I USED to wake up earlier than usual on a Friday morning to watch Kesavan’s mother towel-drying her hair.
Chances are that I was around five or six at the time.
A child asking questions always draws the best answers.
“From the time I was a baby, my mother-father told must never cut my hair,” said Kesavan’s mother obviously pleased with my compliments.
“You mean to say they never bolded your head when you was a baby?” I recalled persisting.
My grammar always fitted the occasion. Even at a young age, I figured that you had to meet people as close as possible to the language in which they were comfortable.
Not my uppity mother, Lutchammamma Alimal Naidoo (née Naidu) born on a prosperous farm in Hillary.
She made very few real friends because her posh English always came across in a showboat fashion.
“Naina, speaking properly is the mark of a man,” she would say. My father, Chungelrion Swaminathan Naidoo (named after his Chettiar paternal grandfather indentured from India), was just as prim and polished.I think my mother had him shipshape from the day she fell in love with him in the Magazine Barracks.
“Son, read everything you lay your hands on so that you can become like the Right Honourable Sir VS Srinivasa Sastri PC CH, silver-tongued orator of the British Empire,” was my learned father’s popular line.
I took both their advice and added a healthy pinch of salt.Sastri was the Indian Agent-General to the Union of South Africa from 1927 to 1929.
He was appointed at the urging of Mahatma Gandhi and the Viceroy of India supposedly to tackle issues like racial segregation and Indian repatriation.
During his time, he had a hand in the Natal Commission for Indian Education and the founding of the iconic Sastri College which opened in October 1929 after his departure.
Forgive me if this history lesson sounds like it doesn’t have anything to do with Kesavan’s mother’s pitch-black poker straight tresses that hung to below where her ample bum met her thighs framed by a damp chiffon nightdress.
I took to reading like a fish to water and later learned that Sastri had arguably the finest command of English of anyone of his generation.I also later heard from the historian, Hassim Seedat, that the repatriation document that he inked could have landed Indians in the forests of Borneo or Brasil.
I searched for solid evidence of that but only found a statement that went along the lines of: “For those Indians in the Union who may desire to avail themselves of it, the Union Government will organise a scheme of assisted emigration to India or other countries where western standards are not required.”
Had we been packed off to the non-western standards of Brasil, I might have become much better at dancing the salsa.I wish my politically conscious father knew that Sastri was a servant of the Empire working inside the colonial system rather than fighting it.
Well to cut a long story short, my grandparents and Kesavan’s mother’s opted to adapt to western standards learning English and wearing trousers and frocks.In the process, we lost much of our Tamil, Telugu, Bhojpuri, Hindi, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali and other ancient languages our ancestors had carried from India.
Kesavan’s mother continued to wash her hair in the same manner as her great-grandmother’s village in Chingleput.
In her pre-Hindu faith tradition, Friday was prioritised to worship the Goddess Luxmi.
My mother was named after the goddess.
Thanks to those powerful spirits, I’ve never been without money even when jobless.
Kesavan’s mother came out of the outside toilet that doubled as a bathroom with her long hair wound in a fluffy towel and piled on top of her head.
“I wash three times with the green soap and rinse with the chombu from the bucket.”My curiosity didn’t end there.
“Why your hands is yellow, Aunty?”
She explained her facial beauty routine of rubbing a stick of dried turmeric on a stone or in her palms to serve as a cleanser.
It was also my mother’s method giving them a glow that Estée Lauder would have envied.
Kesavan’s mother then loosened the towel and whipped her hair back and forth in the morning sun.
She almost bent herself over double before throwing her headback.
Thick clumps were then pulled forward to be rubbed dry.
Next came a generous lathering with coconut oil followed by a broad- toothed comb straightening the tresses much better than a GHD might.
She then twisted her hair into a generous bun at the back of her head and knelt to offer prayers to the goddess in a tiny shed that was her precious altar.Her mantras were interrupted by her recollection.
“Only one time they took my first hair out. I was sitting in my Mama’s lap and Nondi Barber scraped with the Minora blade.
”She giggled as she recalled crying her eyes out but her mother’s elder brother held her firm.
“Mama then pierced with gold earrings.”
Join Naidoo at the Indian Heritage Month commemoration hosted by the 1860 Heritage Centre on the beach opposite Addington Hospital at 10am on November 16.
You can reach him at 082 940 8163.