Prerna rushed to the St George Ferry Terminal-her okra, curry leaves and mangoes nearly spilling out of her bags. With her free hand, she clutched her handbag-her only stylish accessory, a knock-off Coach handbag from Reema. Fashion didn't matter to Prerna. All that mattered was food.
She pushed through the mass of human bodies-dour businessmen in grey overcoats, excitable tourists in their colourful shirts and shorts, rough-handed and sleepy-eyed workers who looked as if they could do with more sleep, preppy college students, pushing their bikes or scooters to the ferry, and the occasional eccentric who defied category. Like a colourful school of fish, the crowd squeezed in from the streets and parking lots surrounding the terminal. Once inside, they all swam through the massive glass gates leading to the ferry gangplank, on to the Staten Island Ferry.
Prerna preferred to ride at the front and would go to pains to arrive early enough to ensure she got a place to sit aboard one of the deep, burnt-orange vessels-the colour of mace-which reminded her of the vegetables she seared in her tandoor. She could almost smell the rust of the ferry.
She never learned the name of each boat, but she preferred the older models, which featured what she thought were mid- century bathroom fixtures of wood and brass. Best of all was the fact that her picturesque twenty-minute commute, though sometimes packed and frantic, was free-and Prerna loved a bargain!
Clutching her bags of fresh Indian herbs and spices, her mangoes and okra, Prerna pushed through the crowd towards the bow and ascended the stairs to secure her favourite spot for the twenty-minute water journey-the deeply-worn, shellacked benches of the upper deck, whose visible layers of exposed paint and scratches revealed much history. This position gave her a marvellous view of the Statue of Liberty to her left and a fine view of the immensity called Manhattan.
The waters were choppy that day, with the rising sun rapidly dispelling the last vestiges of the fog. Seagulls and security helicopters appeared to give chase to the lurching ferry, and soon their only companions were the occasional military ships, oil tankers, barges, luxury speedboats and other boats.
It was a beautiful sight that Prerna would never miss taking in -the Statue of Liberty, thrusting her torch in the air from a distance. To her, it didn't matter what others thought of the statue, what mattered most to her was that Lady Liberty was just that a woman offering freedom. Prerna was content to view her from a distance, for no money whatsoever. She held her thumb up to measure the statue's height from where she stood, only as big as a piece of okra.
She then peeled her eyes from the view of Lady Liberty and the ocean life and saw she was sitting amidst a varied group of people. A blonde sat to her right, pampering a Havanese puppy with pink ribbons in its hair. The woman vaguely, very vaguely, resembled Brigitte Bardot-her bleached hair and smear of pink lipstick gave the superficial impression that she was thirty rather than pushing seventy. If she weren't on the ferry, she would have easily been hanging backstage with Mick Jagger, or even Pandit Ravi Shankar.
On Prerna's left sat a mild-looking college kid, with a trimmed 'millennial' beard, his oxford shirt buttoned all the way to the top. He was probably a graduate student at Pace University. Prerna knew the type-students from Pace often came to her restaurant for lunch takeout.
