You may recall my initial infatuation with Minah my little hummingbird and tabbouleh slinging sweetheart in Montreal. I had been accepted to McGill University in Montreal with a full Claire and Warren Quimby Scholarship for Third World Disadvantaged Urchins. I didn’t need the tuition money but seeing the bastards the First World can produce, particularly at the Kings School for Young Men in Bombay, out of a matter of revenge against the upper-class twit colonists I decided to accept it. These twits assumed that my being from India made me poor but in comparison to the Quimby’s they could have been my servants! In the few months preceding the beginning of Term I decided to scope out Montreal a bit and of course take advantage of Schwartz’s smoked meat and kosher dill pickles. Those mixed meat sandwiches at Slovenian Meat Market on St. Lawrence Street could feed an Indian regiment of hussars!
And it was time to see Minah my delicate sweet bird of love …my precious dainty hummingbird. Well that hummingbird had swelled into a penguin with a very large plus size girth close to 140 kilos with a very bad case of acne and was blanketed by an ominous cloud of depression. Of course, I was taken aback! The vile terrorist action of her brother Abdul bombing my mother Juanita’s airplane out of the sky wreaked havoc with both her body and brain. Her mother and father lamented I was not on board that plane referring to me as an infidel devil! Seems I had become their Lawrence of Arabia. They were still pressuring her to be what she referred to as a “Burka Babe”. The relentless pressure and horrific act of her brother was too much to bear. She required psychiatric help not me. So we parted our ways. I recall walking away seeing Minah laughing as if possessed like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist”.
My main mission was to secure accommodation in Montreal. I lived a very swank life in Bombay so the thrill of a fleabag apartment on Durocher Street in the McGill Student Ghetto with all the liberated from home middle class students did not appeal to me. Both the Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons hotels were more or less across the street from McGill and I chose the Four Seasons Presidential Suite. Living at the Ritz-Carlton would be just a bit flashy so I settled for the Four Seasons I am a man of discretion.
