East Indian Biker Chicks

      

       
       The Saturday evening sky was a tie-dyed blanket of shades of grey that held the muggy heat down over the city as I rode up to Duplex Avenue and Eglinton.
       Because it was darker than usual at that hour, as I passed the Eglinton Grand Theatre I could see the green neon outlining it’s art deco front and I suddenly realized what a lovely cinema it is. I remember seeing “2001 A Space Odyssey” there many years ago.
       It isn’t until one gets to Duplex on the way east on Eglinton that one notices that one is hitting a concentrated part of the city. Everything looks pretty village-like before that.
       I rode down Duplex and made my way back for what will probably be my last coast down Avenue Road for a while, since I’ll be going down Yonge Street next time. Crossing St Clair, I saw Clara Blackwood. She waved and I said “hi” as I continued south. She’s one of those few people who I run into outside of poetry readings in the oddest places, once a year or so.
       I got off my bike at Spadina and Dundas to cross and a vespa pulled up carrying two young women in traditional East Indian dress. The driver was probably about eighteen and her passenger fifteen. They wore matching purple helmets.
       As I crossed Spadina on the south side of Dundas, coming the other way was a young couple walking side by side and each pushing an identical stroller with a little blonde girl in it. The two girls were happily holding hands as their carriages moved in unison.
       I watched an episode of Bonanza, guest starring Ricardo Montalban as a Bannock warrior named Mattsu, who’d been exiled from his tribe because he married a Shoshone. He saves Ben Cartwright from his brother and Ben gratefully gives the couple a piece of land on the Ponderosa. But the Bannock go on the warpath and kill Mattsu’s neighbour’s wife. The neighbour kills Mattsu’s wife in revenge and then he goes nuts with the desire for vengeance on both his neighbour and Ben, fitting Montalban’s later typecasting many times as a vengeful savage. Ben is tortured by being staked to the ground in a pose similar to Jesus on the cross but Mattsu lets Ben go when he starts spouting the “lord’s prayer”. All this religious crap kind of ruins a good show.