IN MY LIFE


It is humid and hot here in deep darkest Africa and I am dying from a broken heart … the sky is overcast and there are occasional sheets of fine rain soaking the soil.
I’m in a bit of a strange place, feeling tired and weary of life, I have been hiding away from people. I sense that they want something that I have, that does not belong to them.
I am terribly bad at saying no…which makes me feel sordid. (I must make it clear that I am not speaking of having sex with any one, though some might want that). I am just too polite. I smile and feed their egos, when I really feel that they are intolerable.
…Sometimes I wish I could return home to him, strong enough to hold me together in the comfort of his arms…sigh.
Instead I am slowly falling apart…bit by bit. It gets harder to pick the pieces up and put them together again and again, without the hairline cracks and fissures showing.
……..So this is where I am after all the adventure, alone…the price you pay when you are an uncompromising idealist and a hopeless romantic.
Did not in my wildest dreams think I would ever be on my own.

I’m throwing all modesty out the window right now (so you, dear reader can understand why I am so bewildered and lost) …… I am a catch, I’m hot, and great in the kitchen, as for the bedroom…. it goes without saying. I can (nearly) out-dance Shakira (at least I think so when I’m smashed). I am fairly successful at what I do. I try to be compassionate and fair, I am well read, intelligent, dangerously sexy (at least this French guy visiting at the time burst out in front of my parents “urrr eyes sooo sexyyy, but moi afrrraid of the dangerrr they hide”). Anyway, his comment was slightly different from the norm and he did not give too hoots about my parents’ presence… I remember him. It is harder to remember all the others who say: ‘may I ask you if anyone has told you what beautiful eyes you have got’
What am I supposed to say? If I am honest I would have to answer ‘weeelllll, most people do, (I say nodding my head up and down) and have since the day I was born, it’s really out of the ordinary if people don’t turn around and look at me, or stop and ask if I am wearing contacts, or if they are real…..actually my family (parents, sis and son) all experience the same. Would that be conceited?...or is this one of the be-silent-smile-and-shake-ur-head moments? Please don’t let me be misunderstood…I appreciate a good compliment and know how hard it is to summon up the courage…it’s just that some compliments are less worthy than others.

One exceptionally bitchy x-girlfriend of my sons father, blurted out when she saw my sons green eyes (which now have turned more hazel than green, but are none the less striking) ‘oh, so your eyes are real’. Apart from the make-up, signature eyeliner all else is puka.
Let’s return to me…I could have been the perfect courtesan, I throw fabulous parties, and I am a gracious host…. When it comes to witty jostling ‘my tongue cuts like a razor blade, stings like a bee…’or I could spin a cocoon of candy floss around you, let my words soothe your fears away and leave you floating in between dreams and the sweet taste of milk and honey. Beyond that I have style, I have flair but I can also slum it…I don’t have to put on make-up to go to the kiosk…I am fun and play full, I love to go dancing be it a punk-ska mosh pit, Latin rhythms or bhangra…..but I am still all alone.

There have been many a-willing candidates, but none appropriate. Why can’t I find one good man to sweep me of my feet? My dream man would be partly gypsy, partly Mediterranean, a wanderer and storyteller. He would enchant and make people dream, collect their stories and transform them into songs. He would have passed through many places and many hearts and would be at ease at the kings table as well as a paupers.
I imagine him arriving at dusk, wearing a hat. A silent silhouette, casting a long shadow dressed in a dark coat, of which he wears a crisp but flowing white cotton shirt beneath. He will speak many languages, be well read, a writer and a poet… and would have perfected the art of swearing, which he will teach me over a bottle or two of red wine, while we cook stroganoff and listen to Ragas. I can smell him, a scent of sweet sweat, Tuscany, wood and wild herbs…and his kisses will be wild and tender…………….and I should stop dreaming. I have never met him or come across a man like him. I don’t really mind where he is from, as long as he can dream, on a houseboat or on a Persian rug, under the shade of an apple tree with my son and me
……………………………………………………………………………………………..

This weekend has been quiet. I spent some time with my sister, went for dinner at my favorite Italian place Spiga d’Oro with my son and a friend. Earlier that day we had sat on Su’s rooftop balcony drinking red wine belting out and grooving to old Madonna tunes. Went to my sister’s favorite Chinese shop where I stocked up on crispy pork wantons, spicy noodles and 56% sake. I cooked yesterday, Spaghetti bolognaise and a beef goulash, fried some Chinese prawn crackers for late night movie snack. Read some beautiful exile poetry.

Thought about love and the places I have been in my life. I had the wildest romance with my first love in Rome and later we sailed to a small Yugoslavian Island in the summer of ’85-86. It was the grande romantico journey. Ohhhh, I always return to romance and love…but apart from love my life has been exciting. In Tanzania we saw the Savannah, ate snake and Zebra. Saw a family of lions lazing in a tree after feasting on a fresh kill. It was a whole ox or wilder-beast still intact and there we where in a land rover just beneath them, cautiously peeking through the sun roof while they languorously looked down at us. The ox was still whole, just the stomach had been ripped, because the lions first eat all the soft easily decomposable bits, like the guts, heart, liver etc. it is amazing, I wonder if it is intelligence or instinct or just survival skills.

