And Home Was Kariakoo : Memoir of an Indian-African; 
MG Vassanji; 
Hamish Hamilton; 
400 pages;
 Rs 599

And Home Was Kariakoo crosses genres as deftly as its author and his Gujarati forefathers crossed continents. An East African yatra packed tight with swathes of history and autobiography and freewheeling critiques of African politics, current affairs, religion, cultural practices and whatnot, M.G. Vassanji’s latest book is a ghar wapsi in the best possible sense.

Having been brought up with only the vaguest sense of his own heritage as an Asian-African, and irked in no small measure by how the Western world still tars Africa with the old broad-brush of Dark Continent, Vassanji (who holds a Canadian passport) returns to Dar-es-Salaam—not so much to write about his hometown as to rediscover his own moorings in it. Sure, the face and ethos of the Indian quarter, Gaam and the African area, Kariakoo, have both changed irrevocably; the sleepy small-town Dar of Vassanji’s boyhood is now a gleaming megalopolis whose Indian footprint has been all but wiped out. An entire generation fled Gaam for the West in the wake of the socialist takeover of Tanzania in the 1960s; in any case, the diasporic Gujaratis (unflatteringly known as the Jews of Africa) had always been the kabab mein haddi, as Vassanji puts it, in the eyes of European and African alike. Not all is lost, though: the KT Shop of Gaam still thrives, a little six-tabled stronghold, and its chai and camaraderie are as unsurpassed as ever.

Disheartened but determined, Vassanji sets out to retrace the routes (and roots) of the Gujarati in the rest of East Africa. This pilgrimage into the past, to places that seem to have fallen off the map and the history textbook alike, is full of surprises. Along the way, we discover the quaint coastal town of Tanga where a World War was waged by Indian soldiers on behalf of the British sahibs, only to be defeated by a cloud of bees; we learn that the East African Expedition of 1857 led by Richard Burton and John Speke in their quest for the source of the Nile was “brokered” by a Gujarati merchant; and that, in fact, the first Gujaratis had arrived at the east coast of Africa from the west coast of India, long before either had been a gleam in the Empire’s eye.

Vassanji is as fluent in Swahili—which he says “comes to the tongue as readily as the taste of a much-loved mango”—as he is in Gujarati; and the fact that he chose to title the book And Home Was Kariakoo rather than “And Home Was Gaam” is proof enough of his deep attachment and commitment to both. His is an Africa of warmth and many-splendoured exuberance, not merely “wars, HIV and hunger” (And he can’t resist cocking a snook at Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari here either.).

Vassanji delights equally in the raucous open-air TV screening of an English Premier League soccer game, as he does in the discovery of Africa’s own brand of Sufism, the Shadhiliyya sect whose “oddball nonconformism” has him in momentary mystical thrall. His travels on rickety buses over rough roads, marked by the familiar impedimenta of too-frequent police check-posts, are invariably enlivened by much chai pe charcha (“Where there are a few Asians, there is a chai place”) and generous helpings of the legendary Indian hospitality.

Written with the insight of the insider and the emotion of the returnee, this is both a celebration of the sheer diversity of Africa and a heartfelt paean to the spirit of the unsung Gujarati vania who believed that “home is where the trade winds take you.”

Sriram is a writer in Chennai

courtesy : http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/books/home-is-where-the-trade-winds-take-you/99/ : February 21, 2015 4:50 am

BOOK REVIEW

Bead Bai (ખોટા મોતી ના સાચા વેપારી) by Sultan Somjee

CreateSpace, Charleston, SC 29418, U.S.A. – Second Edition 2014 

www.thebeaddbai.blogspot.com  

Sultan Somjee`s Bead Bai is a real feast of magical realism at its best – a kind of kaleidoscopic poetry in motion!  It breaks new ground in `our` literature – a different genre that extends the boundaries of a conventional novel.  It is hugely endowed with imagination and daring, yet well grounded in historical research.

Basically, it is about the settlement of the Satpanth Ismaili Khoja community in East Africa with roots in the princely state of Kathiawar in British India, but Somjee has skilfully contextualised the tales of their arrival and venture into the hinterland with the art and craft of native bead making.  He is an ethnographer by academic training and in this extraordinarily ambitious work he has used his learning and professional expertise, gained over many years` field work in Kenya, to perfection.

