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South African Indian comes in quest of his roots

M D Riti in Bangalore

"Many rich Indian women remove their mangalsutras before they bathe or sleep: don't copy them," admonished the chief temple priest sternly. "Try instead to be like Savithri who followed her husband to death's door and brought him back. That is the true Indian woman."

Lucie Naidoo, well-known French-Canadian television journalist based in Cape Town, South Africa, nodded solemnly, eyeing her newly tied Andhra style mangalsutra. Her husband, Jayasheelan Naidoo, the flamboyant and popular South African minister for telecommunications, caught her eye and winked, while their three children Leandre, 11, Kami, 6, and Shanthi, 3, grinned.

As part of his quest for his roots, Naidoo, 44, remarried his wife of many years at the popular Lakshmi Narasimha temple in Malleswaram, Bangalore, on Monday. "Jay is so keen to retrace our Indian origins," whispered his sister Nisha, carefully pinning strands of jasmine to her short hair as the priests conducted the rites of a traditional Naidu marriage ceremony.

Lucie's Canadian mother, dressed for the occasion in a cotton salwar kameez, tried to find the best camera angle to capture her attractive daughter, while the three children played all around them.

'Kalyanotsava of Jainaidu and Lusi', announced the blackboard outside the temple that listed the day's temple programmes. "Our real wedding the first time round in South Africa was Indian style," said Naidoo talking to Rediff as he sat cross-legged, wearing a silk dhoti and shawl, on a low wooden platform beside the smiling Lucie, who was dressed in a pink and purple polyester zari sari. "But it was not hardcore Hindu like this: we just exchanged garlands and vows before an Indian priest and a Christian padre. Now, we both felt a keen desire to experience a traditional south Indian wedding, and truly understand all the accompanying rituals and customs."

After Naidoo completed the official part of his Indian visit at the end of last week, he requested his friend L C Jain, who just completed his term as Indian high commissioner to South Africa some weeks ago, to organise a traditional Andhra Naidu wedding for him in Bangalore, which is now Jain's home base. Jain's wife Devaki, an internationally known economist and frontrunner of the women's movement, hosted the wedding. Her brother, conservationist and writer M A Parthasarathy, his daughter-in-law Sujatha and her parents helped to put the show together. Lucie was dressed for the occasion by a local Bharata Natyam dancer.

"We ran into some problems as this is Dhanur maasa and not the auspicious month for weddings," said Sujatha. "We managed to get around that hurdle by picking a temple that my mother frequents and clubbing this ceremony with a Kalyanotsava (marriage ceremony) for the gods themselves."

Naidoo relished every minute of the two-hour ceremony, chatting with Rediff between various rituals. "I am not an Indian, I am a South African," he declared firmly, hitching his dhoti up around his thighs as he sat cross-legged on the low platform. "During the apartheid regime, the government adopted a policy of divide and rule, and tried to say that the ongoing struggle was South African, and not Indian. Many of us Indians then adopted the militant stance that we were South African and not Indian. Now that we are free, we are happy to enjoy our cultural diversity."

Sujatha stepped forward to help Naidoo tie the mangalsutra around Lucie's neck and put silver toe rings on her feet. In accordance with Naidu custom, Lucie placed similar toe rings on his feet as well.

As the priest coated coconuts with turmeric for the next rite, Naidoo resumed his conversation. "To understand what you are, you must see where you come from," he said almost philosophically. "My ancestry is Indian and I am proud of my Indian roots. I want to understand some traits deeply ingrained in me that might have come from my ancestry. This knowledge will definitely enrich me.

"It is important to know where you come from," he continued. "After all, you are shaped by your history. The world is increasingly focused on materialism and driven by global consumerism. The social fabric is being torn apart by fundamentalism, dishonesty and violence. Success is becoming an act of domination, and only those who have glamorous houses, money in the bank and luxury cars are considered successful. Actually, all this is so transient as even monuments deteriorate over time. Knowledge is the only intangible asset that is invaluable like the Kohinoor diamond. India can really teach the rest of the world about deep roots and how they can give you the right values and beliefs."

The Naidoos were quickly placed opposite each other and the children cleared off to a side for the ritual in which the couple roll coconuts towards one another and then toss balls of jasmine string at each other.

"Pow," said Lucie, and pretended to throw a hard coconut at Naidoo's head, making the children break into delighted peals of laughter while the priests looked quite horrified by the horseplay. "These foreigners can do anything they like and get away with it, but the priests like to lecture us about the lack of piety and devotion in the Indian woman," muttered a grey-haired matron, who had wandered into the hall while on a routine temple visit. The hall had gradually filled up with a motley crowd of curious temple goers and the priests quickly seized the opportunity to make an appeal for contributions towards a silver chariot that they hoped to build next year.

"Every Indian legal emigrant that left this soil was given a number by the British," said Naidoo, as the priests got a homa (sacred fire) ready. "This helped identify where a person came from." Using this number and a couple of old photographs, Naidoo enlisted the help of the Indian high commission in South Africa to shortlist a few ancestral roots.

"From the details you have given us, your antecedents appear to be from one of four places: Chinglepet, Thiruchinappalli, Gollapalli village in North Arcot and Ottamnadu village in South Arcot," wrote Hassim Seedat of the high commission to Naidoo, just before he left for India. "I suggest that you try to locate and visit Gollapalli and Ottamnadu. Villagers may remember people who migrated to Africa in the last century. Even if you cannot trace any distant cousins, you can still at least see the locality from which your ancestors came. Take a guide to solve your communication problems."

And this is precisely what Naidoo is all set to do during the rest of this week. He is armed with a few possible names, like Angamma, his great grandmother, who left Gollapalli when she was 30 years old aboard the ship Cold Stream, in 1865, and possible male ancestors called Muniswamy and Palaniappan from Chinglepet district. His friends have helped him identify a crumbling old house in Gollapalli which was probably his ancestral dwelling. Naidoo's own parents were Valanthan and Bakkium, obviously corrupted versions of the names Velanthan and Bhagyam. His sister Nisha's actual name is Dayamoney Rambigay (probably Dayamani Ambica).

"I just want to hold the sand of my ancestral terrain in my hand," said Naidoo melodramatically, as he finally rose from his uncomfortable perch. "I want to find my ancestral home and sleep in it. I want to know what my forebears did here in India and why they left. Then, I will be truly at peace with myself."

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