Grandmother

I brim with pride
I brim with anger
This has been no easy ride
Ever present is the danger
That we will turn on each other
Rather than to one another
Ready we must
To build a nation robust
My grandmothers
And theirs
Were forced to the soil
Not the soil of their mothers to toil
But the land the gallant Zulu reign
Usurped by the Teutonic queen vain
Indenture in name
Shamesless slavery in popular refrain
Profit they did
Englishmen,  Scotsmen, Welshmen sordid
Trafficking in human cargo
Nary a thought for the devastation below
Below deck on slaveships they wept
From ancient ancestral villages swept
From Madras,  Veloor,  Bihar and Kanyakumari
Ripped, hungry,  sweating and weary
To the land of iLembe they were made hurry
To turn green to gold under whips and ropes scary
To sugarcane, tea, coffee, coalmines, railways and domestic service
Went potters, poets, scholars, jewellers, landowners, gravediggers and sex workers
The punters in London and Glasgow rolled in glee
Imaliyavuza!
My grandmothers
Are long gone
Their memory I honour
I brim with pride
I brim with anger
But my energies I must direct
To the nation we must build with no refrain
Or 154 years would have been in vain.

My roots are here

My roots are here*

Kiru Naidoo

My roots are here

Deep in African soil

It’s a story I tell

Tell to myself

Tell to my children

Tell to theirs

It’s a question I am asked

Asked sometimes, asked often

A question I don’t mind

That I can answer with my chest filled with pride

My roots are here

Deep in African soil

Does a leopard have to confirm its spots?

I don’t know any leopards to ask

But ask me and I will tell you

I am an African

My roots are here

Deep in African soil

A question I don’t mind

That I can answer with my chest filled with pride

Don’t TELL me I am an Indian!

Your’s is no right to give an answer

Or a tag or a label or to assume or to taunt

I am because of Phyllis Naidoo, of Archie Gumede, of Albertina Sisulu, of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

I am because of Helen Joseph, of Dorothy Nyembe, of Billy Nair, of Marimuthu Pregalathan Naicker

I am because of Joe Slovo, of Albert Christopher, of Walter Sisulu, of Nomzamo Winnifred Mandela

I am because of Dulcie September, of OR Tambo, of Monty Naicker, of Ahmed Mohammed Kathrada

I am of many more and their uncompromising non-racialism

Lest you think there was only one GPS to South African freedom

I am also because of Steve Biko, of Sonny Venkatrathnam, of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe

My roots are here

Deep in African soil

I am of many more and their uncompromising non-racialism

We proudly claim twenty years of freedom

We are because of them

My roots are here

Deep in African soil

Mayibuye, iAfrika!

*Inspired by Omeshnie Naidoo’s words, “my roots are here”.

Vadas rule the roost

Vadas rule the roost


Kiru Naidoo

(Published in the Sunday Times Extra - Johannesburg, 24 November 2013)


Hot out the oil, golden crisp and crunchy. The real treat of the afternoon “flesh” prayers was my granny’s vadas. Speckled with red and green chillies, she deep-fried them in a wok-type cast iron kadai. The cooking ritual is etched in my memory and the pride of my lineage. 

My paternal grandmother, Kanniamma Govindarajulu, was a matriarch of silent majesty. Barely four feet ten and of the same navy blue complexion she bequeathed me, she rarely let anyone near the kadai. Her sari hitched and gathered between her thighs, she sat on her haunches over the leaping fire in our  Chatsworth backyard. 

In one hand she held a little square of banana leaf. In the other she balled the pungent wet mixture of stoneground dried peas, onions, chillies, coriander, cumin and a host of other spices. 

Everything was hand ground on a block of heirloom granite, the revered ammikal. The  spicy ball was slapped onto the banana leaf to be flattened into a plump little disc. The final flourish

was sticking her ring finger into the centre to poke a hole right through. The delicate formation was  then slid off the banana leaf into the crackling oil. As half dozen batches cooked they were theatrically scooped out with an enamel sieve-type ladle to form a growing mountain in a dish
alongside. 

Not even the favoured grandchildren were allowed to touch until the vada had been offered to the Goddess in the afternoon prayers. The morning ritual was the “pouring” of the sour porridge along with vegetable curries to honour the Mother Goddess who had rescued the faithful from a smallpox plague. 

The prancing roosters we slaughtered as offerings to the Mother were cooked for hours on open fires for the afternoon feast. The vada however occupied centre stage.

The crispiness outside gave way to a moist core bursting with a spicy, nutty, salty sensational crumbliness that overwhelmed the eager mouth. The matter of the hole still stokes fiery debate.

Some put it down to religious, ethnic or even sexual symbolism. (The hole is distinguished from other clans who use a three closed fingers indentation similar to the forehead ash markings of Saivites.) 

