Amir Mohamedali Virani

'J.P.', Kampala’s Flute Player Who Became a Reader of Gujarati

An essay on the native and foreign in me

Dr. Sultan Somjee

(Special to Khojawiki.2022)

I met Jonny Virani at a seniors’ book reading of Khota Moti Na Sacha Vepari (2021) in Vancouver, Canada. The book is the Gujarati translation of my ethnographic novel Bead Bai (2014). I was in a unique situation listening to the Gujarati rendition of the novel I had written in English. This article is a reflection on myself who had abandoned his mother tongue in his youth. Now, I am returning to it through the reader, Jonny Virani and translator, Dr. Navin Vibhekar. I view my loss in the wider context of language, colonization and migration.

Bead Bai a story set in mid-20th century East Africa based on life of a Khoja Ismaili woman called Moti Bai who worked with ethnic beads and arranged them in colourful displays in the shop’s verandah. The flash back in the novel describe the great migrations of the Khojas from British Indiato Africa from the 1870's. Moti Bai’s family bead shop was in a remote town in Maasailand near the Kenya-Tanzania border. The Gujarati title of the book, Khota Moti Na Sacha Vepari, is from a proverb that was on Khoja bead shops in East Africa. It means ‘Genuine Traders of Fake Beads’. It’s a popular proverb that does not fail to bring a smile on lips of Gujarati speakers

Jonny Virani’s fluency in reading and his knowledge of Gujarati impressed me, and I wanted to know more about this man in his 90s. He may perhaps be the only one from the Khoja Ismaili group of Uganda refugees in Canada who carries in-depth knowledge of his mother tongue and among those who love their mother tongue. By this, I mean not just the vast vocabulary that he has preserved in his nineties through the tribulations of expulsion from his birthland and re-settlement in a dominant English-speaking part of Canada, but also the nuances, metaphors and poetry that a native speaker of the language understands. A cultural language, no doubt, is foundational in shaping one’s values and worldview that starts while listening to mother’s lullabies in her lap. It brings comfort to be in one’s skin when thoughts of ‘What’s my heritage?’ pulse the mind as it happens at some points in life. Ancestral languages anchor and tell us about our origins, and implicitly about our identities.

With the advent of colonialism in eastern Africa, and its influence that spread and remained after independence, a new culture of ‘modernization’ evolved among both the indigenous elites and Indian settlers. It was a culture that took pride in speaking in English at home over their mother tongues. In Kenya and Uganda, English became dominant (from Latin dominus, meaning master), especially among the elites, while in Tanzania, Swahili was predominant.(1) English was literally the old master’s language and the culture that was embedded in it.

In time speaking in English cultivated a status. Alongside this, what happened was the lowering of the capacity of the mother tongues to conceptualize complex ideas and produce literature and beauty. It weakened, and, in some cases, rooted out native languages and aesthetics and, in that, the indigenous heritages and values handed down through them. We see this in some cultural communities today where after a generation or two under the influence of a foreign language, they cannot speak in their mother tongues, and if they do, they quickly revert to English when faced with an in-depth account. This is observable especially among the wealthier and educated classes sometimes called the upper classes. I was shocked when I met some Kenyan students at the University of British Columbia (UBC) who could speak neither Swahili nor their mother tongues. When I queried, “How come you don’t know Swahili or your mother tongue?” Some replied with pride, “My second language is French,” others said, “German.” I realized then that they were mostly children of the wealthy who had studied at the former Europeans only or international schools commonly known as ‘High-Cost Schools’ in Kenya.

However, indigenous languages continued to flourish in villages through Oral Traditions that include songs, storytelling and rituals. Among the east African Indians, the equivalent of Oral Traditions was the theatre in the ‘vernacular’ languages, music parties and religious chants and rituals.

Nevertheless, the decline of the linguistic heritages weakened the anchor of communal dignity and identity, for it broke the culture’s back. Gandhi is famously quoted as saying: “To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them.” https://www.mkgandhi.org/towrds_edu/chap02.htm

Like me, Jonny Bapa studied Gujarati in school to grade V. But, unlike me, he continued reading Gujarati books and magazines all his life. I stopped reading and writing in Gujarati after grade V when my mother enrolled me in a mission school where we spoke and wrote only in English. This was an abrupt change in my life like a jolt that shook my body. In the mid-fifties, my community in Kenya was abandoning its mother tongue spoken at home in favour of the language of the colonizer, and my family went with the flow. I had to repeat grade VI because my English was not up to the standard required.

