Zuleikha Mayat (1926-2024): a recipe for how to live
DR ZULEIKHA Mayat, internationally-recognised for the culinary book Indian Delights, died on Friday, just a few months short of her 98th birthday.
Mayat was born in 1926 in the Afrikaner-dominated town of Potchefstroom in the then-Transvaal. She completed her primary education at the local Indian school but dropped out as the town did not have a high school for Indians.
She would subsequently complete matric through correspondence, but her dream of studying medicine remained unfulfilled.
Mayat did short courses in journalism and wrote weekly columns for Indian Views
(“Fahmida’s World”) and the
Graphic newspapers, in which she dealt with the social and political issues of the day.
She moved to Durban after her 1947 marriage to the Witseducated medical doctor, Mohamed Mayat. The couple lived in Clare Estate, where their neighbour was renowned photographer Ranjith Kally.
At a time when few women were visible in the public sphere in the conservative Indian community, she founded the Women’s Cultural Group in 1954.
Ranji Nowbath, in his weekly column in the Leader, titled “The Fakir”, wrote tongue-in-cheek: “I think it jolly good that our women should be getting down to doing some community work. A movement such as this obviously caters for the need for women to get together now and then, and have a good natter, while at the same time doing some constructive work.”
The women did more than have tea parties, gossip and do a little social work on the side. In its formative years, the group was non-racial, including white, African and Indian women from all religious, ethnic and language backgrounds.
Dr K Goonam, Fatima Meer and Dr Khorshed Ginwala were familiar faces at its functions. They performed several plays for women-only audiences, dealing with social issues in Durban.
The group emphasised education, and used profits from the sales of books to provide bursaries, run soup kitchens, give sandwiches to less-privileged schools, blankets to needy people, teach sewing skills to women, and much more.
Mayat also participated in some of the activities of the South African Institute of Race Relations and Black Sash.
She has become synonymous with Indian Delights, first published in 1961 and having sold more than 500 000 copies internationally. It continues to be in demand more than six decades after its publication.
Indian Delights was followed by several other recipe books, including Treasury of South African Indian Delights (1999), though none acquired the original’s reputation. Indian Delights is more than a recipe book.
Betty Govinden wrote in an academic study that while “a recipe book is not likely to be considered as ‘literature’, when one pages through Indian Delights,
one begins to appreciate that it projects a fascinating dimension of cultural history, with a strong
appeal to narratives of the early indentured Indian”.
Mayat was a prolific author in her own right. Her books combine history, geography, sociology and fiction. They are filled with fascinating anecdotes and reflections on culture and community written in poignant language.
Academics nowadays refer to this combination of historical research and fictional narrative as critical fabulation. She had been using the technique long before the term came into fashion.
Mayat wrote Quranic Lights (1966), Nanima’s Chest (1981), A Treasure Trove of Memories (1996), History of Muslims of Gujarat
(2008), Journeys of Binte Batuti
(2015) and The Odyssey of Crossing Oceans (2021), which she published at the age of 94.
In the 1960s and 1970s, when poetry recitals were a feature of the cultural scene in Durban, she
wrote and recited poetry in Urdu under the pen name “Fehmida”. Her semi-autobiographical works cover her childhood, family and family history, marriage, travels, community work and activism.
Mayat was struck by tragedy in 1979 when she lost her husband and sister in a car accident.
Having experienced apartheid as a child growing up in Potchefstroom, the painful experience was compounded as her husband was denied treatment at a nearby “white” hospital and had to be taken to a more distant one. Mayat was in the car and survived.
A remarkable epistolary relationship with Rivonia trialist and Robben Island prisoner Ahmed Kathrada followed. Kathrada was a flatmate of Mayat’s brother in Johannesburg and penned a letter of condolence.
Mayat acknowledged Kathrada,
and they exchanged 75 letters over the next decade. These were published as Dear Ahmedbhai, Dear Zuleikhabehn: The letters of Zuleikha Mayat and Ahmed Kathrada 1979-1989 (2009).
One reviewer described the book as “beautiful, moving and powerful”. In one of the letters, a friend of Mayat’s writes to thank her “for sharing an essential part of history with us”.
And that is precisely how one feels on reading this lovely, intimate collection.
Mayat was awarded an honorary doctorate in social science by the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2012 for her contribution as a founding member of the Women’s Cultural Group, author and activist for gender and political rights.
Most recently, she has been passionate about the rights of Palestinians. Her almost shy-like demeanour and instant smile belied one who had strong views and was unafraid to articulate them even in the face of people who wielded power.
In a 2021 interview, Mayat stated her life’s motto as: “Live every moment of your life to the fullest. Love all humanity. Above all, stay true to yourself.”
She certainly practised what she preached.
Until the end, she attended functions, wrote and encouraged others to be true to themselves.
Her door was always open to diverse people, and she continued to confound with her acute knowledge of contemporary global affairs.
Mayat was of the “old school”, as we would say. Old world charm, values that seem to be from a bygone era. But this sense of community spirit, giving and compassion, so striking in her communication with Kathrada, appears to be making a comeback.
Fuelled by Covid-19 and the 2021 riots, neighbours watching out for one another, making sure somebody has something to eat, seems to be entering our psyche once more.
Will we also try to see the other side of a debate, as Mayat always did?
Mayat has passed on but Indian Delights, her signature offering, will continue to light the kitchens of the world for generations to come.