Jiving for Janis

 

The cactus of a bright sky available at Clarke's in Cape Town

 

Alan Finlay's chapbook The cactus of a bright sky is also available from Clarke's bookstore in Cape Town. You can order it here-- or, if you live in Cape Town, why not pop in to the store and buy a copy in person?

Extract from 'Chops Chutney' in Pravasan Pillay's short story collection Chatsworth

 

Abdul was twenty-three-years old, five years older than her, and was originally from a small town outside Lahore. He had moved to Durban two years ago to take up the kitchen posi­tion in his cousin Karim’s takeaway. Apart from being extre­mely handsome, he was very funny, and Kavitha found herself instantly attracted to him.

They flirted almost daily for three months before Abdul finally asked her out for a milkshake at Milky Lane at the Chatsworth Centre. Their dating since then had been restricted to daytime excursions around Chatsworth, or driving around in Karim’s Toyota Corolla, which Abdul would borrow.

Abdul was constantly asking her to go out with him to Cape to Cairo, a night club in the city, and Kavitha kept turning him down. Of course, she wanted to accept his offers, but she knew that her father would only allow her to go out in the evenings if he could meet the boy first. It was tough enough getting appro­val for a Chatsworth Tamil boy. A Pakistani Muslim would have been completely out of the question.

The gift of the tinned-fish samoosas had been Adbul’s idea. “Maybe if he can taste my cooking he won’t hate Pakistan so much,” he had joked, before he handed the half-dozen samoo­sas to her.

Abdul seemed to take her father’s attitude in his stride. “Fathers in Lahore are even more protective of their daughters,” he would say. “Anyway, who wouldn’t be protective of a girl like you?”

Gary Cummiskey's Outside the cave at Clarke's Books

 

Gary Cummiskey's selected poems, Outside the cave, is available also at Clarke's Books in Long Street, Cape Town.

You can order online or pop in and buy a copy in person!

Extract from 'The Green Ghost', in Pravasan Pillay's short story collection, Chatsworth

 

On 12 August 1999, I found an article that I thought was worth investigating further. The article had appeared in the knock-and-drop Chatsworth Sun and was written by Frank Nair, who usually covered the paper’s paranormal beat. It involved an encounter with a ghost. As was often the case with the free com­munity papers, the article was short on details. However, one sentence caught my attention:

“The apparition appeared to be green in colouration and smelt dis­tinctly of syringa berry leaves.”

The next day, I called Frank Nair at the Sun and convinced him to give me the telephone number of Gona Naidoo, the man who had reportedly seen the ghost. I lied to Nair and said I was a sociology student and that this was for a research paper I was working on. Nair revealed that he had been struck by the unusualness of the story. “Where you heard of a green ghost before?” he had asked.

Arranging an interview with Gona Naidoo was simple enough. He agreed immediately to a meeting and seemed eager to share his story with me. We met on 16 August at Kara Nichha’s, a takeaway located just outside Chatsworth’s Bangladesh Market.

Naidoo, a Tamil, was short, dark-skinned and a little over­weight. He wore his grey-flecked hair closely cropped, and kept a cigarette behind his left ear. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose squat and his teeth stained by nicotine. He came dressed in a Manning Rangers FC T-shirt, grey track-pants and a pair of Jack Purcells. I was struck by how much he perspired, even for Durban; he was constantly wiping his face and hands with a small, blue terrycloth.

Naidoo was friendly, if a little shy at first, and open to all my questions. He seemed pleased when I mentioned my plans to submit the interview to Bhoot, and asked that I make a printout of it for him when I was done. We sat at a corner table and ate Kara Nichha’s famous grilled cheese sandwiches while we talked. I tape-recorded our interview and what follows is a transcript of that conversation.

 

Extract from 'The albino', in Pravasan Pillay's short story collection Chatsworth

Two hours after the assembly, the teachers gathered in the staffroom for the first lunch break. I sat with the other female teachers, as I usually did, in the small lounge area. The talk had centred briefly on Principal Singh’s annual charade, but it soon shifted to Cookie. We learnt a few more details about the girl from one of the teachers sitting with us, Mrs Reddy, whose hus­band taught at Primrose. 

Mrs Reddy immediately dispelled the rumour that Cookie was not actually an albino. Soon after the assembly, Kogie had visited my classroom to inform me of the gossip that had begun circulating about the pupil. She said that several of the teachers suspected that the girl was really white or coloured and that her parents were making her pretend to be an albino. 

Mr Chetty, the boys’ PE master, had speculated that the girl’s mother, whom he said was on the cleaning staff of a Durban beachfront hotel, had had an affair with one of the white guests.

Another teacher, Mr Nair, was of the opinion that the girl was 100% white, and that the Govenders had stolen her from a white family. He recommended that Principal Singh contact the education department as soon as possible with this informa­tion. It was better to approach them before a school inspector made the discovery himself, Mr Nair had reasoned.

Kogie and I laughed over the gossip, but, as far-fetched as it all seemed, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something to it. I had heard far stranger stories about Indian families trying to hide their mixed-race offspring from the authorities. One of my own cousins, Satiah, was exceptionally fair-skinned, green-eyed and had very curly hair. It was obvious to anyone that he was more coloured than Indian. 

