around. If New Delhi has its monuments – commemorating various ancient rulers, DC has memorials celebrating the achievements of former presidents. And both have that same heavy feel of significance. Capital cities often combine two cities within themselves – the power centre and the regular city where people live, cook, go to school, fall ill etc. Neither power nor money can erase these basic human features but sometimes they do succeed in casting a diverting aura of glamour around them.

Amrita Shah is a writer and former editor of Elle