'Bang in the middle of Miami is the nudist beach, if you please. I can’t believe my eyes.'

You may not believe it but an emergency of sorts has been declared in America. While Pakistan battles the Taliban, the Americans are battling swine flu. With over a thousand dead, President Obama has declared a state of emergency. The epidemic is being fought on a war footing (excuse the cliché). The TV channels 24/7 warn of death urging the juniors and seniors to run to the nearest pharmacy and get vaccinated against the killer disease. The problem: most health outlets have run out of the vaccination.

Where is one to go? Maybe Miami. No one talks of swine flu out there. Other things take precedence.

Bang in the middle of Miami is the nudist beach, if you please. I can’t believe my eyes. But let me leave it at that and not go into too many details for my editor to excise. The Trump towers are on the beach and once ready will offer the most spectacular vistas that money can buy and a giant telescope installed on the balcony can show. Oh yes, you have to be loaded to live near this particular oceanfront and enjoy sights nowhere else available. Plenty of golden sun and white sand thrown in for free. Bathers sprawled out for miles just want to be one with nature, literally. Besides they want a tan that even money can’t buy. No matter how hard some white skinned bathers try, they can’t attain nirvana. Instead of turning golden bronze they turn a beetroot red.

Yuk!

Miami has a heavy Latino population. Rich guys and gals from South America own villas by the sea. By day they spend their (ill-gotten?) millions shopping in exotic malls dressed to kill and by night they frequent the most expensive nightclubs that pander to them, many of them drug dealers. Life for these people is good. The drugs fetch good money.

Remember the TV series Miami Vice? It was the rage in the ‘80s because unlike routine detective/police stories, it portrayed the 1980s ‘New wave’ culture and music where rock, pop and punk came together. People magazine said it was the ‘first show to look really new and different since color TV was invented.’ Drug-trafficking and prostitution gave the show its name.

Anthony Yerkovich, the man who created the series calls Miami a sort of a modern-day American Casablanca. ‘It seems to be an interesting socioeconomic tide pool: the incredible number of refugees from Central America and Cuba, the already extensive Cuban-American community, and on top of all that the drug trade. There is a fascinating amount of service industries that revolve around the drug trade — money laundering, bail bondsmen, attorneys who service drug smugglers. Miami has become a sort of Barbary Coast of free enterprise gone berserk.’ The Europeans from the 16th century until the 19th refer to the ‘Maghreb’ now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisa and Libya as the Barbary Coast. The term is derived from the Berber people of North Africa.

At a swank mall in Miami, a tall slim girl in black catwalks around holding a card. She is a walking/talking model for a high end couture brand. ‘Hi’ she greets me, ‘I’m Jean. Do you want to take my photo?’ she invites me. Sure why not? I say and take her picture with all smiles. ‘My job is to walk around the three-storied strip mall showing off my dress made by St John.’

Okay, I get it. The dress is definitely pretty but much above my price range. What a novel way to advertise. Hire a leggy blonde and give her one of your dresses to wear and then get her to parade your brand. How can people, I mean men, resist a pretty face? I overhear a couple sitting nearby sipping coffee arguing. ‘But I don’t like the dress,’ the wife protests angrily when her husband tries to call Jean to their table.

With riches come poverty too. On a less fashionable road, I notice an abandoned truck. It’s parked. And on it is a big sign saying ‘Foreclosures/bank owned properties for sale.’ This is the other side of reality where the banks snatch away your belongings if you fail to make the mortgage payments every month. Obviously the unfortunate truck owner has had his car snatched from him because he failed to honor the monthly payments.

Later, I drive to Boca Raton, Florida’s paradise for the wealthy. I walk into a huge home furnishing store. ‘The rich just dump their wares here when they get bored with them and want them out,’ says the owner. The store is an Aladdin’s cave and the prices, my God, are so low. One is tempted to sweep the store but then not everyone is Donald Trump, the chap whose Trump towers stand tall on the ocean where you read signs warning: ‘Attention. Beyond this point you may encounter nude bathers.’
 
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