Brother Man

We were an assembly of people put together by Thiloshnee as her birthday guests as well as premier visitors to her new flat in Baker street. Among this group is myself, Laurence, Yambazi and Ravi.

Thiloshnee is an over achieving employee a big city firm, Ivy leauge graduate, former competitive athlete and weekend mountain climbing extraordinaire. She also sees herself as some sort of social engineer, organizing theater nights and other such outings. Though employed by the city firm since her graduation, it was over a year before she moved out of her humble university provided lodgings and into a studio apartment in Baker st. It was to this central location that we her ‘close’ friends were invited to for desserts and drinks before the nights adventure to the night life of the west end.

Laurence is another helpless over achiever. Another London School of Economics graduate (indeed it is through him I got to know Thiloshnee), University of Cape Town graduate and current employee of an economics consultancy group. A white boy from Cape Town whose bookish pursuits and dilection for South Africans of color make him not just a passionate believer in South Africa’s post apartheid future, but also someone well aware of his countries struggles and past.

Yambazi is a Zambian I consider to be of my own making. He too has studied hard sciences and worked through pages long calculations for nights on end. He too has been to that boarding school in Lusaka that claims many of the countries best school achievers. He too is a sort or rebel, taking every day as a platform to act against social expectations. He is a dreaded, tall, thin, dark, bearded, guitar playing particle physics PhD student at Oxford on scholarship from Zambia. He has hosted Laurence and I on a couple of Oxford booze up social outings, and this weekend was a chance for Laurence and I too try and even the score.

Ravi, is Thiloshnee’s friend, we assume she knows through Harvard. More than once before, on hitherto unsuccessful outings attempted by Thiloshnee, we have failed to meet her “CNN” friend. Indeed up to this point, we were unaware that he had any venerable traits apart from his choice of work and employer.

Soho

After a couple of wrong turns in the rain, refusing to call and admit the need for further directions, Laurence, Yambazi stepped up to Thiloshnee’s flat. When she opened the door, Priyanks greeted us with a short black dress and pair legs that near blew the eye brows off our faces. Inside her square living room/bedroom was a collection of young, mostly Indian men, spread about the sparse furniture, whose cussioned and over educated lives was revealed in their chubby faces. Also present was Thiloshnee’s elder sister, not wearing as a nice a dress or showing jaw dropping legs. Laurence had warned that Thiloshnee’s crowd was not likely to contain many women. His prophecy, it turned out was all too true. At one point, after returning from a trip to the ablutions, I brought the room to a stand still by saying “eish, this room smells sweaty crotches and unwashed socks” in a blatant reference to the predominance of men. Laurence tried to cut the ice by quipping “trust Jumani to bring things to a stand still with a comment like that.” Whenever I was overwhelmed by my counterparts pre and post university achievements, I mentioned Yambazi and his particle physics studies at Oxford.

Cake and wine was consumed before we pushed on the bus and black cab busy streets, in the rain, to make for the underground to the night club for the night.

Soho is a collection of streets in the center of west London that is skew on all fronts. The roads are skew and never meet at right angles. The morals are skew, as proved by the numerous sex shops, brothels and naked legs waving out door ways. The sexuality is skew, as evinced by the buff men that sometimes walk its streets wearing nothing but gold bum pants and twirling a wand.

Thiloshnee and her sister, Laurence, Yamabazi and I as well as the assembly of over achieving chubby faced Harvard graduates, crept out of the underground at Piccadilly circus into the crowds and the rain. The night club of Thiloshnee’s choice would not let us in before 11pm (where upon Yambazi and I guessed that the ubiquitous racism of clubs door bouncers was at play) and so we were forced to wander the streets of Soho for a short term alternative. At this point Ravi, our man from CNN, knew just the place to go – a little place called The French House on Dean st. The French house only sells half pints of beer, has walls covered with black and white photos of good times of old and sells an obscure selection of books behind the bar. The clientele was curiously well acquainted with the bar staff and some of them were older than the photos on the wall.

