Addiction estranged them. Food is bringing this father and daughter back together, before it's too late
Despite a complicated past, Pearly Pouponneau and Avtar Bhullar have always bonded through cooking
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When she was a little girl, Pearly Pouponneau and her father were inseparable.
"We were like the poster child for daddy-daughter relationships, like that cliché you see in movies, doing everything together," she joked.
They especially liked cooking together. Pouponneau recalls a kitchen filled with incense, windows wide open, and her dad, Avtar Singh Bhullar, jamming out to music — "typically old Bollywood" — as he whipped up dishes from his home country of Malaysia.
"I would just be in awe watching him," she said wistfully.
Today, those memories are bittersweet for Pouponneau, who became estranged from her dad as a teen, losing touch for several years.
At 33, she is now reconnecting with him, but not in happy circumstances. Last March, Pouponneau learned Bhullar had Stage 4 terminal cancer and was told he had just months left.
She recently sat down with him to talk about the past and share a meal in a video produced by CBC Ottawa's Creator Network.
The lost years
"Pearly was always around when I'm in the kitchen trying to cook something. She was always [...] curious to help, like, 'What can I do?'" said Bhullar, recalling those early years with this daughter fondly.
But as close as they were in her early childhood, he was absent for much of Pouponneau's adolescence as he struggled with alcoholism and addiction.
"I noticed when I was around six or seven years old that my dad did drink excessively, and that it caused a lot of problems in the home," Pouponneau said.
By the time she was a teenager, her parents were divorced and she was living with her mother in Ottawa, while Bhullar moved to Toronto.
After that, their relationship became strained.
"At one point in my life, I was down, feeling sad and I used to drink quite a bit. We were hardly communicating and I didn't like that because I wanted Pearly there and I'm sure Pearly wanted me there as her dad," said Bhullar.
"It nearly drove us apart."
Pouponneau said he missed special occasions like birthdays and her high school graduation, and the pair often went months or years without speaking to each other.
When they did, it was because she decided to seek him out.
"I would always try to show up for him in ways that I wish he showed up for me," she explained, recalling a time when, as a teenager, she drove down to Toronto to surprise him at Christmas.
"I got some of our favourite food from a Malaysian restaurant in Scarborough and he was sitting in his driveway, smoking a cigarette in his car, listening to music," she said.
The sight was in stark contrast to her memories of him being surrounded by family and friends.
"It made me a bit sad seeing him like that," she said.
A shared love of food
Their relationship started to improve with the pandemic. When things shut down, Pouponneau invited her father to stay with her family in Ottawa.
In the past he'd refused, so Pouponneau was shocked when he took her up on her offer. Though at first it was awkward, she "made it a point to try to talk to him and [...] have conversations with him with an open mind."
When talk didn't flow easily, cooking together helped fill the silence.
"I thought, OK, it looks different for us now, but it's still our absolute favourite thing," Pouponneau said.
Appreciating the time that's left
Since Bhullar's diagnosis, the pair has tried to make the most of their time together.
A lot of it has been spent preparing traditional Malaysian dishes like Hainanese chicken rice, which, according to Pouponneau, is "like a hug to your soul," her father's special biryani rice dish, which she's almost mastered, and her personal favourite, Nasi Lemak, a dish that's eaten off a banana leaf.
"There's so many traditional components [to Nasi Lemak] like the pandan flavour in the rice, lemongrass in the chili sauce, [and] the food is wrapped and steamed in a banana leaf," she explained.
"It brings back so much nostalgia for me and I see [that in my dad] as well."
While Pouponneau says she's grateful for this time, she's still conflicted about their relationship.
"I wouldn't say that we ever reconciled," she said, adding that she's still dealing with the pain she endured because of her father's absence.
But Pouponneau is glad nonetheless to have gotten to know her dad a little more, and for him to have gotten the opportunity to spend time with her six-year-old daughter Reina.
"It's so amazing for me to have these memories with my father because I naturally replicate them with my daughter present day," she said.
Bhullar says he feels the same.
"Knowing that I don't know how much time I have on this earth left, I'm going to make the best of it, especially with my daughter Pearly," he said.
"Being a food lover and passing this on [to her], it has been a great pleasure because [...] the best thing I've ever done in my life is learning how to cook."
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With files from Christine Maki