I must’ve run past this rock formation innumerable times, but I hadn’t known it existed. ‘We meant to,’ my father said. ‘We thought we’ll come here and sit and listen to the birds.’
‘Sitting was whose idea, Papa?’
My father grinned.
There was no way my mother would decide to go for a walk and then abandon the activity midway so that she could birdwatch.
‘Do you want to go in?’ I asked.
I walked around the fencing, looking for a way in, when my father caught up with me and steered me across the road. He wanted to walk along the library.
Usually, we were quiet on our walks, but today, my father was giving me a tutorial as we walked past the silver oaks and the mighty gulmohar, with its bright orange carpet around it.
‘Your mother loved the gulmohar,’ he said, pointing at a family that had spread out a bed sheet and opened a picnic basket.
I knew that the gulmohar was her favourite; mine was the tabebuia. He picked up a pink tabebuia petal and gave it to me.
My dad knew all about the exotic botanical species found in the park. He had a friend in the horticulture department who briefed him about every petal and pond on the 300 acres, which was then duly reported to my mother. He then rattled on about the nearly 6,000 plants and trees in the park. I felt the wind caress my cheeks.
‘Myra,’ he said just after we had crossed one of the motorways in the park, ‘to be able to forgive is a wonderful thing.’
I nodded. But where had that come from?
‘I learnt that from your mother – to let go and live freely.’
My mother travelled light. She didn’t do baggage.
We walked along the araucarias and beds of canna lilies, red and yellow stalks swaying in the evening breeze. We passed the compelling colonial construction of the library and made our way towards Hudson Circle.
This was my running path, and suddenly, I was itching to run. I turned to my father. He was smiling; his head was in the sky.
‘I’m going to run a little bit.’
He looked at me and blinked. ‘Let me try,’ he said, and without warning, one foot in front of the other, he was moving faster than he ever had.
‘Let’s go, Daddy.’ And we were moving again, father and daughter.
When I was a kid, I once called my father ‘Poppy’. He was overjoyed that I had a melange of expressions for him. ‘Myra has so many names for me,’ he told his wife. It was his chest of treasures.
We ran about a kilometre, stopping at the peanut vendor just outside the grounds, where we packed boiled peanuts for ?50.
My parents always picked up boiled peanuts on their Sunday walks. They had some of it on their way back, and whatever was remaining was tossed into a salad; they called it the ‘Cubbon Park salad’. Mummy added finely chopped onion, half a tomato, one green chilli, the juice of half a lime, salt to taste, and no points for guessing, turmeric. The hors d’oeuvre with their evening drinks.
As we turned to walk back home, I decided to rustle up the same salad for the evening.
I was considering a fresh lime with tonic water and a dash of ginger when I heard my father call me. We were almost home, and I reached for the keys.
‘How is Andrew?’ he asked.
I wondered for a moment if Andrew had got in touch with him. Is that where the forgiveness advice had come from?
They were quite fond of each other, but I would’ve known had Andrew reached out to him. He would’ve told me.
Andrew was not a subject I wanted to engage in with my father. One-way traffic. Elvis has left the building.
‘He must be okay, Papa,’ I said. I wasn’t lying.
I didn’t turn to look at him but instead had a question of my own. ‘Will you run again?’
