From rectifying his own messy habits to almost getting attacked by a homeless man; Taarak Mehta's Goli aka Kush Shah calls moving to New York a 'reality check'

So, luckily, I was living alone because the guy who was supposed to share the other room never showed up. Oh, nice. So I basically got the whole place to myself. So I was living alone in New York. That was a big deal for me because that’s when I realised—oh, eating in bed attracts cockroaches. And yeah, they do show up.

Cockroaches kept coming, and I couldn’t spray bug spray to get rid of them because their babies would become immune to it. I found this out after doing some research since I didn’t know anything about cockroaches before. So, for the first two or three weeks, I think I was just figuring out how to get rid of cockroaches. There were a lot there, you know? Where I was living, there were tons. Honestly, when I moved to New York, that’s when I realised I was a pretty dirty person. Like, really messy. Maybe not anymore, though.

I learned all that in three months, but the thing is, I’ve always had everything handed to me. I’ve lived with my parents all these years, living a super entitled life. Everything was just given to me, but when I went to New York, I had to figure everything out on my own. That’s when I realised, man, you’re messed up. Like, I was eating in bed at night, and obviously, the consequences hit me the next day. I wouldn’t even wash the utensils before going to sleep. I started understanding how tough things are. I get mad at myself a lot for that, honestly.

Also, it’s New York. I was super distracted. Seeing the world made me crazy because as soon as I came out of the Port Authority bus terminal in New York, I saw the New York Times office right in front of me. To the right, I saw Times Square. At first, I thought, “Wow, Times Square is such a crazy place. Such a beautiful place.” But honestly, I think I like Ghatkopar better than Times Square. Times Square is such a terrible place, no matter what you say about New York.

First of all, I think back in the 90s, when there were no LEDs, it might have been kinda fascinating. Dude, there are so many LEDs and huge ad posters now, but seriously, that’s a lot of ads, so many people, so much smell. Also, I love New York because it’s smelly, I love New York because of the traffic, I love New York because it’s noisy and all. Mumbai, on the other hand, feels way more homely.

Honestly, I’ve never been scared of beggars back in India. But over there, yeah, I kinda got scared of the homeless people. Because there are beggars who look well-fed and taken care of, and that’s the scary part. You can’t really be scared of them, 'cause if you show fear, they’ll just mess with you even more. So, the first time I came to New York, a homeless guy saw me and I just looked at him, you know, trying to play it cool and tell myself to chill. But obviously, my body language didn’t show “chill” at all.

I changed my way. Yeah, and then he got so mad and started chasing me, like, "How the hell did you change the route?" So right there, on my first day, I thought, man, this place has some crazy people, like seriously nuts. Also, I didn’t even know that the Bronx—the place I think was shown as Gotham City in Batman—is like a living hell. If you take the subway there, you’ll see syringes lying around everywhere. That’s just how people are on the subway.

They just come to hang around, that’s it. If they want to sit there, they’ll sit there. They’re not gonna check if you’re sitting or not, thinking you'll just fly away. I haven’t seen anything like that. But overall, New York felt like a really safe city to me. I used to travel even at 3 in the morning. So, no big problems, but honestly, I was pretty scared of the beggars.