Kindness For No Reason
It's so many things that add up to one. It's like a shoe that fits you. It fits me. It's gradual, symbiotic growth. When I came to Edmonton from India I felt I had something to prove. I can see from the other side, where I am now, that I was poking at something. But now it's grown on me; the relationship has organically grown over decades. Over the years, Edmonton has grown to be me and I have grown to be Edmonton. So I'm not pining for anything – it’s a personal sense of being home.
When I first came here to live in Edmonton, I'd step into the streets. People would stop. But I would expect them to because they stopped for other people. I was that guy.
But there's something inside the people, inside the land. People come to Edmonton for something good. There is a sense of community. I saw that one night when I was going to work, not too long ago – I'm a radio DJ at CKUA…I love radio – and needed to cross the street. Just some old guy going to work.
One person sees me; he stops…a young man in a big truck. He stops, and the other lanes stop one by one. And I look at him, and them. It's night and it's snowing. I have nothing to offer them. But they stopped and it broke my heart. It was kindness for no reason and it broke my heart. I did not want to stop the regular flow of traffic. Once, I would have expected them to stop. But why? Nothing was owed to me. Nothing is owed.
Edmonton is just home. It invited me home. I fell into it.
Where Next?
Baba Bhangoo
Baba Bhangoo hosts Baba's Grooves on CKUA, "a tribute to the excitement and experimentation that [he] found on FM radio when [he] arrived in Canada in the 1970s." His overall aim in life is to grow old and become ordinary.
