No city is an “urban jungle.” That is a condescending and dismissive term. Every city is a human habitat, and it is full of wonderful and not so wonderful things. A jungle is also a wonderful place, unless you take it for granted or disturb its inhabitants. To call a city an “urban jungle” and denigrate it is to condemn two wonderful habitats at once: the jungle and the city.

I have been visiting New York – often described as an “urban jungle” – on and off since 1988, and my fascination with the city has only grown. Beneath the thousands of steel and glass columns that reach into the sky, life goes on pretty much like anywhere else, busy with the everyday things that threaten one’s livelihood. From the top of one of these columns, people and vehicles look like ants scurrying around in a valley of huge mountains.

The typical New Yorker is a person in a hurry, but I think only as much as his counterpart in Mumbai, Calcutta or Bengaluru, only the styles are different. The New Yorker seems more tense while his Indian counterpart is more relaxed – perhaps Indian capitalism has not yet grown far enough to tighten the noose properly. The only people not in a hurry in New York are the old people sitting on a park bench watching life go by, or the homeless with nowhere to go. And of course the tourists. They rush, but they rush slowly. An incredible 66 million tourists come to the city every year to wander among the steel and glass corporate cathedrals.

For me, the magic of New York is in the streets beneath the skyscrapers and in the crowded subway hidden in the eerie underground tunnels beneath the streets. What New York’s Staten Island Ferry offers you is a different kind of magic: it’s a piece of New York above water. It’s one of New York’s most beautiful experiences.

For those unfamiliar with the ferry, here’s a brief description. It connects Lower Manhattan with Staten Island, 5.2 miles away across New York Harbor. The ride takes 25 minutes through the choppy waters of the East River estuary, which is fed by the tides of the Atlantic Ocean. The ferry could almost be called forever famous, because at any given time of day or night, spring, summer, fall or winter, rain, shine or fog, two huge, sleek, urban-orange ships cut through the rough waves, one bound for the island and the other bound for Manhattan. The service operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And, believe it or not, it’s free. Yes, free! In the world’s largest capitalist society, there is something that is free.

Here are some interesting facts about the ferry. It began service in 1905, long before the bridges were built. The New York City Department of Transportation operates the ferry. It makes 117 trips a day with eight large and two small vessels, all named after prominent citizens of New York and Staten Island. It carries about 70,000 people daily between St. George Terminal in Staten Island and Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan — around 22 million people and 40,000 trips a year. The ferry’s on-time performance rate was 94 percent at last count. In its 118-year history, there has been only one accident, when the vessel Andrew J Barberi crashed at full speed into a concrete maintenance pier at St. George Terminal in Staten Island in 2003, killing 11 people and injuring many.

I first boarded the ferry in 1992. Over the years, I have been its loyal passenger many times. I am indebted to my friend Manohar Thomas for introducing me to the ferry. His house on Staten Island is my New York sanctuary and so I became a loyal ferry passenger. I still remember the first time he drove me to the ferry terminal and said, “Go in.” “Where is the ticket office?” I asked. “No ticket,” he said. I couldn’t believe my ears. The United States of America was giving me a free ride!

The waiting area at Staten Island Terminal is large and full of people. There are a few police officers holding two happy Labradors on a leash, chatting and drinking coffee. Every now and then they stroll up to a passenger and ask him to sniff his luggage. After sniffing, the dogs have a satisfied look in their eyes and wag their tails happily. I have probably seen two or three generations of police officers and dogs by now; perhaps some of the officers are now bosses and the dogs are relaxing in their eternal hunting grounds but miss the sniffing.

The huge drawbridge that takes you to the ferry is manned by staff standing on high platforms on either side, who seem to keep a constant eye on the passengers. I wondered at the vast gallery that stored in their minds images of faces, gaits and mannerisms of the never-ending stream of people who pass beneath their gaze day after day. It must be an extraordinary logbook of humanity.

The three-story ship is huge and cavernous. The rows of seats are spaced far apart and there’s no feeling of being crowded. Balconies open on either side where you can stand and watch the world of New York Bay open up around you. On the starboard side, Brooklyn and the famous Brooklyn Bridge come into view, followed by Governor’s Island further ahead. On the port side, the Statue of Liberty appears like a dot on the horizon and soon she’s in full view, but still far away. As she gets closer, tourists flock to the port balcony with their cellphone cameras. Next to it is Ellis Island, the place where millions of immigrants from around the world – those who created the America we know – landed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, had their immigration registered and were forwarded to their destinations. (The National Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island is an unforgettable and moving experience.)

The waves are always choppy, whether it’s high or low tide. They’re scary to look at. They’re not high and seem to dance. But you can imagine how merciless their cold, undulating grip would be if you were to accidentally get caught in them. All over the bay, ships of all kinds cruise, huge cargo ships heading in or out of the harbor, tourist boats, speedboats, luxury yachts, sailboats and small canoes in which a single man sits with his fishing rod, impervious to everything, dreaming that his fish is hiding somewhere.

Then the Manhattan skyline across the bay begins to take shape, to grow, to loom, to grow larger by the minute, and then to rush toward you like a glittering collection of fairy castles, their spires reaching for the sky. We know it’s an extravagant display of power, wealth, and dominance. But it’s amazing. It’s breathtaking. New York appears before you in all its glory. Then, under the watchful eyes of the drawbridge keepers, you are unloaded into what may be, to me, the most open and human urban conglomeration in the world. New York may be the headquarters of the Masters of the Universe in its skyscrapers, but the city belongs to ordinary people.

Back to the ferry. It is a world apart. Like New York, it is a melting pot of races, colors, languages, dress and behavior. For the daily traveler, as for commuters anywhere in the world, the ferry is an extension of home. There are even people who appear to be mentally ill—perhaps suffering from depression or under the influence of drugs—who use violent language and stagger around. No one seems to mind. I see Buddhist monks in their saffron robes, Hasidic Jews with their ponytails, huge hats and long coats, Muslims in their white kippahs, African women with their magnificent headdresses, and Indian women in saris and salwar kameez. There is a lot of laughter and chatter, but there are also people engrossed in their cellphones or lost in thought. Children play. Lovers whisper and kiss. A black man holds a huge music player—something that disappeared from the world long ago—and plays it loudly. He is happy and smiling. Nobody cares about him. Families of tourists are having fun taking photos and selfies.

For me, the Staten Island Ferry is a piece of real New York, the New York that is more than the skyscrapers, the glitz and the hoopla. It is the New York of the working class, of the less privileged women and men, of the humble and the ordinary. In its own way, the fact that the ferry is free represents not the grace of capitalism but what remains of the shining humanism that once illuminated the American Declaration of Independence. Thank you, Staten Island Ferry, for being here. May you cross New York Bay for free for another thousand years!