Help! I Can't Cope.(Brief Article)

THAROOR is the author, most recently, of the novel "Riot."

A friend who had lived in New York during the 1970s was recently here for a brief visit. I asked him what, in this ever-changing city, he found to be most startlingly changed. He thought for a minute before answering. "Probably the visible increase in prostitution," he replied.

My astonishment at this comment was so palpable that he felt obliged to explain. "Haven't you noticed," he asked with surprise, "all these young women standing furtively in doorways? You never used to see that when I was here."

I couldn't resist my laughter. "They're not prostitutes," I clarified. "They're smokers."

For indeed they are. Most American office buildings no longer allow smoking on the premises, driving those who can't resist the urge onto the streets. The sight of them, lounging on "coffee breaks" near the entrances to their workplace, puffing away, has become ubiquitous. Since most new smokers apparently are women, my friend's confusion was understandable. And there are more than ever since September 11.

Stress is probably better measured anecdotally than statistically. I'm not aware of surveys on this matter, but anyone living in New York these days has stories of friends who, amid the scares of 9-11 and its aftermath, have sought solace in cigarettes. I used to go to a gym in the MetLife Building over Grand Central Terminal. Some days so many people stood outside, tensely smoking, that I assumed an evacuation had just been ordered. At least three friends who'd given up tobacco have lapsed back into the habit, claiming they couldn't calm their nerves any other way. Others have increased their previously reduced intakes. Some, in their quest for a crutch, have begun smoking for the first time. In modern Manhattan the frantic puff has become the preferred alternative to the silent scream. (If you can't reach your therapist, you know where to find her.)

New Yorkers, of course, are coping in more imaginative ways, as well. A friend swears he knows someone who has stashed a canoe in his closet in case he needs to escape Manhattan by river. Another says he has moved a heavy objet d'art into his office so that he can smash the window if a firebomb makes the elevator or the stairs impassable. A woman working on one of the lower floors of her office building has acquired a rope long enough to lower herself to the ground; one who works at the top of a skyscraper tells me she's looking ...