No time to waste

Dr Fahim Chand | Sunday May 15, 2022 21:47

A cool infusion permeated the warm summer day and promised a perfect summer night. The northern summer provided the briefest of stops in the midst of the North American year. And hence there was no time to waste. Every solitary summer second was meant not only to be enjoyed but savoured. Under cover of the deep dark winter, another year of university had been dispatched. Exams had been conquered and the summer promised fun and excitement. A worthy reward from the gruelling world of academia. And so it was. Every city has its own unique groove and pulse.

And the heartbeat of Toronto, Canada has always echoed style, class and sublime sophistication. Everything cool has a nickname and T.O., Hogtown and the 6ix is no different. Thank yous can be sent to hometown rapper Drake for the last one. As we navigated the avenues and boulevards of the fabulous 6ix, our GPS would read STK Toronto in Yorkville. In a sensational city, Yorkville was the crown jewel. The most chic and trendiest area of all. Playground to sports stars and Hollywood royalty. It is here that I once saw Magnum PI himself, the devastatingly handsome Tom Selleck amongst many others.

STK Toronto served one of the finest steaks in Hogtown and it was on this glorious day we were finally going to savour one. A tad more expensive than the dollar menu at Taco Bell, but we had budgeted and saved enough for this foodie experience. We had been in high anticipation for months. It was with my college roommate Dave Jasey and his sister Jennifer that I strolled towards culinary nirvana. Tonight would be extraordinary. The city lay at our feet as we motored on.

STK Toronto, unlike many other steakhouses, had a high energy atmosphere. We had booked a table in the raised back section, which featured curved rosewood booths framed by a white brick background, bathed in fuchsia light. That was our stage for the evening. We even knew what we were going to order. The filet steak done medium and topped with STK’s world class chimichurri sauce, accompanied with Parmesan truffle fries. As they say, preparation is everything and we had done our homework.

The summer symphony played on and the magic was palpable. Beautiful people painted and contoured to perfection, the Porsche’s and Ferrari’s revving their sweet engines. This was Yorkville, home of the rich and famous.

Toronto and indeed Canada look after their own. It is a prosperous land and social programmes ensure that all live a comfortable life. But some unfortunate people fall through the cracks. As we edged closer to the Promised Land, a lone solitary figure sat on the sidewalk as we stopped at the traffic light.

“Spare some change good people”, his chosen words. We turned to face him with the usual thoughts of he will spend the money on drugs or alcohol running through our minds. Well mine and Dave’s mind, it turns out Jennifer had different ideas. She reached into both her pockets gathering every cent she had and instructed us to take our wallets out. She proceeded to empty both our wallets completely and with her two hands overflowing with our money proceeded to deposit the money, not in STK Toronto’s bank account, but this nameless and homeless man’s now open and waiting palms.

Dave and I were dumbfounded, and yet Jennifer possessed the widest most satisfied grin you have ever seen. Our culinary dreams evaporated into the sweet night air. There would be no fillet steak tonight. Jennifer’s kind heart and humanity had taken care of that. The man muttered something. Probably “Thank you” or more likely “Thank you, Christmas came early this year”. We turned around and returned to the flat. Rummaging in the kitchen we found a few slices of old bread.

The ones nobody wants to eat until miraculously there is a new loaf the next day. But that night we toasted those and dipped Tetley teabags into three mugs of water and that was our meal. I don’t think we ever went to STK Toronto. That night the three of us sat on the couch with our feet on the coffee table and all you could hear was the sound of our uninhibited laughter. The tv show Friends was on and was it Phoebe’s flaky humour or Chandler’s manic wisecracks that had us in stitches? I don’t know but I guess it doesn’t matter.

If you listened closely you could probably hear our half empty tummies playing a little symphony. Though, the sound of our laughter drowned out the tummy song and we were three young happy people enjoying a beautiful summer night together. The evening turned out to be memorable though not in the way we had envisioned. Dave and I had learnt something valuable. Selflessness, compassion and generosity are the currency that make the world turn around. The days events had taken our tiny flames of compassion and humanity and had turned those flames into a raging inferno. A light brighter than the infinite galaxies in the sky. The days passage provided a homeless soul with some degree of comfort, at least for a period and in the process provided an inkling into that age-old existential question. Who are we and why are we here?