The decolonization movement that marks the current decade of 2020s, arrived at the public forum with headlines about toppling and, sometimes, the quiet removal of statues of slaveowners and colonials. These included statues of Christopher Columbus and Winston Churchill. In Canada, the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, was removed from the precincts of the City Hall in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. Sir John A. Macdonald was a leading architect of the abhorred residential schools where children were punished for speaking in their mother tongues as it was in Kenya in the 1950s when I was in school. Erasing the mother tongue by the colonial-settler government is said to be an instigation of the cultural genocide of Indigenous people https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/john-a-macdonald-statue-victoria-city-hall-lisa-helps.

In 1986, the famed African writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, wrote about ‘Decolonizing the Mind’. Today, it’s a global movement hotly debated in universities and widely written about. At the core of ‘decolonizing the mind’ is reclaiming of cultural languages made redundant by colonization. The First Nations on the American continent are a splendid example of communities engaged in an effort to regain their languages.

In an article titled Preserving Mother Tongues: Why Children of Immigrants are Losing Their Languages, Karina Zapata shows how closely tied language is to identity. She writes, “Now, at 23 years old, Daignault finally understands the important things she lost along with her mother tongue (during migration): a connection to her culture, a sense of belonging and even the confidence to identify as an ethnic woman.” November 12, 2019, Calgary Journal. https://calgaryjournal.ca/2019/11/12/preserving-mother-tongues-why-children-of-immigrants-are-losing-their-languages.

What I found fascinating was J.P. Bapa’s passion for music was comparable with his passion for reading Gujarati literature and watching Gujarati plays. When I first met him, he had a stack of books and a stack of gramophone records by his sofa in the living room. As an ethnographer, I know that language, visual art, and music are relational human abilities that affect communication and formation of ideas and philosophies. As Bapa reads, I observe his expressions that are telling when he smiles, or when he laughs to himself or pauses to reflect. Like he paused for reflection as he read a descriptive paragraph in Bead Bai about Moti Bai’s mendi (henna) night before the marriage ceremony. In fact, Bapa read the lines twice. This was when the silk bandhani (Khoja wedding shawl) was laid on the teenage bride’s shoulders by her mother-in-law, Ma Jena Bai. It became a pivotal moment in Moti Bai’s life. The bride felt the radiance of the bandhani’s sparkle of zari embroidery enveloping her bodily. It was a paradox of being celebrated on the outside while within she was conflicted by the burden of thoughts of responsibility she would carry as the keeper of her husband’s family honour, procreation to sustain the patriarchal lineage and household duties. This was a metaphoric picture of the enigma bore by many an Indian woman who, while she is decorated with jewelry, her heart carries silent pain and obligations of the being a woman.

A writer would know how the artist in oneself draws on images and linguistic nuances, metaphors and poetry that elicit emotions. Sometimes, Bapa points to the richness of the Gujarati expressions in Khota Moti Na Sacha Vepari to the delight of his avid listeners who are all Ismaili Khoja seniors. We know that arts work in relationality referencing on the senses and sense memories. This connection reminds me of a writer I read and liked when I was in school. Ernest Hemingway (Nobel Prize 1954), once said to a New Yorker reporter that he had learned a lot about writing from Johann Sebastian Bach, the famous German composer and musician (Kulansky, M. The Importance of Not Being Ernest, 2022, p.20). What I understand by Hemmingway’s comment is that Bach’s music spoke to the writer about how tones and rhythms refine art. Both writing and music as art share them.

