Originally published on Why I Love New York City – A photo documentary about love for New York City. Thank you for the feature my extremely talented friend, Eljay Aguillo @W57TH.
@Nishita08 creator of @Fluid.World –
“It had been one of those crazy New York days where you have a million things to do and 24 hours seems way less. I had been attending meetings since 8am, all a part of the very different aspects of my current routine. I was rushing back to Brooklyn after my last meeting at Pershing Square and as I entered Grand Central I looked around at all the New Yorkers rushing toward different terminals. I stopped. I thought to myself that this place was the epitome of movement. I decided to just stay a while to take a few moments to ponder. I sat on the steps leading to the Apple store and started jotting down my thoughts in my little NYC notebook.
A guy who worked at the Apple Store came up to me and asked what I was writing about. “New York” I said. “Are you from here?” he asked. “Yes. Every fiber of my being. Although I’m originally from India.” He went on to ask me about how long I had lived here, what I was doing, and what made me come all the way to New York. To that I answered, “From the first day that I visited New York I knew I wanted to live here.” He seemed quite impressed with the tenacity with which I said that. “That’s what I love about this city. At any moment you can run into people who are really doing something with their lives. You left the comfort of your home behind to come to New York City to live alone?” But that was the thing. I hadn’t . I had left everything behind (my family, my boyfriend now ex-boyfriend, my self – this person who really wasn’t me, who had no voice, no drive, no value for herself) that was holding me back, that wasn’t who I was, to come home to New York City. As he got up to get back to work he complimented me on my curly hair. That’s when I thought, New York had made me fall back in love with my one-hundred percent wildly natural curls, those curls which I had always tried to tame, but now have to come realize that they have a mind of their own, just like I do.
In that random conversation I knew that this was my New York. The hustle. The life. That exhilarating feeling of being a New Yorker. It was all mine. You could take me away from New York. But you can never take New York away from me.”
fluid.world 