Smriti and Kamal have come for Wednesday Night Lights. “We walked here,” Kamal says, though neither indicates quite how far that might be. As it so happens, they are five hours early. So they do a shop at Addi Road Food Pantry and think about the day, whether to stay or go and return later.
The couple have a young son they call Elon. “Like Elon Musk,” Kamal laughs. His wife Smriti smiles. “Maybe one day our son will go with him to the moon,” she says. They laugh again, their boy a restless burst of new life, holding a tree twig in his hand.
Their hometown in Nepal is Butwal, Kamal says, very close to Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha. It’s a source of obvious pride.
Kamal says he is software engineer. He came to Sydney to study, got his Masters in IT. Then Covid hit and he was suddenly trapped in the lockdowns. Not an easy time.
Eventually he was able to go home and meet his wife, and now he has a new family here and things are better, brighter, with Smriti and his baby boy.
They’ve shopped at Addi Road Food Pantry in Marrickville three or four times. “My friend told me about it,” Kamal says. “The free fruit and vegetables, the free bread. It’s good.”
For those who don’t know, the Food Pantry is a low-cost grocery store that offers free bread and free fruit and vegetables with every shop. It runs on a mix of donated goods from businesses, our food rescue operation to stop waste and help the environment, and purchased stock to fill in the gaps and keep place going as best we can.
Smriti likes the volunteers who serve her at Addi Road Food Pantry. “The staff are… familiar,” she says, taking a moment to find the word. Kamal says “friendly” to help her, but Smriti sticks to her word and says it again, “familiar”.
What work does she do? Smriti waves away the question. “I am just a housewife.” She calls out to her son who is playing in the dirt beneath a tree. She lifts him up and places Elon on Kamal’s lap so a photo can be taken of them all together.
But when she first calls out for Elon she cries, “Baahubali! Baahubali!”
“It’s a nickname we have for him,” Kamal explains. He brings his smartphone out. Shows a movie with the title, the story of a character who is, he says, “like god. There are many statues of him in Nepal.”
Kamal tries to tell the story behind their nickname for their son, the way Baahubali “mean strength”. But it is much more than that. The statue shows a figure with very strong arms and hands, a figure who meditated for an entire year, for so long anthills grew at his feet, overcoming all human passions and weaknesses to gain liberation from this world and any unnecessary suffering.
It’s a sunlit day in Marrickville. The couple and their son and their friends all sit in a loose circle beneath a large tree outside the Addi Road Food Pantry. They say they might walk home and come back again later for Wednesday Night Lights. Or they might just stay.
The light is warm and beautiful to them. “We like this place. It’s a good place.” This afternoon, together, they have all the time in the world.
Kamal and Smriti with their son Elon. Waiting in the sun for Wednesday Night Lights at Addi Road. Photo Mark Mordue.
This story was originally published on our social media on 19 June 2024. Kamal, Smriti and Elon continue to shop at Addi Road Food Pantry and visit us regularly at Wednesday Night Lights.