Kishore Singh: Being conservative in NYC

It was a pied-a-terre like many others, though perhaps better located and better furnished than most. Michelin takeaways delivered brilliant meals to the privileged occupants of the building where it was situated. The quiet street was only a hop, skip and not quite jump away from the bustle and madness of Manhattan. High streets wrapped themselves around the precinct. You could shop for fashion, or entertainment, and walk home without bothering to flag down a yellow cab.

Yet, its occupant was considering giving it up to move back to India on a whim and a job. There were other attractive prospects to coming home - the comfort of cooks and drivers, of those who could be employed to tend to you part- or full-time. It meant trading in independence for security, "but, really, coming back" my daughter wanted to know, "do you think I could have her job and her apartment?"
 

My daughter thinks of New York as one big store with a delicatessen attached. She gave me a list of stores to check out "just like that" - coincidentally, all of them stocked women's wear, so I suspect it was some kind of ruse to make me go on a splurge. Fortunately, I was too occupied with work to fall into the trap. Could I go to Coach? Sephora was next door from the hotel, and couldn't I find a few moments to compare prices at Burberry, seeing I was already on Madison Avenue...

If my daughter wanted me to shop for her, my wife instructed me on places to see on this, my recent visit to the Big Apple. "I'm working," I reminded her, and, therefore, unable to go strolling through Central Park, or zipping up the Empire State Building, or cosying up to the Statue of Liberty. "Where are you now?" she asked to know. I assured her that the watering hole on the sixty-fifth floor nightclub amid a slew of Manhattans and Cosmopolitans was "strictly work", and that I wasn't having a good time at all.

My son demanded to know if I was cooped up in an office, so I explained that I was at the Guggenheim, but had already been to the Met, and had lined up a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, having already done the galleries. "Sounds like a lot of work," he said sarcastically - even though, of course, it was. It was difficult remembering where the Miros were, and the Picassos, so my colleagues decided to junk work to go out partying. That it was Halloween was coincidental: we didn't go out looking for fun, it was fun that came looking for us.

On a previous visit, my boss had taken us to a strip joint, so that wasn't on the bucket list of experiences any more, which meant there was less to do than, well, wine and dine, and challenge each over the next gentleman's club visit that seemed overdue. We went, however, to places where others might not have been able to hold their heads high, but where a modicum of respect appeared expected. If this required us to hand over our jackets and our esteem to a phalanx of, er, creatures of the night, surely we could be excused? Which was how, unwillingly, we found ourselves exchanging life stories at a bowling alley. It was a palliative, a reward that extended to our nod and a wink at a studio apartment where life might have been different - if it wasn't for being conservative in NYC.