Keeping up with the Peters

ON FRIDAY, May 16, I went to Phoenix. Not the one in Arizona in the US, the one right here in KwaZulu-Natal.

- RAVI GOVENDER

So, what is so special about that, you may ask? Hundreds of thousands of people do that daily. Well, it was unusual for two reasons.

The last time I visited the suburb was perhaps five years ago, when I used to travel every Friday evening to present the evening music programme on Phoenix FM. It was around the same time too, as I painfully recalled the traffic congestion on the freeway and the long wait to get on to the Mount Edgecombe off-ramp.

By the time I get to Phoenix (1967 song by Glen Campbell), | would have had spent a whole hour driving. My visit this time was for a beautiful reason. It was to celebrate the SOth wedding anniversary of my godparents. You see | was a child when Paul met Jessie. It was love in the air and marriage soon followed. They were family friends of ours and we belonged to the same religious faith as well.

It was a given that when my parents died, I took them as my mentors and substitute parents. I only learnt later that my father and Paul had made a pact that if either of them passed on, the survivor would look after the other's family.

Even before the marriage, Paul had been an integral part of our family. He shared the same passion for movies as my late brother, Rajin, and |.