Reflections

Today is the fifth death anniversary of singer activist Miriam Makeba. In our school days her songs were immensely popular; especially Malaika and Pata Pata which used to be bring to our staid Calcutta school the romance of Africa. She was one of the singers who made the sixties one of the most significant decades of revolt in the twentieth century when challenges to authority seemed to be a way of life. Miriam "Zenzi" Makeba was born in a suburb of Johannesburg in one of the crowded and deprived black townships of the apartheid era. Her father, Caswell, was Xhosa: her mother, Christina, was Swazi. Her given name Zenzi was derived from the Xhosa word Uzenzile, meaning "you have no one to blame but yourself". This was a traditional name intended to provide support through life's difficulties. When she was eighteen days old, her mother was arrested for selling umqombothi, an African homemade beer distilled from malt and cornmeal. Her mother was sentenced to a ...

When I was a schoolboy, I, like all schoolboys dreamt of adventure. During the sixties when we were in primary school, the world did look very adventurous indeed. The space race was on, and while we did not understand the political nuances very well, the space walks, the first circumnavigation of the moon and finally the moonwalk ( of Armstrong and Aldrin, not Michel Jackson) left us with a state of wonder and a feeling that everything was possible. Three books stand out in my memory that embodied for me, the true spirit of adventure and I could and to some extent still feel a cold feeling crawling up my spine as I shared the adventures of the heroes of these books. One of them was a real person, and I refer to Jim Corbett and his “ Maneaters of Kumaon”. I was presented one copy on my birthday by one of my friends and the thrill of the forests had me in its thrall in an instant and I am glad to report, it has never left me since. The other two were fictional. One was Robert Louis St...