In my unlettered granny’s greater wisdom I suspect that it served only to cook the vada right through like the hole in a doughnut. 

The one mannerism where the Govindarajulu bloodline easily stands out is that the vada is eaten pressed by thumb and two fingers against a fried globe of sweet flour paste we call oorinda or to use my mother’s tongue, goolgoola. It’s our version of the sweet and sour. 

The vada also appears on other occasions like Purtassi, Kavady, when we pay homage to our ancestors and sometimes even Deepavali. Now and then it is doled out on cold winter afternoons with piping hot tea. Compliments have always poured in for my granny’s vadas.

The Govindarajulu’s freely share the recipe - minus a few ingredients of course.


Granny’s recipe from my sister, Ravathy Naidoo’s recollection (the five year old in the middle of the picture)

1kg dried split pea dhal soaked overnight

1 bunch dhania (chopped)

5 green chillies (finely chopped)

5 red chillies (finely chopped)

1 bunch spring onions (finely chopped)

2 onions (finely chopped)

2 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon jeera

Sunflower oil


Method

Grind dhal on a stone to a rough pulp. (A food processor will do but it won’t make for a good story!) Fold the rest of the ingredients into the dhal and grind further without getting the mixture too fine. Extract in golf ball sizes and pat into a small disc on a square of banana leaf. Fry in batches in deep, moderately hot oil until golden brown and crisp. For best results use a cast iron kadai and open fire. Serve hot on a platter lined with paper towel. Quantity obtained depends on the temperament and generosity of the cook. Recommendation to serve with goolgoolas for which a vetkoek recipe should do the trick. Mainstay optional.

White Peter and the Mariannhill tumblers

Dialling the Life of Kiru
Kiru Naidoo

BlackBerry is an absolute pain. I remember being thrilled with them a decade ago.

I once commended one to a higher up who could barely get their podgy fingers to punch the numbers. In the years since, I have relished and reviled them. They have just not kept pace with the competition nor kept their house tidy. These viruses that pop up are infuriating and as for that clock dial!

I was at dinner with a Frenchman the other evening on a rather posh North Coast estate. You know the type that talk with their hands and eat salad with their fingers. He threatened to throw both his Blackberries into the braai. They had gone down on him twice the same day and not at a good time either.

I don't know what I am still doing with this Rosetta stone of communications. The seduction of the new generation Samsungs is hollering at me. That would take me to the top end with telephones again.

Reminds me of forty years ago in Durban’s Chatsworth township when my home had the only telephone for miles. It was one of those Bakerlite monstrosities in ebony with a cup for a mouthpiece and an enormous dial that double-clicked endlessly.

It was an advance on the ones where you picked up the handset and someone on the other side said "Nommer asseblief?" before they listened in for onward transmission to all the neighbourhood.

I also remember the tickey box at the "Off the Hook" fish and chips shop in my neighbourhood Westcliff Shopping Centre. A shiny 5c coin could connect one to Timbouctou. You notice I write it in the pompous French way in deference to my swish French teacher, Madame Ooh la la. I adored her style but I wonder why we never noticed her breaking the academic boycott of apartheid. That will go down as one of the mysteries of my political universe.

Phoneless Chatsworth folks would give our number 436351 to all their friends, relatives or indeed anyone they wanted to impress. When a call came the party would be asked to hold while the handset was gently placed on the white doily. We even had a special imbuia telephone stand. The next twenty minutes or so was straight out of Monty Python. (Life of Kiru, geddit?)

Someone from my household will shout next door that there was a call for so and so. And so the message ran from attached neighbour to kitchen door neighbour to front house to back house to opposite neighbour to corner house to top house. Soon the whole neighbourhood knew that so and so had a phone call. Getting the message to so and so became everyone's priority.  If so and so was not at home they could be frog-marched even from miles away to take the call. The bush telegraph worked brilliantly.

The ritual didn't end at getting the message to so and so that a call was waiting for them. So and so once reached would start running on the spot catching her breath for a few moments at the kindergarten, Moon Roy's spaza and shebeen, GP Naidoo’s manicured bourganvilla hedge, Cavendish School Gate, Rent Office Ganas’s broken down vintage on bricks, Ken's shebeen, Number Ten Aunty’s Gate, Salim Moosa's palm tree, Corky's shebeen and Fathy Aunty’s to announce that they had a phone call.  

Eventually breathless, so and so would make it to the sitting room of House 51 Road 320.  After exchanging prolonged pleasantries and offering thanks to the householders so and so would eventually shout "Hallo" in that lilted Indian-accented English now instantly recognisable from Vancouver to Sandton Square. One had to speak louder for long distance calls because the caller was far away.