If M G Vassanji`s The Gunny Sack was about the inner world of the fictional Shamsi community – the alter ego of the Ismaili Khojas – Bead Bai reaches far and deep into every aspect of the proverbial Asian dukawallahs` lives and businesses.  From the opening Introduction, these passages neatly give the flavour of what is to follow :

`From mid-19th century onwards, there was a steady migration of Satpanth Ismailis from India to East Africa increasing to greater numbers in the   late 19th to early 20th centuries.  Already by the early 20th century, some Satpanth Ismaili merchants had developed trade networks running   from the East Coast of Africa towards the Congo.  Their foot caravans included beads among other goods, such as blankets, cloth, foodstuff, and building material.  The bead trade developed by trial and error as the merchants tested preferences in colours, lustre, sizes and shapes,  among the ethnic people.`

(and)

`Thus, over time the bead merchants of East Africa learned how different and particular were the over hundred ethnic groups when it came to their art.`

Although the chapters are serially numbered, they are nevertheless grouped together into several Parts, each with an epigrammatic intro, such as `Stories from Shantytown` in Part One.  Here he cites, in addition to other references, an undated (and unpublished) paper by a veteran Kenyan Oshwal businessman Amritlal Raishi outlining the building up of what is now known as Nairobi`s Biashara Street by (A M) Jeevanjee from its ramshackle beginning at the turn of the 20th century.     

An extraordinary feature of the story (to call it a `novel` does not do justice to its broader appeal as a work of fiction enriched by factual history) is that the author has entrusted its telling to a female character (from his man`s pen, that is), Sakina, born in Nairobi on 15th March 1922, `on the day when the colonial soldiers opened fire on the crowd protesting against the imprisonment of Harry Thuku`, who had `defied the governor`s order on the wearing of the hated kipande` – a subtle reminder that all this was happening during the heyday of Empire! 

The narrative continues and is threaded through such early chapters as `Stories arriving with the monsoons`, `Stories departing with the monsoons`, `Story of Sohn Bai`, `Losing the land`, `Crows on Board the Dhow`, `There were three prostitutes at sea` and `Deaths on Kala Pani`.

The spread of the community across the Indian Ocean and beyond is further explored under various headings, including `Chup Chap Whispers`, `The Stone Jamat Khana`, `At the Religious School` and `Stories from Meethi Bai`s Lodge`.  In the process, we are treated to an indepth insight into the very soul and character of the Khojas.

The Gujarati sub-title of the book comes from the signage on the shop premises of Nagji Pademsi and Sons (`popularly called Duka la Ushanga na Blanketi, the Bead and Blanket Store`) that, according to the author (at page 127) transliterated as `Of Imitation Pearls We Are Genuine Merchants`, though a nuanced version of it might have been `True Merchants of Imitation Beads`!  In the next chapter (`Loving Gujarati`) Somjee extols the beauty and complexity of the language in, it has to be said, loving homage. 

In other chapters, he delves into the history of the Raj and the relationship between the British rulers and Indian princes, with a passing mention of the famous Aga Khan Case in the High Court of Bombay that definitively declared who the Ismaili Khojas were and how he, the Aga Khan (“Saheb”) came to be their leader.  There is also a mischievous local folklore reference to Gandhi`s alleged sexual peccadillo in Zanzibar en route to South Africa as recounted by Ma, the narrator`s mother-in-law. 

The reader cannot but be impressed by Somjee`s brilliant eye for detail.  A graphic example of this is in his description of the minutiae of domestic drudgery that was traditionally the lot of the newly married daughter-in-law, in this case Sakina, who, besides having to perform the routine tasks of cleaning and cooking (“Bride as Housemaid”), was expected to meet her husband`s conjugal demands and to generally keep the household running smoothly under the stern and watchful eye of Ma, appropriately dubbed `Mama Khelele` by the Maasai milk women who came to the back door of the house daily with their fresh produce and engaged in banter with everyone present.

Although the focus of the book is the trajectory of the Khojas, the fact that they came from the same cultural, ethnic and regional background as the other Gujarati community groups (Hindu and Moslem) who were also part of the Indo-African migrationary trail means that it is richly steeped in resonances of commonalities and shared experiences.

