Dear Zohran!

First things first: Congratulations for a well-deserved, well-earned and emphatic victory! Against all odds, against entrenched hostility (institutional and motivated), you prevailed. Before you get ‘bogged’ down in the ‘pedestrian’ affairs of the mayoral office, allow me to state and belabor the obvious: you assume office at a critical juncture in US history; the country is at that ‘ inflection point’ where able , prudent and moral leadership is the need of the hour. The ground swell of support you received, the trust that New Yorkers have reposed in you is humbling: it comes at a time when the global, local, the regional and so on mesh together in a curious mélange. Your work is cut out for you Zohran. As a starting point, a cardinal one, you must beseech God and ask him to help you, and then begin your work with all humility and grace. Post this private and introspective moment, you must govern (or serve) as the mayor for ALL New Yorkers.

Here I must interpose with a personal experience, a memory that has remained with, and will remain with me as the cherished one from and of NYC. In 2007-8, during my travels (with attitude), to gain multiple vantage points on the US , as a conscientious Muslim, I chose , to experience life in the streets of the United States. As I lay huddled in an NYC shelter, a weird space where the ‘wretched of the earth’ congregated in quasi Dickensian conditions, where wisps of marijuana smoke mingled with half rotted food , where men of different ethnicities........

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