Have you seen the price of chilli bites recently?

EVERY Friday evening about 60 years ago, my uncle Daddy Moodley, who was a waiter at a Durban beachfront hotel, would take home oily brown paper bags of bhajia and sev, nuts and boondhi he bought for 30 cents from Victory Lounge.

Now that was a sizeable amount of savouries to be shared with his wife and four children - and not forgetting some that he would have had as bites with his favourite tipple.

Those days Victory Lounge, situated at the corner of the then Victoria and Grey streets, was an obligatory stop for most city workers on their way home on a Friday. Buying treats for the family was a way of celebrating another week of hard work.

The street-facing windows of Victory Lounge would have shelves neatly stacked with gulab jamun, burfee, chana magaj, sutarfeni, fish cakes, masala fried fish (only the 74 species of fish was used), puri patha, an assortment of pies and a variety of cakes, including fruit squares (which I despised), snowballs, cream do-nuts, queen cakes and cream horns.

Inside there would be long lines of people, looking weary and impatient, waiting to be served sweetmeats or savouries.

It always baffled me how, whether the order was for five, 10 or 15 cents, the men behind the counter could scoop up the exact measure of salted nuts, ghatia, or spicy fried green peas, fill a brown paper packet, place it on an analogue scale, and without adjusting the quantity, declare it was the correct weight for the amount of money. Were they perhaps taking a chance?

Apart from the legendary braised mutton curry or Tamil-style fish curry served in the upstairs dining room at Victory Lounge, there was also big demand, especially among cinema-goers, for hot fried chips with salt and lots of brown vinegar which made the packets soggy.

My uncle Daddy would definitely cry into his cane and Coke if he were to visit a sweetmeat shop today. Thankfully, he is on another spiritual realm - prices have gone up at least 1 000 times. The packet of bhajia that cost just 15 cents in 1964 would set him back R150 today, 10 times more than his weekly waiter’s wage.

I came face-to-face with sweetmeat inflation - and some suspected exploitation - when I visited Victory Lounge in Chatsworth last week.

Craving a savoury snack, I asked for R20 of “round” and potato bhajia. When I was handed the near empty packet, I thought the shop assistant had made a mistake. I reminded her I had asked for R20 worth of “mixed” bhajia. She replied the quantity was correct. I was gobsmacked. I had got only three pieces of round bhajia and four slivers of potato bhajia.

I badgered for more information and was told bhajia cost R220 a kilogram.

“But that’s what I pay for a kilogram of AAA Grade back leg of mutton,” I muttered to myself.

Victory Lounge in Durban’s Grey Street complex closed its doors in 2017 after doing brisk business for 73 years. The profile of customers had changed. Only a handful of Indians were walking through the door.

The well-admired brand reincarnated in Chatsworth Centre under the management of Vicky, the younger son of founder Ramsamy Kisten Moodley, and was again popular for its sweetmeats and variety of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes, including offal such as tripe and trotters curries to cater for the township’s largely sub-economic and unsophisticated taste buds.

But the price of bhajia is certainly not “sub-economic” at R220 a kilogram. The high price is enough to make me envision giving up being a vegetarian and snacking on fish fingers and chicken nuggets instead.

If I thought that the bhajia in Victory Lounge in Chatsworth must have gone to a Model C school, then the bhajia at Victory Lounge in Umhlanga at R260 per kilogram must most certainly have private boarding school breeding.

At these prices, the journalist in me decided I should play “bhajia police” and do a quick survey to ascertain if there is price-fixing of the spicy snack. There could be a case for the Competition Commission or Consumer Council to probe.

Kara Nichha's, a Pietermaritzburg legend which started in 1935 and is still going strong with a national chain of franchised outlets, has a standard price of R120 per kilogram for bhajia.

Patel Vegetarian Refreshment Room in Grey Street (Dr Yusuf Dadoo St) in Durban, which claims to have been “serving authentic vegetarian bunny chows, sweetmeats and Indian snacks since 1911”, also sells bhajia for R120 a kilogram.

Indian Delights, the Overport “temple” of sweetmeats, sells round or spinach bhajia for R90 per kilogram, one-third the price of the most expensive outlet surveyed.

Satisfied that there is no collusion among bhajia vendors to fix price levels, I spoke to Vicky Moodley who told me just what I expected he would: “The prices of all ingredients and condiments have gone up tremendously.”

There is no denying inflation has pushed up all prices exponentially. It cost R10.95 per day in 1979 to stay at the 4 Seasons Hotel in Durban with three 8-course meals per day. A 750ml bottle of Mainstay cane spirit cost about R6.50 in the mid-1970s. In 1971, the KFC Barrel which had 21 pieces of Finger Lickin' chicken cost R4.29. Today it costs R300 with the same 11 herbs and spices.

According to Statistics South Africa’s inflation comparison, the same basket of goods and services that cost R100 in 1964 will cost R10 000 today, increasing 100 times. However, StatsSA does not say why bhajia has gone up 1 000 times.

I have decided it’s time Mrs Devan dons her apron and mixes some batter. A 250-gram packet of ready-made chilli bite blend costs R25 and gives at least 40 pieces of bhajia. That will save me more than R100 in the shop.

Yogin Devan is a media consultant and social commentator. Share your comments with him on: [email protected]

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