THE WORLDS WITHIN US

Why do we seek – and sometimes find – a little bit of home wherever we go? Dr Vicki Bismilla with her husband Yusuf at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

By DR VICKI BISMILLA

We have been Canadian citizens for over 50 years and have lived here more years than in our land of birth, South Africa. Canada is our home; our heart is here where our children and their families are, they are our life! And we love Canada.

But every few years we listen to the yearning in our minds for the reminiscences of our childhood, the smell of the salty ocean, the tropical trees we climbed, the fruits we ate, the exquisite flowers we grew and, most of all, the siblings, cousins and in-laws we left behind. And the beauty of going to our country of birth is that we do not feel “foreign”, we fit right in, embracing our families, their homes, their way of life, their sense of humour – it’s as if we never left. That is thanks to the way in which our families and friends welcome us; they spoil us, and when we thank them profusely, they brush it off saying, “We are family,” and that is the way we are embraced by birth families and in-laws alike. A tremendous gift of love!

I had 11 siblings and now I have two. My brother Surat is 91, my sister Dolly, 79, and I miss them. Even though most of my siblings have long passed, their children, my nieces and nephews remain important to me, and this trip “back home”, much delayed by COVID, had been much anticipated.

We landed in Johannesburg, a large, bustling interior metropolis. Our first stop from the airport was to visit my husband’s aunt and her son and wife whose love for her is visible in the tender way they care for her. She is in her mid-eighties and is suffering from Alzheimer’s. It is heartbreaking to see this once vibrant, athletic, sports loving, racket-wielding woman go through this. She still loves to watch sports on TV but too often in the same hour she launches into enthusiastic, happy dialogue about her mid-forties and fifties as if she were still there. She asked us if we told her late mom (long passed) and late brother (long passed) that we are here; and how is her (long passed) brother in Canada and other events lovingly plucked from that glorious era of her mid-life. It’s as if the record player keeps skipping back to the middle of the vinyl disc that is a playing the melody of her life.

On to my husband’s small town of birth, Potchefstroom, where we stayed with his loving cousins in their lovely home with a garden filled with the flora of Africa. We could not believe their generosity! There were cousins-in-law in our huge, beautiful family that we hadn’t ever met and the get-together they had for us was fabulous. These cousins-in-law, strong, professional, dynamic women and their families truly epitomize love of family.

Apart from the spread of food we crave, meeting the aunts and cousins and their families was precious. There is something about our Indian cooking in South Africa that is uncopiable! The flavours of the curries are quintessentially South African-Indian and superb. My husband says the same about the BBQ meats which they call braai. I do not eat meats but to watch the others relish the braai confirms that there is nothing like it.

Time spent with family is so precious. Dr Bismilla with her sister Dolly.

An added pleasure are the unique fragrances of “home”. We were served a range of food beyond delicious and embraced by family some of whom we haven’t seen in years. Their gardens with the range of tropical flowers and fruit were delightful. The huge curry leaf trees that most families have in their yards made me yearn for one. Most of all the aroma of family cooking – nothing compares with that. With all the worldwide choices of spices here in Toronto nothing matches the aroma and taste of a red-hot Durban curry! For us there is nothing as delicious. When the indentured men, women and youth were brought to Durban by the British Raj to slave on the sugar farms, they brought with them the curry powders from India. And when the Indian merchants followed shortly after, they imported masalas from India and opened the legendary, ubiquitous Indian spice shops on the streets of Durban. But the way those masalas were blended by the sisterhoods and brotherhoods on each sugar plantation created the most unique and unsurpassed curries of Durban. I only lived in Durban for the first 21 years of my life, the rest here in Canada. But those first 21 formative years sealed my taste. There are also some uniquely Durban delicacies that are not found anywhere else. There is a plant along the beaches of Durban called Carissa Macrocarpa which some locals call Natal plum and we as local Indians call ‘mutton gulla’ probably because our Zulu neighbours call it Amathungulu. It thrives in salty air and has a luscious, plump, small fruit with nutritious flesh and sweet and sour taste which our families make into a delicious achar. Plump lemons on garden trees provide the best fresh lemon juice but especially unsurpassed lemon achar. And many Indian families have mango trees in their yards, laden with overhanging mangoes, many varieties and shapes. The unripe mangoes make delicious achars but we as youngsters loved eating green mangoes with salt and chilli powder and we still do!

We indulged in the eponymous Durban bunny chow. Nothing at all to do with rabbit meat, bunny-chow is a quarter loaf of white bread, hollowed out and filled with a variety of spicy curries. My all-time favourite is the broad beans bunny. Other versions include chicken, mutton or prawn bunnies. The term bunny-chow started in the early to mid-twentieth century when indentured Indian sugarcane workers in the fields, railways and construction sites or stevedores bought a half or quarter loaf of bread and filled it with a convenient tinned food like sardines. As it evolved, the term “bunny” began to be used for the half loaves that were being stuffed with delicious Indian curries. The workers associated the curry-filled ones with the word bunya or bania, the Indian shopkeepers and café owners whose curry-stuffed breads became very popular. There was a long-standing vegetarian café called Kapitan’s in Durban’s bustling Indian business casbah area run by a Hindu Gujarati family, where my father used to take us as kids; and it is likely that several cafés such as this one, run by vegetarian families, first started filling the quarter loaves with delicious spicy, specifically vegetarian curries – hence the term bunya-chow, now bunny-chow.

