Langadha stories of indenture and the days of our lives

THE holidays almost always bring together extended family at the communal dining room table. It is most often the case, especially in contemporary times, when family that have not met in a long time use this opportunity to catch up on their “days of their lives’.

- SELVAN NAIDOO

Lots of the conversation is punctuated with titillating langadha (gossip) stories, either revealing juicy anecdotes of life in the present, or by reminiscing on the past.

In most instances, secrets of the past are often revealed in hushed tones to ensure that family dignity remains intact. This Easter, as the conversation rolled on at our dinner table, my ears pricked when one of the aunties spoke of my wife’s indentured great-grandfather having gone back to India.

Eager to learn more, I ensured the drinks flowed merrily, making sure the conversation kept pace with my already racing and inquisitive mind.

Beyond the Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository files of Indian indentured history, there lie many stories locked in individual family history that speak to the new direction of writing the experiences of the 152 184 indentured workers, who arrived in South Africa from 1860 to 1911.

The tales of kidnapping are richly illustrated in the archives with countless tales of how Indian indentured workers were preyed upon by recruiting agents (Arkatiyas) in Indian villages, only to find themselves in imperial colonies stretched across the colonial world. Little information, however, exists on how lives had changed by kidnapping by suitors on the plantations, largely owing to the imbalanced gender ratio of 30 females to every 100 men being recruited to work on indentured plantations.

At the dining room table, the conversation revealed that my wife’s great-grandfather had gone back to India, never to return, after attempts to find his wife proved fruitless. The story from one of my wife’s aunts was that their strikingly beautiful great-grandmother, whose parents came from Chingleput in 1891, was kidnapped by a medicine man on the Bluff as she was visiting relatives.