Talking about survival, we lived in an ANC camp in Morogoro for a year. There was tight security control, one needed permition to leave or to enter. The camp was situated inside the crater of the mountains. There were no shops, hospitals or anything remotely close to what our life had been like in Denmark. It was a training camp for the Umkhonto we Sizwe (the military wing of the ANC), but there was also a school and a University. We attended the school were my Mother taught, while my dad was employed at the University. Although we only lived there for a year it was an eventful time, filled with sub-tropical beauty and extremes. Mosquito nets and malaria (ten times), Majestic Masai people who used to bath in milk and my dad and uncle Alan would always give them a lift, which my sis and I found a bit nauseating cause they made the car (in 50 degrees heat) smell rather peculiar. Give us a break; we were 6 and 8, so we were just being honest…with all due respect to the Masai, whose traditions, way of life and survival I have the utmost respect for. We still have the hand-carved ebony sculptures, merscum pipes, and ivory jewelry bought at the market place. My mother even learnt traditional South African bead-making there, while we were taught to do the gumboot dance.

It is due to my parents that I have got this travel bug and desire for adventure brewing in me. From Rome to Cape Town to Paris, were I visited Jim Morrison’s grave at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. I was surprised at the amount of famous people buried there…no wonder Jim Morrison wanted the Pere Lachaise to be his eternal resting place…. amongst artist, painters, dancers, writers, singers like Isadora Duncan, Maria Callas, Edith Piaf, Marx Ernst, Oscar Wilde’s lipstick kissed shrine and Napoleon’s Mistress Marie Countess Walewski whose heart is entombed there, while the rest of her remains have been returned to Poland. How macabre and romantic.
Imagine each night the souls come alive… the dance of the dead, conversations between Proust and Morrison. Modigliani and Duncan getting smashed, ghost crying murder and young lovers seeking the solace of the grave yard for that first kiss……. Cold stone alters and mausoleums of love, loss of virginity and innocence…….as long as the heart is there…grave yards.

In Paris we lived in a dingy motel, with a horrible red light and upon opening the window we discovered no view, but another building. Between our Motel and the building, a metal grid like mesh which people used to dispose dodgy garbage like the discarded encasing of a Lolita doll, we found on the ledge of our window sill. It really wasn’t too kosher. I was relieved to have left the Grand Cru region of St Emilion (were we stayed at a wine château) as I had gone cold turkey on any Indian food for about 21 days by then. The food in the Grand Cru region was delectable especially the Crepes Suzettes, but I began missing curry terribly by the second week, so by the time we hit Paris I was going through severe withdrawal symptoms. Irritable, short tempered, shaking etc. Luckily for us there was a tiny but up-market North Indian restaurant opposite our Motel. We walked strait in and got a table for two. I think we ordered everything on the menu, roti, Dal Ghost , bhaji, pickles etc, and I could hardly control the way my mouth was watering when the waiters came and began laying the table with forks and knifes etc. which I promptly sent back to the kitchen. I have always wondered how the hell one eats Indian cuisine with a fork and knife. There are so many dishes and the art of eating with your fingers includes how to select and mix the various dishes with the roti or rice, (and I’m a die hard roti girl). To me Indian food is pleasurable because each bite is different, it is the sensation of the cold yogurt with hot curry, a bit of lime pickle and dal, it is a sensual way of eating. Metal on the other hand changes the taste of food, and does not allow the sense of touch. Eating Indian should be done with your fingers and for weddings I would go as far as to say it should be done on banana leaves.
Eating curry is addictive, as well as cheese and chocolate, as the chili releases endorphins….I don’t care what they say, take it from all the exiles, expatriates etc they all know what I’m talking about, after the first few tasty morsels of curry and the pleasure spreading through my body and veins is sweet as an opium rush. While my x-boyfriend and I were eating (he being a blonde longhaired Scandinavian) all the Indian waiters and the chefs came out to look at us, smiling quite bemused and then began asking ‘but, where are you from (as most Indians can see I am not from India). The second time we visited the restaurant we were greeted with such warmth and the head waiter called into the kitchen ‘prepare something special for the puka Indian couple’

The identity issue is something I am constantly confronted with. Not just by other Indians, but by Africans, Whites, etc.
Sitting at the pavement table at Spiga’s, a South African Indian (quite intoxicated man) came up to me and began chatting me up. He then asked ‘are you Indian?’…’cause you don’t look Indian’. ‘I don’t’ I replied. He said ‘You do, but you don’t’, but you are very beautiful….I then had to excuse myself and go wipe my sons bum. (Which, by the way he is very capable of, but when we are out will kick up such a fuss that I will rather avoid the embarrassment and get it over with). The waiter did the same (no, he did not expect me to wipe his bum), he just asked ‘where are you from?’ I wonder what it is that makes us seem foreign here in the country of my birth…after living here for 11 odd years. Is it my manner? Or can they see my rootlessness, I wonder where I look like I belong or to whom? For I have still not given up on love…



(Lennon/McCartney)

IN MY LIFE

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more