I have now decided to write more about some of the oddities that I observe during my walks and my speculations about them too. I wish to do this as, it is fascinating to see so many different behaviours during the brief hour and a half or so time that, I spend there every evening.
I am quite a fixture in the park and the regulars there, by now seem to have concluded that I am harmless. I of course am, but it is nice to know that others believe so too.
The post today is the young girl, 16 or at best 17, who sat at one of the benches beside the southern end of the oval track, below a very shady copse.
I saw her sitting there on the middle bench, all the seven times that I crossed the bench on my rounds. She left just as I was about to leave and what happened at the exit will come later.
This girl would have weighed close to 150 Kgs (330 lbs). She was dressed in an obviously brand new track suit and walking shoes. She had on ear plugs for a music player of some sort, perhaps an ipod and was swaying to a rhythm of her own. Besides that, I saw her blow bubble gum bubbles on four separate occasions.
That is for the factual observation. Now for the speculation.
I think that it is reasonable to speculate that she has been advised by her doctor/s and family to reduce her weight and to achieve that, to go for walks. I think that she is really not interested, but perhaps her mother nagged her to get out and walk after having first spent a great deal of money in buying the gear. Being unable to bear the nagging, she would have walked up to the park, or perhaps may have even been driven there by a chauffeur to get on with the exercising part of it. Having started off, with that little bit of exertion, must have decided that it was not worth her while and instead, to sit comfortably on the bench and listen to music for some time and return home.
Her exit from the gate to the park preceded mine by a couple of minutes. Just outside the gate, there are always two hand cart vendors selling tender coconuts. One of them from across the road is shown here along with the parapet where people sometimes rest before entering the park or while waiting for their cars to pick them up or eating coconuts.
One can get one of coconut water or one with less water and more of the flesh. Serious exercisers, usually go for the water and children are bought the fleshy ones.
As I exited, I saw this same girl sitting on the parapet wall near the other vendor, not present when this photo was taken, and eating the flesh of a coconut, which is possible after the juice is first drunk and the shell cut open to access the flesh.
I bet she put on at least a few hundred grams of weight with that coconut.
Do you think that my speculation is reasonable? What would yours be?