A battalion of margarine containers hold everything except margarine - chutney, soji, buttons, needles and thread.
The bioscope, the McIver shirt, the ice cream tub that lied - the second love letter to the Indian South African soul
After the first letter - the Blue Label Marie, the mindrel, the Joko, the broken samoosa - the phone rang for weeks. In car parks, at weddings, outside the temple, the mosque and the church, you said the same thing: you only scratched the surface. You forgot the bioscope. You forgot the shirts. You forgot how we speak. Consider this the second sitting. The kettle is already on.
Start at the freezer. You saw the ice cream tub. Two litres. Your heart lifted. You prised off the lid - sugar beans. Or dhall. Not once in the recorded history of our community has an ice cream tub in an Indian freezer contained ice cream. Beside it, a battalion of margarine containers holding everything except margarine - chutney, soji, buttons, needles and thread.
We threw nothing away - not bread bags, not the good Diwali or Eid wrapping paper, unfolded with surgical care for next year. That was not stinginess. That was a generation that crossed an ocean with nothing and knew in its bones that waste was an insult to labour. Your grandmother saved that tub because she remembered being poor - and was determined you never would be.
