Looking for history’s pieces
CHENGAMMA is my paternal great grandmother.
The present generation only know her through a picture. Her portrait hung at the top of the stairwell of my grandmother Kanniamma Govindarajulu’s home on Road 327 in Chatsworth.
We have no written documentation about her, but cousins have started to scour the indenture archives.
My grandfather, Govindarajulu, would have made the portrait some time in the 1920s or early 1930s when he worked for the Durban municipality.
That job afforded him a rented home in the Magazine Barracks, which was the municipal workers’ compound on Somsteu Road.
With his meagre means, he commissioned the portrait and dressed it in an ornate oval frame with a convex glass common to the period.
When the Group Areas Act forcibly removed my family from the barracks to Chatsworth, the portrait moved with them.
My grandfather was born in Cato Manor.
This was one of the areas settled by Indians freed from indenture. Whether the family home was owned or rented is unclear.
It was likely rented or overcrowded for my grandfather to have chosen to live in the less than comfortable communal conditions of the Magazine Barracks.
On the other hand, he may have been forced to move there as the municipality kept a tight rein on its labour force, which had to be in close proximity to their work stations.
In that regard, employment by the municipality was as tightly controlled as being indentured to a plantation or coal mine.
Movement from the plantations was heavily restricted by the masters and it was not unusual to be denied permission for time off to bury loved ones who lived elsewhere.
In the barracks, the Indian sirdars were the local policemen who maintained control.
The gates to the compound were opened and shut at particular times.
My grandparents’ first child was also named Chengamma. She was born in 1935 followed by my father Chungelrion in 1937.
The son of my grandfather’s brother also called his daughter Chengamma out of reverence for this matriarch.
Chengamma had three sons and three daughters. One of my grandfather’s brothers, Soobramoney Rajoo Chettiar, had 10 children, five of whom we are still blessed with.
My grandparents had seven children of whom my aunt Vijay Reddy now takes on the mantle of a rather youthful matriarch.
As we piece together the jigsaw of the family tree, one of the mysteries is that I may be an imposter.
It turns out that we are not Naidoos. My paternal grandfather was a Chettiar.
He had a half brother who was the son of a Naidoo. My cousin Loganathan Pillay’s recollection is that our grandfather didn’t want his brother to be a lonely Naidoo, so he adopted the name.
In time that branch of the family also adopted the name Chettiar and we remain the lonely Naidoos.
Whether we are descended from the grand land-owning and banking class of the Chettiars whose influence over the centuries extended across South India and South East Asia, I can’t be certain.
The circumstances of indenture frequently led to the break up of the settled family system in pretty much the same way as the migrant labour system undermined the African family.
For women especially, indenture presented both a perverse sanctuary and an inherent danger.
An ostracised widow or a woman escaping an abusive marriage could run away, board a ship and head for a new life in a foreign land.
To keep from being preyed upon by unwelcome attentions, women chose to marry for security.
Marriages just before boarding indenture ships have been recorded. This may also have been necessitated by indenture regulations insisting on adult women being married.
Marriages into Zulu families by Indian men and women were not uncommon. That is an aspect rarely given attention in unpacking indenture history.
Whatever our great-grandmother’s circumstances, she made choices that safeguarded her welfare and that of her children.
That story is slowly being uncovered by my cousins, Thamodran Kesavelu Chettiar, Jai Radhika Devi Dasi and Deshandran Govindarajulu, as they trawl family papers and the archives.
For now, Chengamma’s portrait is a prized link to a history for which we now have the tools to decode.