The legacy of my Patti, Kanniamma Naidoo: a story of resilience and triumph

TALL AND STURDY

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KANNIAMMA Naidoo, a petty vegetable street hawker.

(Selvan Naidoo Collection)

MY BROWN eyes and 6ft tall physique, along with some of my melanin-deficient siblings and cousins, one being the offspring of a Gujarati and Tamil union, have dissuaded me from searching for my ancestry on my paternal side. Central to this side of the family was our matriarch, Kanniamma Naidoo, my Patti (grandmother in Tamil).

Kanniamma, as I affectionately called her, was tall and sturdy with well-defined features. Her proud nose, embellished with a mookuthi (nose ring), exposed enlarged nostrils abused by years of snorting snuff that saw her live well past a century.

Kanniamma’s ancestral roots were discovered by accident when I made a trip to the KwaZulu-Natal Pietermaritzburg National Archive repository. I went in search of more information about my maternal ancestry that I was able to trace by sheer luck in June this year, through the discovery of my maternal grandmother's green identity card.

While at the repository, I found my parents’ declaration of marriage certificate that located the indenture numbers of my maternal and paternal ancestry.

On the marriage certificate of my parents, my paternal colonial-born grandfather was listed as the son of numbers 33550/24015, and 24016.

Kanniamma, also colonial born, was the daughter of 26-year-old Kuppu Ramanjulu Reddy, number 96403, and 19-year-old Karpayamma Ersappa Gounden, number 96575.

SELVAN NAIDOO