Take two common words in Gujarati to illustrate the unconscious influence of music on language as said by Hemmingway. Ooth and soo are both sonic words. Both can translate to non-spoken cultural expressions showing how words impact us bodily like reflexives. We say ooth for waking up or standing up. In conversations, we raise a hand gesturing ooth. In contrast, we say soo for sleeping that has that cajoling laying down soothing sound to it. Gestures that go with soo show going down. Ooth has a sharp and hard sound whereas soo is soft, and calming to the ear, the sense of hearing. Related words such as sookh (peaceful happiness), soondar (beautiful), sooambri (calm and gentle) are soothing. The word-sounds imply actions and values in sonic languages like Gujarati. Thus, loss of a language changes not only the mind but also the body, the repertoire of our sensed knowledge and heritage. We see this when the younger English-only speaking, and often mono-cultural generation, imitates accents and gesturing that go with words of their Gujarati elders as funny.

The translator of Bead Bai in English to Khota Moti Na Sacha Vepari in Gujarati is Dr Navin Vibhekar, an accomplished Gujarati writer who has received accolades from Gujarat’s Sahitya Academy. Navin Bhai Vibhekar is the winner of the highly contested Parishad Award. He was once a beloved doctor of Moshi in Tanzania who has done a splendid work of the translation of Bead Bai that enhances what Jonny Bapa calls the mithass or ‘the sweetness of the story to the ear’. Navin Bhai has published over 40 books in Gujarati including books on Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere. In an interview (Opinion Magazine, 2015), he told me that he researched and wrote these books on African leaders because he wanted to create an awareness and understanding of Africa in Gujarat.

During our book club sessions, Jonny Virani Bapa, when pointing to the figurative lines in Khota Moti Na Sacha Vepari, praises the translator Navin Bhai for his excellent work. Sometimes, Bapa re-reads some lines to us with a comment that they are better rendered by Navin Bhai in the poetics of Gujarati than how I have written in English in Bead Bai! He read the English version while he was in a care home convalescing from the knee operation earlier this year. I agree with Bapa for English is my fourth language after Gujarati, Kutchi and Swahili. I learned my first languages in my childhood ‘naturally’ so to speak, in a shared cultural environment of the family, playmates and community. English on the other hand, was the language I learned ‘officially’ so to speak, sitting rigidly at a desk in a school and often cramming lines and English vocabulary from books.

While listening to Bapa reading my book in my own mother tongue, I realized that English does not give me as much of the depth, the rhythm, and the personal connection that Gujarati does. Could it be my ancestral genes speaking to me? I don’t know but what I know is that Gujarati affects me bodily. Perhaps there is some truth in recent research that shows we inherit memory through our genes. However, I constantly write, commonly speak and always give lectures in English. While writing Bead Bai I would listen to Gujarati music, ras-garba, and watch plays in Gujarati on the YouTube everyday without fail so I might absorb the rhythm and lilts of Gujarati in my body. It was the language and milieu of my characters. I also went to the Ismaili jamat khana everyday to listen to the ginans and observe the chanters’ expressions. Thus, I attempted to convey the semantic and cultural nuances of my childhood language into English. On reflection, I am thinking how difficult it became at times to transport the subtleties and intonations because I had fully embraced a foreign language over my mother tongue as my own, and, through it a heritage and a worldview from elsewhere. The change happened at school as if seamlessly from one grade to another up to the university while not only neglecting my own linguistic heritage but also at one point in life, looking down on it, and even intently blocking out my first language ‘interferences’ while speaking in English. In fact, the better and more we spoke like the English, the more educated, if not more intelligent, it was considered. That was the standard I followed. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o calls it creating the ‘Other’ in oneself.

Episodes during our book club when comparing the English and Gujrati versions, whether vocalized or in thoughts, flashed momentary feelings about my belonging, my honesty and my fakeness about language. I had willfully put on a garb of someone else to appear successful as an academic and a writer, the way I was taught in school, sometimes under the threat of the cane or some other form of punishment, and the way my community measured its modernization and even integration into the Western society. The journal writer and Indian classical dancer, Neera Kapur Dromson wrote how she was punished for speaking in Punjabi at a secondary school in Nairobi’s South C area in the 1950s (Old Africa magazine issue of 2021).

As I reflected on myself, my curiosity led me to listen to casual remarks about Jonny Virani’s life. These were dropped occasionally at the chai-nasto breaks during the reading of Khota Moti Na Sacha Vepari. But I learned much more during the grand party celebrating Jonny Bapa’s 91st birthday on March 31st, 2022, when his extended family members had gathered to celebrate their beloved Bapa.

