Well, I finally made it to the city that never sleeps.  Of course the very first place that I go to is the Dakota. I have spent so many years reading about it and picturing it in my mind and now I am standing outside its famous wrought-iron gates!

It is October the 9th. I have specifically timed my very first visit to New York City to coincide with his birthday. Surely he must come out and acknowledge his fans on a day like this, accept their greetings, perhaps even blow out the candles on the cakes that some of his admirers will undoubtedly bring along.

Within five minutes of arriving at the Dakota – and what a thrill it is to see it for the very first time – Yoko walks right past me. Strangely, she carries no presents in her hands and looks rather dejected on this joyous occasion. No, not just dejected, more than that, she looks very lonely and deflated, shrunken almost, as if some vital part of her has been amputated. But surely, once she walks into their apartment on the 9th floor, his famous wit will cheer her up and his cheeky smile will make her smile too.

        Meantime, I will stand here and wait for him to come out. I have flown across oceans to see him and see him I surely will, despite those ugly rumours that I have overheard about something terrible that apparently befell him some time in the past. What nonsense! Absurd things like that just don’t happen in this world. Fate would take extra-special care of such a man to make sure nothing bad happened to the creator of such sublime and immortal beauty. Why, I am certain, right now he is half-lying, half-sitting on his bed, as I’ve seen him do in photos, picking notes on his guitar and creating more sonic jewels of ineffable wonder.

       And so I will stand here and wait for him to come out, till nightfall if necessary, for I have to prove to myself that he is in fact a real person and not just an idealised construct created by mankind to satisfy its need for heroes. For it is almost impossible to believe that so many timeless masterpieces could come out of one man. Is he a real person at all or a force of nature?  What if he is just an archetypal symbol of our hopes, our dreams, our aspirations for a utopian existence and so all my waiting will be in vain? No, that can’t be!

And so I will stand here and wait for him to come out, till nightfall if necessary, to wish him a happy birthday and to press into his hands some of my poems and stories, so that he would see that we both share the same ideals and beliefs.

And I will grab the opportunity to tell him of how much his music has meant to me over the years. I will tell him how his music had inspired me to reach for peaks of creative endeavours, how music for me is the highest form of expression. Alas, not being gifted with having celestial sounds divine arising and frolicking in my mind, I instead had to convey my inner being through the lame and unwieldy lumps of words.

I will tell him how I have tried to continue his mission of spreading hope and light around the world through my own writings, my own actions, my own conduct and interactions with people, for even one small candle can destroy the infinite darkness of the entire night.

        Until then, I will wait, for I know that if I wait long enough, he will come. He just has to come, for New York City is the place where everything is achievable, the place where impossible and ineffable dreams come true. And so if I just close my eyes and wish hard enough, then surely he must appear!