Dhall & Rice
Twitter has become my go-to space for some inkling of the news engulfing the world, a laugh and finding generally good reading from authors known and unknown. It’s also a quagmire of racism, sexism, populism and just plain jism too, depending on how far down the rabbit hole you go. Thankfully the little community of people I rely on for the daily dose of reminding myself that there’s something worth waking up for have installed ladders, safety nets and signposted most hazards, so going down is, what it should always be, a no-brainer choice — though this is only evident and manifest in a small slice of the general male population.
Every so often though, I am forced to leave this safe, funny, pretty world and venture out into the real one to attend to life admin, deal with errant service people (not service professionals, because those hardly exist), get coffee, nice milk and other provisions needed to stay healthy and alive. And each time, without fail so far, I come across as much madness out there in real life as there is on the now aged blue-bird app.
Except it’s more and it’s worse because you can’t close the app, put the phone down and walk away. Nope, you got to stand there and get shat upon by some bewhiskered auntie in the curry shop because you said dhall and not doll. Don’t be fancy and all here — just say you want doll. Nevermind that a doll is what you’d give to to kid and dhall is lentils but this is Durban where people relish their made up versions of words and meanings and I stand there wondering what the actual am I going to do with a sickly pink plastic barbie doll on my rice but I relent, smile and nod as much to get the dhall and get away from the auntie as to save myself the schlep of having to go back and make some dhall myself. And to save myself beating myself up for not having just made the dhall at home anyway.
But such is the madness of a male choosing a solo life in a village and amongst a people that view solo life and a trim body as sure-fire signs of failure and being gay, respectively. You’re so weak is a refrain I hear far too often lately when I am amongst the living (only barely in some cases) and I have on occasion wanted to whip my t-shirt up and offer my moobs as proof that I’m not weak and that I still have some ways to go to deal with that eight kilograms I added to my frame during that first hard lockdown over a year ago now, when I was considered healthy. But I hold myself back and my moobs remain undercover, well disguised by my excellent posture and I nod and smile at the barely living folk telling me how weak I am.
Still, it’s far and away a better situation to deal with than the barely concealed derision that simmers not so gently under the surface when they find out or rather they direct the conversation so that they can ask the all-mighty question that is burning a hole in their heads and I’ll do it in the voice of a local because it loses its fizz if you just write it out in English. But why you’ll sold your fathers car? (or any other material possession). Note that the forty years of unpaid labour my mum put into making all that accumulation happen is erased, as is the work put in by my elder brother, myself or that a close relative was once called upon to pacify the bank holding the mortgage with a dummy deposit to keep things on an even keel.
No, it’s your fathers car and their memory (look, Mum, you’re back in the picture) and how you can do that? What you’ll doing with the house? Why don’t you’ll put tenants and collect rent? You’ll don’t need the money asked as a direct question and leaving me in a terrible quandary as to whether to choose the over-sweet shop bought biscuits or the over-filled with chilli, deep fried in murderous sunflower oil samoosas to go with the filled-to-the-brim mug of tea.
I’m learning to nod and smile while I delicately chew on a samoosa (because a gay man won’t wolf it down). I’m also learning that age is a powerful tool, if used wisely and my default blank stare (some might call this a resting bitch face) is helpful when paired with the nodding and smiling (interspersed with the occasional hiccup from the chilli) because eventually the auntie is going to say: ay what’s wrong with you? You deaf or something? Finally something I can hold onto. I smile and say: something yes, something.
Because there’s always something to be explained, something to be understood and even more to be misunderstood. And from the past two years of being much more present in this village I have seen that herd mentality is as rampant as it ever was when I was growing up and it is being not so gently sewn into the fabric of the next generation. The prejudices and fears and hate that was passed onto the current crop of parents continues to flow with terrifying ease into the conversations, words, habits, actions and thoughts of the current crop of school age children. Add to this the very obvious pride that is put into the highest praise one can earn in the village being; Ay you never change / Ay you still the same and I can’t help but feel that even the lowest level of engagement here is a wasted effort.
Change has only ever happened when people themselves have chosen change. Given the ease with which people choose madness on Twitter, and given that space is both a mirror to and a window into the real world, I am adjusting myself to accept that people can choose madness IRL too. All I have learnt so far is that you can always hope that somewhere in the future, some brave child will put an end to the disturbing use of doll in place of dhall and from that little beginning, some greater things might have the hope of changing.
Glossary for non Durbanites
* doll (a children’s toy) but also erroneously used in place of dhall
* dhall (lentils cooked until mush)
* weak (not having a large visibly protruding belly and chubby cheeks)
* healthy (having a large visibly protruding belly and chubby cheeks) and not related in any way whatsoever to actually being healthy
Dhall & Rice is a fictionalised account of real life events and any similarities to living or dead people, places and events is entirely unintentional; except that bewhiskered auntie shouting at me about doll — she’s as real as they come, doll.
© Jesh Baker, 2021