An audience would soon gather at the kitchen stable door and at the tin post box at the top of the stairs. All expectant that something juicy was in the offing. Had Lucky Boy sent to bible school in Cape Town found a new love somewhere between the pages of the Old and New Testaments?  Was Kantha and her brood coming by steam train from the Amatikulu sugar barracks for a short visit for Christmas, New Year and then hanging around for three months after?

Was it George Annamalay's second wife saying they will be coming Sunday lunchtime bringing the eldest daughter's arangetram dance invitation that will be at SCIFIDA Hall at 3pm on the Sunday after Purtassi ends with chicken breyani supper served immediately afterwards and so and so and family must come because Carnatic singer Sunny Pillay and his sons were performing?  With the cost of phone calls being what they were you had to say as much as possible as fast as possible with scant regard for commas or even a pause for breath.

Had Monica’s twins run away again to go stay with their alcoholic father in Merebank where they will get wheezing from all the pollution from the oil refinery and that so and so should send her policeman husband to have a word with the alcoholic father to send the children back?

Was it to say that Subatri had sent a telegram to say that she reached Kanyakumari in the deep south of India safely and that she was writing her name in Tamil on a conch shell right from where the two oceans meet and that granny must keep a special place in the Philips radio display cabinet for it?  Just what did that long telegram cost?  Was cat-eyes Kessie’s father discharged from King Edward VIII Hospital after they amputated his left leg above the knee and did the Joburg nurses frighten him enough to take his diabetes tablets?  

Did silent night Mukesh get registered in the Mariannhill magistrate’s office to Miriam, his Zulu sweetheart since pre-school because his father said he was going to take him out of the will and boot him out on his arse if he didn’t marry his Hindu first cousin?

Did the dagga rooker Morgan eventually plaster and paint the Unit 3 house with the money he saved in Bommie’s (stokvel) lottery?  

Was Benjamin, the security branch monster harassing Shanthi again about hiding Robben Island people in the back room of the Silverglen house and will so and so keep the politicals for a few days without telling anybody? Did Pastor JF Rowlands really have tea at Radha Akka’s house to tell her all about his India trips and did she really take out the new Johnson Brothers china wedding set with the gold trim? 

Was so and so aware that they were taking disability grant applications at the Indian Affairs Department in Unit 5 and that the closing date was next Friday and that she must take the parents’ and grandparents’ ID cards and an affidavit which she can do in the charge office at the Bayview Police Station? 

Did so and so know that White Peter re-classified his light-skinned son with the curly hair from Indian into Coloured so that he could get an apprenticeship at Sasol and that the personnel office from Secunda sent a postal order for him to buy the 3^rd class train ticket to come for the trade test?  

Was Zaiboonisha’s daughter pregnant by the taxi man’s son because it was very suspicious that the family took the child out of Summit Government-Aided Primary School when she was getting double promotion and sent her to stay with the coalmine people in Glencoe?

Salacious stories aside, often it was just the receptionist from Dr Bux saying that the blood test results arrived or Clerk Siva from Tollman Brothers, the furniture shop on West Street to say come pick up the certificate of good payment and the four glass tumblers Christmas present.

And so it came to pass that so and so eventually rang off. The news content of the call with a few embellishments, curses or both was carried back the same animated route. Those were the days long before Radio Lotus, SABC2 or a subscription to the The Witness. 

Calls were not only received. People would also come to ring people in centres near and far. So and so would just pop their head over the kitchen stable door and ask to use the phone. A nod from my mother was enough consent. So and so would do their business. When done, a silver coin was silently left on the doily. Olde worlde courtesy.

Nowadays when your BlackBerry is borrowed for a quick call they even scroll through your pictures and bbms.

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.

Cycling past the buffet

Cycling past the buffet

Kiru Naidoo

The pilates instructor has some meat on the bone.  I am not in the class but I appreciate that the gym hires beyond the size 28 dress size.

On increasingly frequent mornings I take up my position outside the glass doors.   The cycle arena is packed like schoolgirls at the YDE sale but it has the vantage point of neighbouring the pilates class.

Lest I be construed a voyeur let me confess that may not be strictly correct.  I draw inspiration from the core exercises. I can only take it in twenty minute bites though.  Well that's when the cycling machine chucks me out and summons the next punter.

In gym-speak I migrate from cardiovascular to the weight training upstairs.   Even though I am a master of the overstatement that is rather rich.   Being of fairly portly disposition and reluctantly trudging uphill to middle age, I am more rumour than danger.   Let's just say I potter around mental knife in hand.

The guy doing forearm curls next to me had a transplant.   Tree trunk for thigh.   I stab him bloodlessly.   The strength in my arms coming from years of lifting Homer, Austen, Dickens, Achebe and Naipaul.

