When I left South Africa, I idly mentioned to a friend that India was just what I needed – and possibly a good dumping ground for excess baggage. That was before I had seen all the litter. Going back ‘home’ again, for my grandma’s funeral and coincidentally tying in with the xenophobic attacks by local township dwellers on their African brethren, I realized that any baggage I have originated there and should stay there. If it hadn’t been stolen by the SAA staff, that is. Or passers-by in the quiet, familiar streets of sleepy Observatory which I so longed for while adapting to the frenetic buzz of Bangalore.
Two days after arriving, and a short visit out to Soetwater near Kommetjie, where 400 refugees were holed up, my handbag was snatched through a house window left open in a newly acquired Indian state of trust. Though the Xhosa passport controller at Cape Town International did assure me, when I commented on the trouble in the land, that there was nothing to worry about – “South Africa always overcomes” – I do rather wonder whether his stoicism was something to fear or rejoice about. That people are vowing to kill each other, proudly in the name of power, makes me kind of grateful for the lacksadaisical progress and kaleidoscopic traffic jams of mushrooming Bangalore and I almost, almost called it home.
Which is a sad indictment on my perception of the place where the umbilical cord is supposed to be. But probably has a lot to do with one’s reception. When the Eastern Cape domestic worker I hired in Cape Town told me, after much preparation (I could tell she had something to blurt), “I like you. You’re kind. You’re not rude like all the others”, I was on the verge of bursting. Into tears and explosions of mixed, irrational emotions.
Manifold though the reasons are, I don’t think it can be discounted that India, where my head-wobbling domestic happily does her nimble thing (barefoot and wide-smiled in a Sunday bestish sari) while I do mine, had mellowed me into a less defensive version of myself. That our driver was there to greet us and negotiate the two-hour bumper to bumper traffic with a welcoming smile was as good as arriving at the spanking new and organized airport with emptier suitcases.