Kishore Singh: Fifty shades of black

It's summer in the Big Apple and as hot as it's likely to get for New Yorkers, but compared to the temperature in New Delhi, it's still mild. It's also holiday time, so the streets are full of the good folk from back home - the Mehras and Guptas and Ahluwalias - taking selfies in front of Bergdorf Goodman's startling show windows and cycle-rickshaw rides near Central Park at $3 a minute. Through the tourist rush, the residents of New York go about their work, grim in their business suits - always black or charcoal, slate or soot, sometimes pinstriped - men and women both, briskly efficient, toting briefcases, hailing taxis, striding down in their pumps and brogues.

It's a mystery why New Yorkers won't wear colour, or eat breakfast, or smile much. At the hotel restaurant where I'm staying, the locals queue up first for their breakfast meetings. You can recognise them by their wardrobe, of course, but also by what they eat - or don't - conducting their dealings over black coffee and a bagel, which is a huge price to pay for the buffet they never ate. But they talk money all the while, to make more of what they'll spend on eating even less. By the time the vacationers arrive, to linger over waffles and poached eggs, the natives have gone to their next meeting, or office, or to count the dollars in their banks.

Manhattan's bold and beautiful might be spartan by choice, but the rest of the American folk seem content with la dolce vita. They're large and hearty, somewhat oddly dressed in red shirts and green trousers with floral shoes, looking like the flowers blooming in the roadside beds and just as incongruous. At the trendy cafes where everyone gathers for lunch, the working New Yorkers order salads and push the cheese aside, while the out-of-towners bloat up on beer and enchiladas.

It's the tourists who drink Manhattans at the cocktail bars, the locals preferring shots or martinis or bourbon, but mostly they seem to like wine - and not too much of that either. One of the richest picking points for billionaires, it seems to prefer all other things in moderation. Do they eat? Not from any evidence, making you wonder where they get their energy from. They ignore even the little bowls of nuts the bartender puts before them (the desis, on the other hand, keep asking for more). No one smokes either. On TV, promotions suggest this might be the generation that put an end to smoking - forever.

But there is one sartorial peculiarity New Yorkers seem to have adopted that is strange even by their standards. Perhaps it comes from having vacationers in town, lounging around in their Ts and shorts, spending their days shopping and eating, and adding another tier around their already ample waists. Maybe they find their formal suits too warm to wear comfortably. So, the fashion industry has come to their rescue with a summer version of the business suit. The colours remain steel and smoke, the two-button jacket is still slim fit, but instead of pairing them with trousers, they're teaming their jackets with shorts. On Manhattan's pavements, you can see businessmen in these strange outfits, sporting ties and cufflinks, but also showing off their knees, flashing a hint of thigh, their smooth-shaven legs presaging an age of gender appropriation that's bound to drive women into wearing any shade that isn't a version of basic black.