I was a legend in my own mind in my native Chatsworth.  No one worked the aisles and shelves of the Unit 10 municipal library like I did.  It got to the obsessive point where I even knew when an obscure book had been checked out. I would harass the librarians to know when it would be back. I would even know how overdue fines on the said item would tally up.

I spent a lot of my life in that library.   In between reading I would chat up girls. Let's just leave it at the fact that I had enormous success with the reading.

This was the earlyish eighties - a time of raging teenage hormones and of intense anti-apartheid political activity. The Unit 10 library was one of the sites of mobilisation.   Des of the green eyes rarity was one of the librarians.   He would organise a bus to take 50 or 60 of us to the gumba. This was usually at the Rick Turner Student Union on the Howard College campus of the then University of Natal.

My mates among whom were Daniel, Seelan, Neville and Clive, especially Clive were all eager for the ride.  After rousing speeches by the likes of Desmond Tutu, Bheki Cele and a host of other political firebrands we were treated to a sweaty disco in the hall named after the assassinated anti-apartheid hero.  

And there-in lay the greatest attraction. We could gyrate with girls of all hues, tongues and physical locations.   In a rigidly racially segregated society you have no idea of the thrill of that.   Hormonal relief aside, those gumbas were remarkable baby steps in building a non-racial society, of a nation turning to each other rather than on each other.

The dance parties usually lasted until the security police viciously broke it up.   We would scatter in panic in every direction with the leadership all the while appealing for us to be calm and directing us to our buses home.  

Hats off to the theorists of the South African revolution who conjured those ideas of organisation and conscientisation with a mix of dancing.   Regrettably in the twenty years since freedom was won we have not come full circle in building a truly non-racial society. We must each shoulder a morsel of blame for that.

Some of us have spent too much time getting fat at the buffet and I am not talking about the pilates instructor.

The hiss of the tissue nobility

The hiss of the tissue nobility

Kiru Naidoo

No one from Chatsworth has won the Nobel Prize yet. I am certain it will happen one day. When it does I hope it will be for someone who invents a silent toilet spray. Nothing announces the nature of your business more loudly than that condensed hiss of strawberries and cream. 

Now these are middle class woes.  In days of yore we had no such trouble.  The toilet was either a distance from the house or facing outside.  In Unit 3 the toilet was outside the kitchen door with yet another door to shield from the elements.  In Unit 2 the toilet was attached to the building but outside altogether. 

  

Nuclear emissions gently wafted off into the yard or in the direction of the neighbours.  If matters got overly offensive, I bunch of strong incense and a few curses were hurriedly procured. 

Lavatory duties were a defined part of my childhood chores.  Let’s just say I had oversight of the mopping up unit.  Usually it was every second party who had need for my services.  The older generation made do with a chomboo of water and a deft left hand.  I dealt with the paperwork for the rest. 

These were days long before double ply Baby Soft with little puppy patterns.  Old newspapers had to be chopped up in even squares and hung on a nail behind the toilet door.  Those with scant regard for abrasions used the squares as they found them.  The more sensitive types splashed a slash of water.  Annually there was the little luxury of the expired telephone directory which came in the softer white and Yellow Pages. 

It was the weekend business that I especially looked forward to.  My maternal grandfather, Vasantharajulu Naidu, Thatha, lived with my mother’s sister, my delightful Big Amma about three kilometres away in the renting scheme part of Unit 3. 

He was also called Jumbo Naidu.  I recall him removing his hat and stooping to get his head under the door frame.  To my little skinny self he looked all of seven feet tall.  He was always in a suit with a waistcoat.  In the waistcoat pocket he carried a little square tube of Kiltys.  These sweets came in pinks and mauves and were usually in a sickly musk flavour.  Whereas other kids got whole packets of sweets or Simba chips from their grandparents, all my younger brother, sister and I got were fingernail portions. 

My grandfather had these steely grey eyes whether on account of his age or his colourful ancestry I cannot be sure.  Suffice to say that he had a command and correct way about him.  Whenever our mother left us in his care to go off to the market, there was no bouncing on grandad’s knee.  He directed us into shorts and vests. We lined up for physical training.  Extending our arms, touching our toes and the like.

To the less kindly, Vasantharajulu Jumbo was also known as Patches.  That needs little explanation.  He patched everything.  Everything. In fact his clothes had so many patches it was hard to work out what was original.  

Now coming back to the lavatorial element of this story.  On Saturday when Thatha visited we felt like the nobility.  My grandfather walked through the vegetable market.  He had friends there. He was an old farmer himself, dispossessed, depressed and destroyed by the Group Areas Act. 

William pears and starking apples were among the prized fruit at the market.  His connection kept all the soft tissue papers that were used to wrap these delicate fruit. 

And so it came to pass that all weekend we alighted the throne in considerably greater comfort.