When, therefore, I read `Haiderali was born in Zanzibar.  His father, Khimji Devji Momna, …. lived on Mla Ndege Street in the stone town …` (p 286), as reviewer I was not surprised, though as an `insider` I felt a bit chuffed that Somjee should have chosen the name “Khimji Devji”, which also happened to be my father`s!  The name recurs again more than once, later to become “Khimji Devji Momna and Son, Beads and General Store”, which, incidentally, illustrated how the pioneer migrants were able to prosper and continue their line down successive generations.  In a similar vein, my father`s business, albeit of a different kind, was also after three decades transformed into “Shah Khimji Devji & Sons” exactly sixty years ago, though I myself was not one of the sons!    

At this point, Somjee encapsulates the symbiotic relationship between Khoja and Maasai, between the Indian newcomer and the native inhabitant of the land, under `Storyteller of the Savannah` (Chapter 39) evocatively described by the narrator thus:

` … the new person that I am becoming … shaped by how I am viewed – a wife, a daughter-in-law, expectant carrier of family name and honour, a cook and servant in the house, but an adorned lady of Devji family in the jamat khana.  What tells me who I am …. is the two hours on the veranda of the shop with Ole Lekakeny … [and] the old man`s nieces … the long milk gourds … [t]he milk was their food while they were in town for a day or two, and for their journey to and from their homesteads.  They walked three days … stopping at homesteads of their cousins, age group friends and aunts, refilling their milk gourds.  One afternoon Ole Lekakeny teaches me how to compose a Maasai bead pattern. His name, Ole Lekakeny, means dawn, for he was born when the colours of the sky were pure.`

And it goes on:

` … There is freedom in my heart … listening to lyrics of Ole Lekakeny explaining the emankeeki and the origin of colours and man.  He reminds me so much of Dadabapa singing the Das Avatar and how God came to be fish and an animal before becoming a man.  Dadabapa also told me how we came to Africa, cramped in a wooden craft ….`

How 'we came to Africa' above was an echo of Cynthia Salvadori's `We Came in Dhows` ! There is so much packed into the book`s 457 pages, including a useful glossary and heart-felt acknowledgements, but not counting the Introduction (and lacking, alas, an index or a list of contents), that it is an invidious task to summarise it all fairly. Suffice it to say that Bead Bai will serve as a most valuable contribution to the documented history not only of the Ismaili Khoja presence in East Africa but also, vicariously, of their other Gujarati counterparts.  It cannot be recommended too highly.

© 2014

e.mail : rkds47@hotmail.com

`Dancing With Destiny : Memoir` by Urmila Jhaveri

ISBN 978-1-4828-1042-4 (Softcover); 978-1-4828-1043-1 (Ebook)

295pp  © 2014 Urmila Jhaveri

(publisher: www.partridgepublishing.com/india)

This is more than just a `memoir`; it is an autobiographical account of an eventful journey through the author`s long life (she`s nearly 83) that dwells on the history of her country and people and draws the reader in with an endearing mix of candour and warmth, wit and wisdom, and much more.

Urmila Jhaveri is a second generation East African Asian, born in 1931 in Pemba, the twin island of Zanzibar where her Indian parents had migrated ten years previously when her father was recruited to the colonial customs service.  Some four years later, her father left his employment and the family moved to the mainland where he joined the business of a drug store that had been started a few years earlier by his older brother in Dar-es-Salaam.  This then was to be and remain her home for the next 75 years. It was here that she grew up, went to school, got married, raised two children and, while living a busy domestic and social life of a successful lawyer`s loving wife, developed her own independent persona of a veteran activist in the Tanzania national women`s movement Umoja Wa Wanawake Wa Tanzania (UWT).    

The narrative is not chronological in a linear sense; rather it meanders through a series of circuitously constructed themes (such as Migrations, World War II, Our Dhow Safari, A Brief Glance over Uganda in Part I alone).  She sets out her early trajectory in the first three chapters, aptly entitled Family Diary, Home and Happy Days.  In later chapters, we are given insights into the broader history of the region, the slave trade, the arrival of European explorers and the onset of colonial rule, interspersed with mature reflections on the lives of people around her.  What emerges is an unpretentious self-portrait of a modest woman with many hidden qualities and abilities.

