A word or two more about America and then let the country rest, as far as I am concerned, until my next visit.

Musing over my earlier visits to the United States, say in the 1990s, I remember that religion had emerged as a matter of serious concern and God became big news. The search for a clear understanding of the core principle of belief and how it would be applied to the daily experience of life was being discussed everywhere. People were cottoning on to the fact that religion played a role in their life far more than it did 10 years ago.

It was not hard to find a reason. There had been an influx in America of communities who were deeply committed to religions. Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were then to be found in almost every state. Some surveys had shown that religion was a strong and growing force in the way America thought about politics. Public confidence in religion and the clergy had been renewed. One scholarly book, A history of God remained on the popular best-seller list for more than a year.

No one doubted that America had become the meeting place for all the religions of the world. Islam was America’s fastest growing religion. Muslims had outnumbered Episcopalians and Presbyterians and it was feared that soon they might outnumber Jews. Along with Muslim minarets, Buddhist retreat centres and Hindu temples had begun to dot American religious landscape.

In the words of Houston Smith, a renowned historian of religion, "East and West are being flung at each other, hurled with force of the atoms, the speed of jets". There were signs of restlessness amongst those Americans who were not prepared to arm ways that were different from their own. There seemed to be an increasing awareness, then, that all the peoples of the world have to take each other seriously. It was stressed not just by the intellectuals and sociologists, but local newspapers as well, that people needed to be open about their deepest religious beliefs. Religion was looked at in a positive sense and this gave a greater confidence to the newly emerging communities from the subcontinent.

As a result there was tolerance of sorts for different religions to co-exist. And although after 9/11, Americans had begun to look askance at Muslims, particularly the Arabic world, the Pak-Americans carried on with their daily lives and their businesses as usual.

Now, religion - Islam that is - has assumed the form of a bogey, and in the wake of the forthcoming election a particular presidential candidate has aroused racial prejudice against the Muslims to a serious extent. As I said in my last column, the attitude about race and ethnicity has now been activated in the lead-up to the November election.

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Do you wear a tie or do you not? Twenty years ago this was one of the debates I found raging in the United States. Raging is perhaps the wrong word, but the matter was discussed not without verve. The wearing of a tie, unlike abortion, was not an emotive issue; the tie debate, therefore, did not cause apoplectic fits, but it had created as many supporters as detractors.

In California, for example, the middle-aged people did not normally wear a tie (the elderly men had given up the neckwear a decade ago). Men’s apparel in California had become more sporty and casual than earlier times when most middle-class men wouldn’t dream of stepping out the house without a tie.

It has, of course, been dinned into us that the tie is what makes an attire formal. The high school kids and university undergraduate didn’t wish to have anything to do with formality. A few boys who did put one on in what the Americans call ‘Junior high’, were teased and jeered.

The middle-class adult too, had been in the process of discarding formality. Creaseless trousers and short-sleeved t-shirt with a baseball cap (often worn the wrong way) was the order of the day then. You could do away with the baseball cap if you didn’t want to appear to be "hip". The trend was to appear ‘cool’.  It was not uncommon to see bronzed men in designer jeans, designer tops, with a four-day growth of beard, dangling the keys of their Infinity or Maserati while sitting in a designer open-air café.

But during that visit when I went to Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, it struck me that more and more people were wearing a necktie. (I do not mean the breed of young salesmen who wore ties provided by the store on their half-sleeved shirts.). Many fashion houses, Gucci, Hermes, Chanel etc. had gone to great lengths to reinvent the tie, and priced it at $125 or more, an extravagant indulgence in those days. Those who created these ties made from the finest silks obviously had a market in mind, but I rarely saw anyone wearing them except models who appeared in brochures about men’s wear bought out by Bloomingdales and Niemen Marcus.

In America there is always a survey for everything and according to a survey conducted in 1996 people who wore ties looked good and were treated more deferentially. This amused me because it was so comically close to the scene at home where a tie-clad man had an easier access to the higher circles of officialdom than a tie-less man.

In one store I saw a label saying ‘Decision Making Ties’. Apparently the heads of corporate bodies and state organs wore these, but did they wear them every day - or only on days when they had to make a big decision like raising or lowering oil prices?

* * *

Now the ties are back and the stores like Macy’s and Lord and Taylor are full of ties made in China. You find more people wearing one in restaurants, in theatres, in airline, concourses and in offices. Even Bernie Sanders, a non-conformist, wears one when he goes electioneering. The only thing is nobody seriously thinks that a man wearing a tie is of a superior breed, or is better educated.

* * *

If I were to be nostalgic I would go back to the early 1960s when New York -Manhattan, I should say - was a delightful world where you could get a full breakfast, eggs, beans, sausage, hash brown, fired tomatoes, toast, jam, and any amount of coffee all for 99 cents; where the Chinese would collect and deliver your laundry (four shirts for a dollar and a half), and where you could ring your neighbourhood grocer and butcher and have your groceries and viands dropped at your doorsteps at no extra charge.