The Lotus People

By Aziz Hassim

Real African Publishers

Copyright © 2003 Aziz Hassim
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-919855-07-3
CHAPTER 1

Durban: January 1882 — Yahya/Pravin

In the year 325, before the birth of Lord Jesus Christ, Alexander the Great, conqueror of half the known world, was finally stopped at the borders of the North West frontier Province of India. His disciplined army, the most feared fighting machine of the time, could advance no farther. The warrior Pathan of India had stopped him in his tracks.

For almost two years Alexander camped on the barren land between Afghanistan and Greater India, initiating occasional forays against a formidable opponent before finally conceding that the Pathan was a warrior that could be neither intimidated nor defeated. Severely wounded, weakened in spirit and facing a revolt from his terrified commanders, the great General bowed graciously to a superior enemy, saluted the heroic Pathan and turned back towards Macedonia.

Yahya Ali Suleiman was a descendant of that fierce tribe of India, a man who asked for no quarter and gave none. He considered himself beholden to no one except God, requested no favours and bestowed no largesse. Mingled within his Pathan blood was a drop of the Great Mughal who had, at some time in the dim past, taken one of his ancestors in marriage. The mixture of those great warrior tribes, the Pathan and the Mughal, was reflected in his bearing and his posture as he quietly waited in the stifling reception room. The inherent arrogance, however, seemed tempered by some recent event although, even then, it was barely held in check.

Pravin Naran was a Hindu from the State of Gujerat, the offspring of a gentle, cultured people. His father and his father’s father, who was his dada, as much as his maternal grandparents, had inculcated in him the strong belief that “he who throws the first punch loses the argument”. Violence was contrary to his nature, his religion and his existence.

Naran was, by profession, a Bunya — a businessman. His philosophy was steeped in the concept of Ahimsa, a way of life that precluded harm to any living creature. In his dealings with his fellow men he was guided by the principle of courtesy and honesty, his motivation a reasonable profit for his goods or services.

The cut and thrust of business afforded him his greatest pleasure, to best a worthy adversary in a transaction was a matter of pride and achievement — though never at the expense of another. If both parties to a deal failed to derive a benefit, Naran simply refused to participate. This was not to suggest that he was a saint of sorts, not by any stretch of the most fanciful imagination. He was simply a man of his word who expected others to subscribe to the same standards.

Amongst Naran’s people there was a crude saying: “To be a man, a real man, you must have arse.” Conversely, a man who retreats in the face of any opposition or takes a backward step is contemptuously referred to as having had his arse torn: “Guyn fati gai.” Such a reference was usually exchanged in mock humour, occasionally with extreme crudity, hardly ever in anger.

The tragedy was, as is common in such cases, that people of other races sometimes misinterpreted the Bunya philosophy as a sign of weakness or the stance of a coward — they seldom did so with impunity and almost always to their great regret.

The concept of a real man, in the make up of a Bunya, had nothing whatsoever to do with physical strength or the ability to wage war: any fool can inflict violence and the more primitive the man the greater the tendency to