Lemongrass Ave.

 Parsley Run.

Photo by Mostafa Agami on Unsplash

 

 

After work and meditation when it’s much cooler to get out, I chance the much anticipated evening walk that occurs only a few times a week. Now it’s almost a daily affair if not for the skies that threaten with dark clouds to unleash a thunderstorm at will. One time it was hot & clear with a smattering of clouds, I strode out merrily only to be pelted with tentative drops of rain two hundred meters out. I beat a hasty retreat back home and it turned into a full-fledged downpour best enjoyed from my balcony. 

 

Today I felt an even more urgent urge to take my walk having discovered I’ve run out of parsley. The urge to get out was even stronger especially after an unhealthy diet of several videos & newsreels of the first presidential debate last night on Sept. 11 in Philadelphia. It was akin to eating too much popcorn at the movies. I just had to get out, despite being out the day before foraging & gorging on local favourites. (Even more reason for parsley diet tonight)

 

I sauntered down the hill and as I turned the corner on Lemongrass Avenue, I came upon the familiar sight of a pretty golden retriever sitting in the middle of the walkway. She was taking an extended breather with tongue hanging out and ignoring her Filipina companion urging her on her leash to move, but to no avail. I, of course couldn’t resist the chance to run my hands & face all over Ginger, an overweight ten year-old golden retriever bitch who reminded me of my own 10-year old golden bitch. My Eleanor was just as pretty but wasn’t as heavy when she was alive a lifetime ago. 

Ginger was still nonchalantly seated on the walkway on her haunches still ignoring the Filipina as we reluctantly parted to continue my brisk walk. 

Further up as I reached the crest of the long avenue past the Lemongrass luxury condo, an unusual sight was approaching, a lady pushing a small-sized open pram with a miniature chihuahua sitting on top enjoying the ride & the view. As we passed I complimented her as I saw it- ‘what an unusual sight!’ I said. She chuckled softly, her chihuahua  sat erect, looking nonplussed. Now that I’ve seen it in real life, it really seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. Except instead of walking the dog she was walking with the dog riding on a pram. Love certainly knows no bounds. 

 

Feeling a lot lighter after encounters with privileged dogs, I breezed down the avenue, turning left to cross the main thoroughfare teeming with evening traffic crawling up the hill, and bumper-to-bumper traffic going down, broken only by the traffic lights at the T-junction halfway up and down the lengthy hill. I crossed the pedestrian crossing at the lights and made my way to and through the MRT station accessed from lifts at one end, passing across the foyer, to lifts on the other end of the station. The huge lifts were spewing out hordes of office staff & workers like ants spilling onto the narrow foyer and into the station, as I weaved my way into an emptied one. I stepped into a lift that looked like an emptied and discarded milk carton just ravished by a mob. As the lift descended, I smiled mindful of the fact I didn’t once look at anyone in the milling crowd. 

 

The lift door opened to two lines of more people waiting on the ground floor eager to get up to the station. I promptly alighted avoiding bodies or eye-contact slithering silently across the labyrinth of walkways leading to the lifts in the basement of the Pavilion complex. 

The lift delivered me to an interior floor of Pavilion mall, I scamper across the road from the prestigious complex over to a more down to earth DC mall scantily appointed with retail outlets, restaurants, bars and a spacious supermarket called Jaya Grocers. This is my ideal grocery shopping haunt and teatime sanctuary where I get my best teh tarek fix, complemented with delicious nyonya kueh. 

I reluctantly passed on the teh tarek fix but happily acquired some rare nyonya delights for supper.

 

The parsley was sitting pretty in the greens section and I grabbed a pack casually and judiciously thought of objectively leaving having gotten what I needed. But not my wants. 

We all have ten thousand wants and desires, surely satisfying a few more wouldn’t hurt since I’m already here. So being the miser that I am and the carefree wanderer inside, I explored the sections & the aisles spending more time than necessary browsing and debating the necessity of items begging to be bought. The tally in the end; sweet young tapioca leaves (oh so young & sweet, I shall simply sauté them with garlic) tau foo pock (must have in soups), 2-packs of barley (midnite desserts), a packet of Chinese herbs (for cooling the body), a roll of raisin cookies (for teatime), a pack of roasted salted kidney beans (for movies) and half a chicken (for the freezer). Pleased with my selections and my frugality I navigated my way around the well-lit, well appointed, spacious & almost empty supermarket to the checkout counters. The local Malay boys & girls at the checkout are a joy to interact with. They have a quiet, detached but warm reverence in their manner. 

It’s the Malay culture of ingrained gentleness no matter how hard their leaders try to indoctrinate them to hate. 

I then head to the pork and liquor section after paying for my halal groceries. I picked up a packet of back bacon (for breakfast) & contemplated on a bottle of Dewars White label (it was on sale) in the expansive liquor section adjacent to the pork section. 

By the time I was ready to leave it was past 8 and I was already feeling hungry. I reminded myself to be stoic about bodily desires and made my way back. While retracing the path I came, I contemplated the monks’ austere but healthy life and the sadhus of the Himalayas who mastered the cold and hunger for months or even years, I decided that I wouldn’t have to endure extremes to transcend but still I marvel at such super human feats and that mind control is paramount to human endurance and spiritual achievements. I imagine if I could just master my mind in controlling my thoughts, I would have succeeded in attaining a significant level of spiritual wisdom.

I exit the MRT station I had just crossed over from the Damansara Heights town center housing the huge Pavilion complex and the DC -Damansara City complex, to stride half way up the main Maarof Road to the slip road leading up to Lemongrass Avenue. Passing the Bangsar Princess condominium, I pondered the merits of enjoying a dinner of Cantonese fried kway teow at the Venicia housed in the Princess’s back lobby. The ‘wok hei’ of the Kung Fu chau kway teow served in this restaurant is well known. I pondered again. The free library of books shelved in the corner of the main lobby has gifted me many paperbacks of significant authors and titles of many genres over the years. Alexander Dumas, George R.R. Martin, William Boyd, Mark Manson and AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada to name a few authors. The Three Musketeers, The Game of Thrones, Brazzaville, The New Confessions, The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fc*k, and The Science of Self Realization, to name a few books. It’s also been a while since I was last there, maybe gifts of new titles await me. Soon I was sitting down to a dinner of classic Cantonese fried kway teow accompanied by a newly acquired paperback of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth that was sitting on the community bookshelf destined to be mine. Not a bad decision after all.

What a haul of goodies, groceries, good food and good book for the body and soul. 

Satiated with my meal I shouldered my backpack and walked back, down Lemongrass Avenue once again. I am homeward bound 500 meters away. I greet the friendly Nepali guards at the Lemongrass luxury condo while gliding home on a cloud of serenity into the night still contemplating the bottle of Dewars on sale. 

 

I am blessed.