We learn about her idyllic childhood, schooling and upbringing in a South Asian middle-class home, though as she says at the time she `never realised that it was an environment in which we were living in small racially bound compartments`, referring to the triple layered structure of colonial society where the Europeans occupied the top position, the native Africans were at the bottom and the Indians in between, and `(a)s if this was not enough, many other extra boundaries were self imposed and jealously guarded` (p 105), pointing to the complex class, caste and religion based community groupings among the Asians and other divisions in the rest of the population, though relations across these lines nevertheless remained cordial even if at times tensions did boil over.

Beginning with an outline of her antecedents, parents` marriage and the birth of her siblings, she remembers her own first memory of `actual` India, as distinct from the vicarious India of imagination and folklore. This was in 1943, at the peak of World War II, when her family, like many others, had temporarily shifted there to elude a feared German invasion of East Africa.  As she puts it, until then “it never occurred to me that my roots were in India or [anywhere] else.  For us … Dar-es-Salaam was our home …. for those of us who made our home in Africa, this sense of belonging was our bedrock on which we built our lives”.  As she adds, “for some reason I could not understand, I did not feel at home in Jamnagar” (p 78)!

Her description of the hazardous voyage across the Indian Ocean by dhow during the monsoon season, in wartime blackout conditions, reads like a hair-raising tale of adventure and survival.  It also gives an inkling of what the earlier, pioneering generation of migrants from India had had to endure, in their case for a better future but without any idea of what awaited them.

The Indian sojourn did not last long.  The family returned to Dar-es-Salaam when the war ended but during her time in India she had become betrothed to a  budding young lawyer, K L Jhaveri (whom she refers to as Jhaveriji and whose own memoirs were published in 1999 under the equally catchy title of `Marching with Nyerere`).  Although she had resumed her schooling in Jamnagar, she did not complete it to the Cambridge School Certificate standard after coming back to  Dar-es-Salaam. That however was not to be a handicap.  Her fate was to `dance with destiny` as it unfolded, through an amazing series of chance and opportunity, grounded in her cultural roots and on a solid marital foundation with a liberal ethos that enabled her to flower into a self-educated woman of great intellect and moral integrity.

Her husband`s high-profile legal and political activities gave her a unique opportunity to mingle with top national leaders and to learn about past and current affairs and what was shaping the country`s path towards independence. Part II of the book is devoted to these matters: `Pre-Independence`, `Travails and Triumph`, `Uhuru-Independence`, `Zanzibar Revolution`, `The Tanganyika Rifles Mutiny`, `The Birth pangs of a New Nation` and `Nationalization`.   But it is in Chapter 17, “Where are the Women?”, and a later chapter with an intriguingly long title “Camaraderie … Djini Witches, Village Ancestors …And mad men”, that we get a full measure of her involvement with the UWT.  She describes its origins and progress under the charismatic leadership of Bibi Titi Mohamed and how after an initial apprenticeship at district and regional levels, she was elevated to the Central Committee and became a valuable contributing member of that organisation.  Her account of the activities of the UWT – their meetings and travels across the length and breadth of the vast country, their encounters with varied people and situations and above all their endeavours to raise the lot of the downtrodden and marginalised women – is heart rending. She was the only Asian, the only non-African, among her colleagues, who all formed a close-knit bond of friendship and sisterhood.

They campaigned and worked for an improvement in the status and education of rural women, dealing with sensitive cultural issues such as wife-beating and other forms of domestic violence, confinement to the home, polygamous households and child-rearing and lack of financial independence despite being “a labour force to work in the fields”.  Above all, it was the social oppression of the women, who were liable to be unilaterally divorced through the `talaq` process if they complained, that the UWT sought to address by “educating both men and women, and creating awareness about women`s rights”.  Their goal was “to push for women`s emancipation by initiating small-scale projects to enable women to earn, open kindergartens and nursery schools”.  

