Why NYC is my favorite city on this planet

I have often said, and been rebuked for saying, that the Big Apple is my favorite city on this planet. People often ask me why that is so, and I'm never able to give a wholly convincing argument - so here is an attempt in that direction.

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that while I have lived in NYC for upto 3 weeks at a go, most of my visits have involved me living there for not longer than 2-3 days - always as a tourist. Mileage may vary for the people who have actually lived in the city.

To understand my undying love for NYC, we must go all the way back to the summer of '95. This was the first time I had left India - and guess which city I went to first?? I had been warned by my dad before arriving there that the place was just as dirty as Delhi and that I might indeed be disappointed once I got there. But, I wasn't. I remember falling in love with it during our drive back from JFK. I remember peeping out the window of our cab, admiring the huge glass buildings, the no. of cars on the roads, the long bridge with two levels (I think) that we were driving on. Imagine me as Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2 - when he first arrives in the city riding in on a cab. I was him - and I was loving every moment of it. The 3 weeks we spent there were just as much fun too. I don't remember spending much time with my dad (he was constantly at work), but my mother, brother and me had one of the best vacations I remember. We must have walked more miles in those 3 weeks than we did our entire lives before then. We covered everything from Central Park to the Wall Street to liberty island. We had coke in cans, and nice nike shoes, and a new remote controlled car. We had the nice weather (coming from Delhi in the summer - you can imagine), the friendly people (I remember dropping my coke in a McD's and the manager giving me a new one - on the house), the diversity of faces, the subways, the buses, the yellow cabs, the ferries to Liberty and Ellis island, the Empire State Building, the New York Style pizza etc. etc.

That trip was where it all started, but by no means is it the only source of love for that city. My next visit to the city came once I had moved to the states for college. Me and a few friends went on a crazy road trip our first spring break at UT. We lived in the city for 3 days and then went up to Boston. But those 3 days were amazing too - we walked up to Central Park and down to the Wall Street. We saw the Empire state building and the City Hall. We walked through the village and China Town. We saw our first apple store across from the NYU. I experienced our first police stop in the city. I saw my first snow fall in the US there.

I went there a couple more times too - when my folks had come to my brothers college for all of us to meet up, or me and my friends going there for new year's '07 (that was one crazy night). And then finally, before I left the US to come back to India, in Oct '07. NYC was my last stop - my final encore - the last city I was in, in the country I had called home for the past 5 years. That trip was memorable too (for many good and some not-so-good reasons). But what I remember most, was my drive to the airport from my cousins dorm room. There was nobody riding with me - and I wouldn't have had it any other way. I was taking in the city, the country, the people - one last time - not knowing when I would be back. And I remembered then, my first time driving into the city - only this time the buildings were getting smaller, not bigger.

However I might describe my feelings for NYC, most people won't understand it - and I don't expect them to. It is my favorite city in the world for personal reasons - they all have theirs. All I want to say is this - go visit NYC, live there for a bit, walk it's streets, talk to the people there, eat the pizza there, ride on the subway there. Then maybe you might fall in love with the city, just as I have.