At home with her sister Dolly and brother Surat.

In Botswana, our very dear lifelong friend invited us as his guests to his safari resort and lodge. The stunning scenery, serene river boat cruise and incredibly close views of African animals were all breathtaking. On our drive to the majestic Victoria Falls, the elephants on the side of the road appeared to be used to humans parking to look at them.

On the jeep safari the sight of prides of lions so close to our vehicle, the impala (buck) “youth” locking horns in their play fighting and the wild apes of differing kinds were fascinating. And in our lodge, we were surprised by a family of 20 or more mongoose right outside our sliding bedroom doors. Apparently, the resort brings clans of mongoose to deal with African snakes that would be unwelcome guests. The best part of Botswana, though, was spending time with our amazing, gracious friend, our “rafika” and his family. In the company of him, his gracious wife, his grown kids and their wives and kids, the meaning of hospitality took on a whole new meaning.

Then our amazing cousins whom we were staying with drove us the eight hours to Durban and facilitated our stay at their stunning time-share on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

Durban is the coastal city where my grandfather was brought by the British Raj as an indentured labourer; where he worked in slave-like conditions on British sugarcane estates, was paid a pittance but eked out a living saving his pennies and ha’pennies to eventually buy land, the greatest investment of all.

The Durban of today is very different from Aja’s Durban; very different even from the Durban that my husband and I left behind 53 years ago. We had left the racist Apartheid regime to come here to a free and democratic Canada.

Democracy did come to South Africa many years after we left but there are signs that the fledgling democracy is suffering. Crumbling infrastructure, electricity brown-outs, water shortages, corruption like in many countries around the world, lack of opportunity for highly educated young people, lack of meritocracy and a brain drain.

The employment equity legislation favours the 60 million blacks as it should, given the horrendous deprivation they suffered during the white supremacist Apartheid regime. But unfortunately, the legislation blocks the employment of highly skilled and highly educated (private school) minorities like Indians, mixed-race and whites. Hence the brain drain out of the country. The public school system unfortunately has drastically dropped its standards, allowing a matriculation pass grade of less than 50 per cent.

What remain intact are family traditions and family connections.

Seeing our families on both sides was a huge pleasure. They are loving, embracing, generous and warm, and the pleasure of being in their company is irreplaceable. My family, my in-laws and our friends welcomed us and made us feel special every single day. And being in the company of my husband’s 97 year-old aunt Dr Zuleikha Mayat, an accomplished author of a long list of books, was incredible. She drew me aside and asked, “As a columnist, how are you going to address the calamitous human rights abuses happening in the world at present?”

Her mind was sharp, questioning, and focused, and she was irritated about the natural physical limitations and the wheelchair. A feisty, wonderful human being, she passed away recently and I am so grateful for the opportunity to have spent those precious hours with her.

Equally feisty is my 90 year old brother Surat who regaled us with stories about the politics of Gandhi, Nehru, and Churchill, and quoted from the Bhagwad Gita and the Ramayana, urging us to remember the importance of spirituality. He, too, an active educator throughout his life, is frustrated with the physical limitations of advanced age. My 79- year-old sister Dolly remains a gem, one of the most hard-working women I know whose clear priority is her commitment to family. Nieces and nephews were a pure delight to be with and one set aside his business schedule and selflessly drove us wherever we needed to be.

Apart from the wonderful food and loving families, we met university friends whom we hadn’t seen in a long time, in one case a lovely woman, a professor now, whom we hadn’t met for 53 years! Yet at lunch and a drive along the ocean roads we talked as if it were only yesterday that we picked her brilliant brain during philosophy class. We met with my very dear high-school friend and her husband who is also a university friend and being with them was as if the years apart never happened. We picked up where we left off, laughed and chatted.

Then we were invited to dinner by our wonderful university friends, she a professor and newspaper columnist, he a lawyer and businessman. They were the ones who told Yusuf that “that lovely girl is interested in you” (I did not know I was!) and told me, “See that handsome boy, he is interested in you”. So our life together began. And the couple who brought us together all those years ago remain gracious and lovely. We were also treated to lunch by new friends, that’s the way it is in that beautiful, warm Indian community of Durban. I am sure that many desis, expats from other South Asian countries and diasporas, feel this intense acceptance, love, and embrace when they go home to their birth countries. It is a South Asian quality that I have found and cherish, and I hope that many readers do, too.

On our last day, my husband met his dear childhood friend, a paediatrician, and his family over a delicious dinner they prepared in their home in Johannesburg. His spiritual discussion kept us rapt and we admired his magnificent hand-built brick work in his backyard .

As immigrants here in Toronto we, like millions, are passionate about being Canadian and serve this country in our committed ways through service, work, and contributions, and we defend our democracy here and the way of life every day.

We also never forget the birth-soil that gave us our start, our education, our values, and our roots.

Family is everything.

COVER STORY

THE WORLDS WITHIN US