The wedding and a speech

Sunday at 5.30pm

I couldn’t believe my cousin was getting married. He was the little boy who used to scare me with spook stories when we slept over at my grans place, but there he was with this smile, so huge if it could it would have engulfed the room.

His bride looked beautiful; she glowed, like brides are supposed to. I smiled to myself and stopped the tears from falling but when the couple walks in to the music of Veer Zara, it is hard for one not to get sad with nostalgia knowing that the person is starting a new life.

Sunday at 11.30am

My uncle Adil and Hanifa dropped us at the hall. We folded serviettes and placed them in long champagne glasses. We tied organza bows around white chair covers. Aunty Shami skillfully arranged flowers and scanned the room, her eye for feng shu or just decorating was excellent (I got jack talent in that department), the way it looked at 11am and the way it looked at 3pm was amazing. Rest assured it looked gorgeous, and I felt proud, after months of talks, here we were at the wedding. My stomach grumbled, in an hours time I needed to be back, I needed to bath and do make up and hair all in an hour. Where was my mum with that car?

Saturday eve around 8pm

We pick up Reyaaz, and he seems eager to join. I am glad he is, taking a guest along who is not sociable would only make it harder for me to mingle. But I needn’t worry, when we arrive, he befriends them all, and my uncles start to talk to him. My mum introduces him to all and chats with him. I’m running a bit around between cousins and aunties, we having a braai. Tomorrow is the wedding.

The table is decked, full capacity, with meats, sosaties, every salad mentionable.

We drink coke and eat cake for dessert. Everyone is there, and all these little kids running around. I like little kids, they have an interesting perspective to life, so new, fresh untainted.

There is always a fascination with my beauty spot (moesie). I have three little boy nephews (well they my cousin kids) all so cute and tiny, asking questions requiring you to think of a proper answer.

The boyz, my three little cousins I grew up with are now big boys, 17,14 and 11. They all sitting on Mixit! All of a sudden they grown up and I realize I’m nearly 25.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, time waits for no one they say, in ten years time I will have wrinkles.

Sunday at 10.30am

My aunt saves me. She brings me a beautiful wrap dress to wear the one I got made just doesn’t seem appropriate anymore. She brings me some makeup as well, my sister and my 5 year old cousin (Sara) mess around with it.

Sara approaches her dad (who can’t refuse) and she puts some blusher on his cheeks. It does not do him justice

Sunday at 5.45

Reyaaz my Mauritian friend is sitting next to my brother and they are talking of the stock market. My mother is fanning herself with the fan, Reyaaz’s sister, Farha had bought my mum. My gran is sitting silently and people come to greet her

But now there are speeches being said so everyone is silent. Junaid, Shaheens best friend is saying a few words. I think of who will say a few words at my wedding. I’m hoping its Farha or Toughedah. I would say Sumaya but I know its not her cup of tea. She will be the loyal one at my side, fixing my hair, telling me to smile, telling me to make a shy face, brides have so many faces. Noticed how they pull the “I’m so shy and innocent one” I think you have to practice for it, I know I would.

I think of her wedding and it feels like yesterday but it’s nearly two years ago. Marriage scares me, yet I’m so surrounded by it.

It’s my turn and I get a few jitters.

My uncle ,Sitchie Mamoe, calms me, and I start bit rushed at first. But once the formalities are over I just start talking.

I offer him some advice (“the wife is always right”), and I relate to a humorous story when he was 7 and I was 5. I then go corny and soppy, I recite a poem by Khalil Gibran and I officially invite the bride to our family. I totally forget to say Asalamualaykum!!!

Sunday 9.45pm

We drop Reyaaz at home, well at his hotel and I say my goodbyes including the traditional kiss on two cheeks. It was a nice weekend with him. I miss my friend Farha, whom I last saw three months ago in Mauritius.

But such is life when there are vast distances between u. Sms’s, phone calls and e mails substitute chats and sleepovers.

We had visited the bride and grooms new house which looks beautiful, new, fresh and clean. I wish that upon their marriage, I mean after all that is what its about, it’s a new start to a new life, you start from a clean slate, a fresh beginning to a beautiful life with the one you love.

Maybe I sound like a Daniel Steel novel or an Indian movie but hey, weddings are supposed to sound like fairytales.

the traveller

sometimes im not sure anymore
at first all i wanted to do was explore
so i gave more than i intended and i got lost
in a snowstorm, fingers cold, iced with frost
i found a river warm and abundent
in a dessert of sand no more redundant

oasis seduce travelers passing by
rivers arent rivers they are tears of people who cried
who got lost in seduction, cheated and robbed

indifference is what i feel for him
a warm coffee in a snowstorm he did bring
U see traverlers only see what passerbys give
its a way certain people chose to live

but im not a traveler i need roots, in the ground
i need apples that arent, huge, pink and not round
i need people ho love me since i was two
i need SA's oceans, skies all blue

i need to say goodbye to my addiction
its causing way too much friction
im pathetic again, it s happened just like that
i dunno how, i dunno where i smelt the rat
the rat of deception brings a diesease

a virus that spreads ur head with lies
i despise
the mess it brought
with an AK47 it cannot be sort