“Attending the meetings away from home meant for us late nights talking, joking, singing, sharing experiences and drinking beer and Fanta.  Many of our older members were Muslims who had formerly belonged to ngoma groups that were open to all, regardless of religious and tribal affiliation.  Occasionally there was mock posturing of visible tribal accents amongst the members like Wachaga and Wasukuma resulting in merriment all round.  Swahili was the common language that bound our understanding.  I had grown up speaking Swahili, and became fluent through using it continuously at UWT meetings and on long journeys to remote regions.  It helped me reach out, make friends, and find my own tiny little place in the lives of the village folks” (p 173).   In fact her command of Swahili was such that she regularly translated press reports and formal party documents into English for her husband!

In Part III, we learn about a couple of serious incidents of threat and assault in their later years, but on the positive side a great deal about her travels also.  In 1970 she was one of three UWT leaders chosen to represent Tanzania at the World Women`s Conferences in Moscow and Budapest.  It was a fabulous trip, which also included Leningrad and Moldavia, with a full programme of cultural and social functions and meetings with important people, among them the first woman cosmonaut Valentina Tereskova.  Elsewhere, she recalls her trips to Mauritius and Varanasi in India and “Tryst with a Tantric and visiting Kumbh Mela”.

In the closing chapters, she reflects on her spiritual journey through to the `evening of my life`, on her children and large extended family and basically everything that has happened to her, putting it all in a wider philosophical context.  There is a Waltonian (The Waltons – the 1970s American tv saga) quality about her homilies and other observations throughout the text.  So much is packed into the book – in terms of the countless number of people whom she remembers by name and of every significant turning point in her life – that for a reviewer it is an invidious task to highlight everything or to miss anything.  But what is clear is that hers is a life that has been lived to the fullest in every possible way.  Some of this can be gauged from the collection of old black and white photographs, among them of her with Julius Nyerere, his wife Maria Nyerere, Mrs Indira Gandhi and Dr Radhakrishna, in all of which she struck a charmingly beautiful figure who has aged well since.

What else?  Among her many vivid WWII recollections are seeing convoys of European PoWs and shabbily dressed, hungry and traumatised refugees (women, children and old men) being transported across to the station in Dar-es-Salaam, and how her father`s German friends came “stealthily to our house at night with their valuable books, artwork, paintings, delicate porcelain tea-sets and coffee-sets, for safekeeping or just to give away before they fled the country” (p 62).

And she remembers friends and neighbours and wider community contacts and acquaintances of all races and religions by name, often with details of what happened to them or where they ended up.

There is more to the book than this selective and partial review can convey adequately. It leaves the reader with respect and goodwill for the author, for all her accomplishments certainly but above all for her strength of character, her humanity and her modesty and selfless service to the cause of women`s betterment in her native Tanzania.  Her husband, to whom the book is fondly dedicated, died just a few weeks before its publication. Of him, she writes in Acknowledgements, “without [his] silent support and encouragement I would not have written this book. Jhaveriji is always there for me; but he never tried to proffer advice or even commented on what I was writing …. letting me write our story in my own way”.   And with typical shyness, she adds:

“My book is based on facts drawn from history and my personal experiences, limited understanding and some impediments.  I am afraid there may be some unintended discrepancies, unseen gaps and even language shortfall and hope that, these may please be ignored (sic)”.  Undoubtedly these are present – and the book would certainly have benefited from some professional input and editing – but not so as to mar one`s enjoyment of what she has to offer.  For the academically inclined, it is also worth noting that as well as an appreciative Foreword by G Madaraka Nyerere, a distinguished Tanzanian journalist and commentator, the text is supported by a useful end section containing References and Notes.

Having explained the genesis of her story in a moving Preface (how, having “arrived from familiar Dar-es-Salaam to Delhi”, she was feeling “like a bewildered, disconcerted, disoriented foreigner in India”), she concludes the book with a Postscript in a similar vein thus:

No doubt, all my experiences, relationships, actions and reactions have mo[u]lded my being.   And today, I am what I am, yet for me the enigma `Who am I?` remains …

To complete the poetic summation that follows, that indeed encapsulates her, you must read the book.  It is an uplifting experience, not to be missed.

Wednesday, 9 April 2014

RAMNIK SHAH © 2014
Surrey, England

http://www.ramnikshah.blogspot.co.uk/