Our crew snuggled up into a corner of the pub and had a round of drinks next to a middle aged man with over sized spectacles, wiry thin black moustache and communist style hat in a red t-shirt. Initially, Yambazi and I were not engaged in conversation with the man. Laurence, who was engaged from the start, who seemed enthralled, had mentioned with enthusiasm, that the man was from Joberg. Our coterie jostled and shifted in the hustle and bustle of this crowded busy little tavern. Phones rang, text messages sms’d and directions yelled for further friends of Thiloshnee to come. Through all this, Laurence took a call and had to meet his lady friend at the nearest tube station. Vacating his position next to the man, Laurence said to me “talk to the man” and I took Laurence’s position.

“English is the language of the oppressor. It is the language of business power” preached the man in the red t-shirt. And he was preaching. He had put on his orating tone of voice. Pryanka and Ravi buffeted the man on each side. They both had a solemn look on their face as if both suffering from reverence and guilt.

“Brother man” said the man addressing Yambazi “where are you from?” When Yambazi said he was from Zambia he then asked “and what do you speak at home?” Yambazi replied “Well, we speak our language, but we all speak English also…” and then Yambazi was cut short “you see!” exalted the Joberg man. Yambazi tried to explain that there was a wide variety of indigenous languages in Zambia making English “the most sensible alternative” but the Joberg man was dismissive.

Thiloshnee too tried to explain the comfort of her country, India, to the use of English as the medium of business and governance. But the Jorberg man insisted that “you are oppressed by the very language you use.” Thiloshnee was exasperated and left the tavern to shout directions into her phone for soon to come members of the party.

I was sympathetic to the notions that of lingering oppression maintained through language. I pointed out the current South African minister of education’s, (Naledi Pandore) trials in opening up the ‘bantu languages’ conundrum, which was labelled by some critics, Pandora’s box. However, the Joberg man did not latch on to this example, but went on to talk in abstract terms.

Then the Joberg man went onto claim he was a man on the battle front in South Africa, with Mandella. That he “knew Thabo well” in London. That he was an exile. That he was disappointed with the South African president “putting the economy before peoples lives”. Through this I asked him if he had been back to South Africa since democracy, to which he replied “just briefly” in another dismissive tone.

Then came a long story of being arrested for not having a pass book in apartheid South Africa. “I ran home from school and changed quickly out of my school uniform. Then my mother sent me to buy bread, but I had forgotten my pass in my trouser pocket.” Then he told of being arrested by a typically unsympathetic Afrikaaner police officer. Of being taken around his township at the back of a van picking up other similar offenders. “when I got home, I found my mother had been so worried, looking for me all over the place, not sure if I had been stabbed by gangsters.”

At this point, I interjected in jest hoping to relax the tone a little. I said “but you still brought home the bread right? I mean you went through all that and you still brought home the bread. That is to be commended.” To this we all laughed, even the Joberg man. But then the Joberg man turned and said “but how can you make such a joke. How can you make such a joke about my mother?” It was a rhetorical question I did not answer. And then he continued “you are a half-caste aren’t you?” I replied “yes, well it shows” while raising the skin of my wrist into view. But the Joberg man did not take this wager for peace and continued “yah, you are not just half-caste in the skin, you are half-caste in the mind. That is Afrikanaar thinking what you said. You have Afrikanaar in the mind” The air had been turned foul quite quickly. I said to Yambazi “eish, this barley is flat” and chuckled a little, even though the insults thrown at me suddenly were quite caustic in my opinion.

It was any how, time to meet some Thiloshnee’s other friends the designated club for night, it being after 11pm then. There we met Laurence again and regailed to him the dramatic turns of conversation with man we had by now christened ‘brother man’. Laurence said, quite amused, “I knew he was talking shit, that is why I wanted you to talk to him” which surprised me. “I had thought otherwise” I said to Laurence. “I thought you were quite taken by him” I said but Laurence replied “No! I knew you would upset him soon enough. That is why I asked you to talk to him.”