Growing up, I remember my aunt always insisting that he wear a peak cap whenever we left the township and went into the city. “They mustn’t see your hair,” my aunt would warn him. If we saw a policeman while we were in Durban, my cou­sins and aunts would crowd around Satiah, hiding him until they thought it was safe again. As soon as he was old enough to work, Satiah began shaving off his hair. 

“The girl is not white or coloured,” Mrs Reddy said, her teacup balanced on her knee. All of the eyes in the lounge area tur­ned towards her. “She’s got a sickness.” 

In between slow and deliberate sips of tea, we learned that Cookie’s father also suffered from albinism. Mrs Reddy’s hus­band had met the Govenders on numerous occasions at parent-teacher meetings. Mrs Govender, who, as Mr Chetty correctly stated, was a hotel worker, had the regular dark complexion of a Tamil, but her husband’s skin was a mosaic of brown and white. He looked like a white person with grease stains, Mrs Reddy said, a bit unkindly. 

She added that Mr Govender’s family had a long history of albinism, and that three of his five siblings had children who suffered from the disease. The children all had the same patch­work skin that plagued Mr Govender.

Only Cookie had escaped it.

 

Extract from 'Idris', in Pravasan Pillay's short story collection Chatsworth

Idris become one of Mo’s favourite topics of conversation with me. As soon as I entered the car for each lesson he would launch into an anecdote or complaint about Idris. Idris seemed to fas­cinate Mo. He said that he had never had a student who had been this difficult to teach.

According to Mo, Idris seemed to completely lack coordina­tion and awareness of his surroundings. There were moments when he appeared to get the hang of driving and the car would move normally for a while, but then, in an instant, the knack would be gone again, and the car would jerk and sway like it did the majority of the time.

Simple tasks like flicking the indicator switch to the right direction or lifting the hand-brake up when he stopped gave him difficulty. “He act like the car is going to eat him or something,” Mo said.

The more he told me, the worse I felt for Idris. I couldn’t understand how something that I had taken to easily could be such a challenge for him, especially since he was so much older than me. It didn’t seem fair. I kept hoping that Mo would have something positive to report, but it never came. 

One incident that Mo related stands out. 

During one of the lessons, Mo had asked Idris to turn into Higginson, which was Chatsworth’s main highway. Driving at higher speeds was going to be tested and up until that point, Idris had only driven inside of Chatsworth at the residential speed limit of thirty kilometres. 

A drawing of mine selected for the latest issue of Graffiti

 

A drawing of mine has been selected to appear on the cover of the latest issue of Graffiti, a poetry magazine published by Subhankar Das, in Kolkata, India.

Excerpt from the short story 'Crooks', in Pravasan Pillay's collection Chatsworth

 

 Kamla noticed that her husband doted slightly more on the baby than he had with the other two children. It wouldn’t have been obvious to an outsider, but there were little things like how he would choose to carry her instead of pushing her in her pram when they went out shopping. He had never done that with their other daughters.

The extended family also spoiled the child. Her first birth­day party was held in Havenside Park in Unit 1 and was one of the biggest family occasions held in years. Everyone brought toys and clothing for Ambi, more than she would ever need.

By then, Ambi was already several kilograms heavier than most one-year-olds, but this didn’t concern Kamla or anyone else. The extra kilos, if anything, endeared her to others, strang­ers even. It made them want to pinch her cheeks, to pick her up and hug her, to nuzzle against her neck. But most of all, it made people want to feed her. It was a joy to watch Ambi eat, the way she relished her food, the way she always wanted more.

The first indication of a problem came when Ambi went in for a routine check-up the middle of her third year. The nurse at the clinic made a passing remark about Ambi being well over the recommended weight for her age. The nurse didn’t say anything more, but Kamla saw in her eyes a different look from the admiring ones Ambi had received until then.

Over the following months Kamla began slowly cutting down on the treats and snacks her daughter had grown accusto­med to in-between meals. Ambi cried a lot during this time. Kamla’s husband tried to convince her to not be as stringent, but by then the concerns about Ambi’s weight were being voi­ced more openly by the nurses and doctor.

It wasn’t just the food or her eating habits, they said. There was something wrong inside of her, something inside of her was making her fatter.

Ambi herself did not seem aware of how different she was from cousins her age. She ran slower than them and would grow tired and out-of-breath more quickly, but it didn’t stop her from playing the same games as them; and when she began to talk, her talk was the same as any child.

What changed first was that the attention she received ear­lier from the extended family began to wane. More and more, when the adults of the family looked at her, it was with the same look the nurse at the clinic had given her.

Kamla was angry at first, that these people should judge her child, but she grew used to it over time. She fielded all their questions about Ambi’s current weight and about what they were feeding her and listened patiently to their numerous weight loss suggestions.

The diet changes and the medication prescribed by the doc­tors didn’t make a difference. Ambi kept putting on the kilo­grams. Eventually Kamla stopped the food restrictions; it didn’t make any sense to deprive the child if it wasn’t going to make a difference to her condition.

During Ambi’s first two years at school, Kamla was called in to see the teacher more than a dozen times. It was always the same thing. The girl was being teased, she wasn’t responding to any of the teaching, she wasn’t making any friends.

 

Pravasan Pillay's Chatsworth is available from Made in Durban.