Khanyi Mbau cried tears

Khanyi Mbau cried tears

Kiru Naidoo

This flu has flattened me. I am toying with the idea of drafting my obituary. 

My first thought is whether I will die owing any living person money.  Banks and other institutions will get their pound of flesh anyhow.  Let me tick that box as clear. 

Just imagine Kenny giving my glowing eulogy in the packed Clare Estate crematorium hall and Nondi from Unit 3 in the cheap seats stage-whispering I only paid him half for the suit he stitched me in 1985?  Pestilent tailors billing for something long after you have ceased to wear it!  I stole that line – from Saki or Oscar Wilde I can’t be sure now.  What with death so much on my mind this is not the time to be original. 

I am not too keen on medication.  That’s my Chatsworth breed.  Only go to the doctor when you at death’s door.  What’s the point in wasting money otherwise?  Besides the first question the doctor asks is, “How are you?”  For #@$* sake if I was hale and hearty, I wouldn’t have rocked on the broken globe chair in the waiting room for two hours catching other people’s germs and reading ancient Reader’s Digests. 

For all the speeches I wrote for Kenny at Glenover High School I hope he gets this one right.  Imagine if he had a Digger’s moment and stopped halfway to ask Rajkumar Nundkumar how to say that word.  That’s an insider joke which will be understood by half the crowd who will come to the funeral. 

My old and dear friends won’t believe the funeral message and will come just to check that I am really dead.  The other half being strangers will come to be photographed by Ranjith Kally and interviewed by the Sunday Times Extra about what a loss I will be in the local Indian community. 

Mine will have to be a low budget celebrity funeral. Khanyi Mbau will be there.  Aunty Saroj will suspect we were lovers.  Now why else would Khanyi cry tears? 

The matter of my dispatch will create some serious confusion but lesser conflict I hope.  For one, my nursery rhymes were along the lines of “if you happy and you know it and you really want to show it”.  The first lines I read in Church of the Nazarene (next to G Motors) at age four were from John 3:16. 

I also held the wings and feet of the Frankenstein roosters my granny slaughtered for Mathra Veeran, sang the whole Thevaram in the wrong key and blew the conch at the head of the Barrack’s Temple kavady. 

In adult life I continue to meticulously observe Ramzaan and every now and then I prostrate before the tomb of the saint, Badsha Peer (less frequently than my mother used to take me as a child). 

If I pull till January I want to make the pilgrimage up the Holy Mountain, Nhlangakazi.  My good friend Aziz Hassim who got on the earlier train to the great yonder often joked that times were so tough that you needed more than one god. 

Let me perish all these thoughts about death and dying.  It’s time to get out of bed and go to work.  The public service doesn’t accept sick notes.  Only death certificates.