Growing up in Kampala, Jonny Bapa learned to play vasani, that is a Gujarati flute, and he played the vasani at music parties. “I am from a musical family,” he told me. Both his parents, Khatija Bai Khanji and Mohammedali Bhai Virani were music lovers. They kept a fine collection of records of Indian music from popular movie songs to classical ragas that Jonny Bapa listened to in his childhood. He still listens to his old favourites as his mood tells him, and as the time of the day speaks to his memories. His sister Rashida Bai, sang at music parties where he played the flute, and his elder brother Amir, played the tabla. His younger brother, Anwar, played drum in the community scouts’ band while JV’s daughter, Shelina, graduated with an MA in kathak dance. Shelina trained under the renowned Roshan Kumari who founded the Nritya Kala Kendra, an institution of learning in the Jaipur Kathak Garana (genre), a much sought-after school by the aspiring students of kathak. Shelina teaches kathak in Vancouver and choreographs beautiful ras garba during festivities to the admiration of the Khoja community. Her students include seniors who benefit from balance and posturing while dancing to the music set to mathematical beats. Their footwork, hand gesturing and concentration on the music that they know, provide an excellent exercise. It not only benefits them physically but is also helpful mentally. The Uganda Asians like other East African Asian immigrants to Canada brought with them their musical traditions and the elders among them speak in Gujarati. When they felt a little settled, they started the popular ‘music parties’ drawing on ghazals and filmi songs from memories and setting them to tunes of their beloved harmonium. Prior to the pandemic, I used to go to Sunday afternoon musical gatherings of ‘music parties’ of the East African Asian immigrants and refugees from 1972 onwards. There would be both the listeners and singers sitting on the floor around the harmonium in an apartment in North Vancouver.

J.P. told me that his love for music was nourished in his childhood listening to K.L. Saigal (1904 –1947), the legendary Indian singer whose songs such as Diya Jalao (film Tansen, 1943) and bhajans like Maiya Mori Main Nahi Maakhan Khayo (film Bhakta Surdas,1942) are unforgettable melodies that hum to memories of Indian song lovers. He would listen to his parents’ gramophone and the trove of records that pulled him into the aesthetic sound realm of Indian music especially what he calls ‘semi-classical’ music. Jonny Virani’s official name is Sadrudin but, he says, “From childhood everyone called me Jonny. I grew up with that and did not question it.” He lives near the Darkhana on Canada Way in Vancouver, and he is known simply as J.P., the eponym given to him by his Kampala friends. “J,” he said, “is for Jonny, and P, for Papa. My grandchildren call me Jonny Papa.” He laughs.

My encounters with J. P. led me to think about the Gujarati culture in landlocked Uganda, its continuity and evolution blending sparingly with the indigenous African culture. This is noticeable in the Uganda Asian cuisine that includes banana (matoke), peanuts in dals and peanuts grounded to make a pulpy source to go with a regular Gujarati meal. Some Uganda Asians speak Luganda, Teso, Lango, and other African languages. African languages and culture stood side by side with their Indian inheritance best displayed during folk drama and dances, songs, storytelling and reading in the older days. J.P. Bapa quoted some of his favourite writers such as Vasant Lal Raman Lal and Kananya Lal Munishi. He regularly read Akhand Anand and Chakram. I could not but admire this 91 year-old Bapa. Gujarati arts (plays, poetry, dances, writing) are vivid on the Indian diasporic stage, not to mention in Gujarat itself with a population of 45 million that is almost as many as we are in Canada. Needless to say, I feel a little envious for being apart from the evolution of the Gujarati diasporic arts and language. Gujarati literature and drama, especially when performed during community festivities often draw from the imagery pictured through ancient orally and bodily transmitted legends. The Sathpanthi Khoja trove of ginans not only emotionally illustrates this but also how they are preserved bodily and evoked bodily (i.e. in the senses) through 600 years in the languages considered archaic today.

