Chapter 6 - A pure and clear soul

G’Day All

It is rare that one can say they have meet the “bearer of a pure and clear soul”, however by a chance meeting, a smile, a smile returned and a decision to stop and see where that smile would go – I meet Nirmalpal (Nir-mal-paul), who’s name means just that in Punjabi. I love San Francisco, I loved living there, I love returning here. And I love meeting people as special and wonderful as Nirmalpal.

San Francisco is a unique place, a bubble in the space time continuum – where people are free to be whoever they want to be, with little to no judgement (compared with the rest of the US), and little to no harassment from the police or other authorities. It is wonderful to see transgender people walking down the street, people wearing goth makeup, people wearing crowns on their heads, while riding a bike up the street. Of course the flip side of this coin, the underbelly of the Emerald City, is the poverty, the sick and those in need of mental healthcare – who have limited access to overstretched resources and more often than not – no resources at all. I used to be able to proudly say that Australia had an abundance of care for its poor, sick and mentally unhealthy – but over the recent decades we have been headed more and more rapidly in the direction of US when it comes to issues of health, wealth and education – and this is NOT a good thing.


San Francisco was not always like this, although it has always been a unique city, drawing to it a varied and interesting history of people. The gay population has had to fight, politically and sometimes physically, to create the haven that is San Francisco. One of the most wonderful things I saw (at Gay Pride) was a male couple, carrying around a baby that they had adopted – see picture. I was touched by the love and commitment of this couple and the knowledge that to have adopted this child this couple has had to travel a road much harder than a heterosexual couple would ever consider.


I love San Francisco and always feel at home here, this trip enabled me to see it from a different perspective on a number of levels. Firstly I spent most of my stay with a friend in the East Bay (thankyou Bernard), Oakland to be precise, so I needed to travel by BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) across the bay, each day that I wanted to spend time in the Emerald City. From across the bay, you get to see the city and the fog and gauge how thick and deep the fog might be and whether you will venture forth from from the warmth of the Eastside. Yep it can be foggy in San Francisco and Sunny just a few hundred metres out into the bay. Yet another reason I love the Bay Area, micro-climates, never have I been in a city or area where there are so many micro-climates. Even within the city of San Francisco itself there are micro-climates within the micro-climates. The other day I drove down to Santa Cruz (about 45 miles South of San Francisco) a glorious summer’s day, spent in the mountains with my friends Flo and John, as I drove back to San Francisco, you could see the bank of Fog from miles away. As I got closer and closer, the fog bank became darker and denser, spilling over the mountain range that runs the length of the San Francisco Peninsular. The fog was like a thick wall, and the sun was blotted out, as I drove into the wall of condensation. The car was covered in a fine layer of water as I speed on up the 280 Freeway and I needed to turn the wipers on to keep the windshield clear. It was NOT raining, the car was simply running into millions of drops of vaporised water suspended in the air and carried on the currents of air. It really is a unique experience.

I also got to see the city through Nirmalpal’s eyes, he was born in the East Bay, growing up in the Bay and living in San Francisco itself for the past 12yrs. Been of Indian decent, with a dark rich velvet brown skin, he like many people of colour living in the US have a different experience of life, than those of us who are born white. Added to this, certain family-cultural expectations, and you can only imagine the sort of life experiences he has had. Nirmalpal has shared some of his life with me, for which I am deeply grateful, it is not my place to tell his story here, hopefully he will write it down one day. However I will say that I now know what a ‘Bearer of pure and clear soul’ looks and feels like – the miracle is that he has been able to live up to his name and I am proud to have had to opportunity to get to know him and experience some of life through his eyes. He has given me a profoundly greater appreciation for the family that I have and love.

Having lived in San Francisco, I did not feel compelled to run around and do the usual tourist things, and was able to get some good writing done. However I did do one thing. San Francisco now has this company called GoCars, they are basically a three wheeled moped/scooter. They have a PDA device with a GPS tracking system in them. They provide a running commentary through the radio, about where you are the history of various areas of San Francisco as you drive through it. And it directs you as you drive, so you can’t get lost. See picture – was a LOT of fun.

I am now in London and about to head to Madrid in a couple of days.

Hope you all are well.