So goodbye to my travels i'll stay on this land
and remain cause i cant expand
horizons as yet my plane has not arrived
of departures and standbyes i am not deprived

i go to other places to run away from here
but once i come back, its till here, my fear
it cannot follow me to lands over seas
i cant get away from this sick, fermenting disease

i run and i hide and it finds me where i go
however high, between cracks, however low
so i fly cause its faster further and im gone
even though its so wrong

one conclusion can only be drawn
its forlorn
ure dead
u always were but i no its true
i no longer think im inlove with u

No Electric and a Vote

Its 7 o clock in the morning. My father is already working on a car in the yard, and i can smell kidneys being fried in a pan. My parents like having loud conversations in the kitchen, it is either that or they both going deaf. It does not help that we did not have a architect design our house, had it been so they would of advised not to have my bed room next to the kitchen.

Today is not Sunday, the only day none of us works (apart for my father and his odd hours as a mechanic), its ELECTION day.

For some odd reason, my father and i have to drive out to Mannenberg school (5 minutes away from home but if u from the flats you would know where and what Mannenberg is like) and my sister and mum vote in Surrey Estate my home town. Different areas/zones are allocated different voting stations and apparently these barrier lines separating the various zones runs through our house. The logic I cannot fathom but so do the posters hanging on the electric poles!

My father thinks that the world should wake up when the sun rises. At six in the morning you will awke to the sounds of a Bollywood hit or memory (not by Mehboob Bawa on KFM tho) on his magic radio which can pick up frequencies from here till Timbuktu!! On one occasions I was having an in depth conversation with a friend on the phone when I heard my voice echoing in the room, my father had managed to pick up our conversation on this radio. I don’t know how and I don’t wish to know, all I do know is , it must never happen again. But today is different, today there is an added bounce in his step, its election day.

So he drags me out of the bed just past seven, before I managed to grab a cup of java or any other stimulant to wake me up from a late night out with some colleagues, with my hair resembling Marge Simpson on a good day, off I go to vote.

I feel a bit proud as I get to the station, as my father predicted we are the only cars parked but then again, people here mostly travel with the infamous taxi.
There are people who are in wheel chairs, old people, aunties and uncles all coming to make a cross or a tick next to a person who has promised them a better South Africa.
I am proud in their faith, i am proud that they realize that they can make a difference and that their vote does count.


there are people out there, who complain about the state of the country and comment on Tokyo Sexwale and why he is so rich. Jealousy makes u ugly, i want to say. I am not naive i no that there is a lot of corruption, i know what the state of the country is. But people seem to forget, people forget we lived in a country of oppression where I would not of had the opportunity to study at UCT, or go to Mugg and Bean and have a much needed cup of coffee.

So now i am walking around with a black mark on my thumb nail, returning home very quickly to have a quick breakfast before the electricity cuts again.

The night before i am sitting at Spur canal walk with these above mentioned friends, and there the electricity cuts. I cant believe it!!
The waitresses hurry around lighting candles, some people rush off without paying and the entire eating arena is making a raucous noise, Pandemonium.

Twenty minutes of huddled in the darkness we contemplate on what is really happening at ESKOM and we agree that, "EKS DOM" is a new more appropriate name change. Sabatoge before elections, spare parts we Eskom cannot afford, the only person who can fix the reactor terminal is on holiday in France and his cll phone is off cause he cant afford cell phone roaming are all plausible possibilities however, the real reason is discovered or uncovered)Homer Simpson was employed at ESKOM! It might have been funny at that time, but the inconvenience is phenomenal, especially in the evening when I chose to check my mail and surf the net.
No TV, no warm coffee, one is resorted to either talking with your family or fall asleep at nine!

So I want to get home before the electricity cuts, and manage to make it is time to make a warm cup of Nesquick and a slice of toast and Nutella.

As I sit at the table, with my mum on the other end, cutting biscuits for a wedding on Sunday, there the electricity cuts.
My mother shouts something I dare not repeat, and I say those words she so often tells me, " i mos told you so, but noooo you dont want to listen."

Two hours pass. My aunty (my mums sister) comes to visit with her two parrots, Raja and Rani, drink tea made on a gas stove (every Indian house has to have one, the reasoning is beyond me, but at times like this, one ponders less on it, and is grateful for its existence irrespective of its origin) and resort to eating lemon creams (no baking required).

My sister hops around the house listening to her new MP3 player, my brother skids off on his bike off to play cricket with my cousins in Rylands.

My father listens to Indian music, on a radio powered by a huge orange car battery looking very out of feng shui, in my parents bedroom.

My online withdrawl symptoms starts to kick up and I retire to a sun lit lounge with the Da Vinci Code that I have been reading since 2005.

The streets are quieter for some reason, and as the night creeps in there is an eeriness outside, like in a spook movie.
At 9.30pm, I hear my pc switch on and smile to myself inside and out.

My sister is happy (relived and orgasmically ecstatic), just in time for Desperate Housewives, my brother is on his PC playing his computer games.
My father turns the battery off, plugs the plug into the socket and listens to his Indian music, and my mother, well my mother can finally bake the Blooody (oops) biscuits!!!