Mahabharata, the longest poem ever written about 3000 years ago, and stone sculptures of the Ajanta Caves (2nd century BCE to about 480 CE) are often resources for themes and dance poses. The Vedic ragas at the base of Indian music, are said to be from this period. When I was researching on the origin of the su-astik (spelt as spoken in Gujarati as I speak it, to avoid it’s meaning to the European eye) while writing Bead Bai, I came across a picture of the su-astik on the British Museum website. It was engraved on a stone seal excavated at the Mohajan Daru-Harrapa archaeological site in the Indus Valley. The Mohajan Daru-Harrapa civilizations are 3000 years old and their influence covered the present day Gujarat, Sindh and Kutch. We see the su-astik stenciled in rice at Khoja weddings. This visual feminine art memory has been carried from mother to daughter and aunt to niece, indeed a collective community cultural memory for over 3000 years in the region where Khoja languages and arts were born.

I have seen Om inscribed in stone at the old Ismaili cemetery in Kariokor in Nairobi and on the 1920 donor’s plaque at the Khoja Mosque (1920), the Ismaili jamat khana of Nairobi marking a milestone in our settlement in East Africa. Through symbols like the su-astik and Om, we pass on as our Khoja heritage as we do through the bandhani, the earliest record of which is also in the Ajanta caves.

J.P.’s wife, Roshan Bai, ran the famous Saree Centre on Allidina Visram Road downtown Kampala. Jonny Bapa and Roshan Bai made frequent trips to British Indiabecause of the saree business. Bapa told me that when he landed in Bombay, he would scan the newspapers and mark the Gujarati plays he would like to see. Normally, he saw a good number of plays before returning home to Uganda. The saree shop that had semi-classical and popular Indian music playing the whole day long, was at a corner away from Kampala’s main jamat khana built around 1936 sitting high and elegant on a high ground. A flight of solid wide concrete steps leads up to the prayer hall. The steps are where bridal couples had their pictures taken with their families against the backdrop of the jamat khana architecture as they stepped out of the prayer hall into new life. Thus, one finds the jamat khana in many of the Uganda refugees’ family photo collections making it an iconic feature of the presence of the Satpanth Khoja community in the heart of Africa at the equator. A framed family marriage picture on the steps of the Kampala jamat khana sits in a glass cabinet in Bapa’s living room.

Meeting Jonny Bapa and hear him read in Gujarati, and having known Navin Bhai Vibekhar, I am filled with admiration of how they have held up to a heritage that I had discarded. As I age, I have some regret, if not an embarrassment from the guilt of not able to write in my mother tongue, the bedrock of my identity, the script I would have liked to pass on to my children. That was unquestionably a responsibility entrusted to me by my forefathers. My body tells me so. Gujarati, in fact, is the largest growing and most vibrant language of the Indian diaspora in the Western hemisphere according to Opinion, a London based bi-lingual Gujarati-English magazine. I would have felt my belonging to my roots, to my identity and to myself, sharing my books with fellow writers in Gujarati. In all, my life as a writer would have been richer if I were a part of the Gujarati diaspora’s literary and arts world.

Sultan Somjee

Ethnographer and author of Bead Bai

PHOTO GALLERY

Bead Bai
Khota Moti Na Sacha Vepari
JP Bapa smiling to the author while explaining during the seniors' reading group. Sitting front: Zera Bai. Sitting back Sakar Bai. Photo credit : Nasreen Rehemtula
Shirin Bai Sachedina and Khati Bai Merali. The Sachedina family ran the famous Jeff Fabric Store in Masaka, Uganda. The bandhani was put on Khati Bai at her marriage in 1917. Photo credit: by the author.
These caves in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra state in British Indiadate back to 2nd century BCE to about 480 CE.Photo credit: British Musuem
JP Bapa in a typical contemplating mood at the seniors' reading session. He read the back cover a few times and then read it out to the group explaining the Gujarati vocabulary.Photo credit: by the author.
1956 Left: JP Bapa in a white suit. Next to him is his wife, Roshan Bai In the middle is the bride, JP's sister, Gulshan Bai and the groom Mehdi Bhai Musani Far right: JP's father Mohammedali Bhai Virani and mother Khatija Bai KhanjiThe rest in the photograph are the Virani and Musani family members and friends.Photo Credit JP Virani
Passport photograph of Jonny Bapa in his early twenties. 1952 Photo Credit JP Virani