In his latest offering, Imran Coovadia weaves together a number of short stories to put together a fascinating novel. The novel attempts to cover 40 years of South African history, encapsulated in 10 short stories. It succeeds. Each story is a snapshot from a life, a single eventful day. The lives and days are all interconnected to create a larger political and historical tapestry.
The title of the book refers to the change from the imperial system of measures to the metric system, in 1970. But the reference really is, to a change in thinking, the rise of Black Consciousness, a changing mindset. The measurement theme runs through the novel with Lakshmi who measures everything in terms of money, people measured by their skin tone, and Neil Hunter who dreams that ‘in the ideal world, everything would count and nothing would be measured, everybody would be lover and beloved’. Coovadia draws his characters from a variety of backgrounds to represent the diverse South African culture and, through their lives, chronicles the politics of an eventful part of the world.
The first story introduces Neil Hunter, academician and activist. Students of all races are welcome in his home, using it for projects, discussions—at a time when multiracial gatherings were uncommon. His wife Ann is rushing to school to deal with the expulsion of her son Paul. While at face value it seems the cause is a bottle of brandy, the reason is deeper. Hunter and his wife are aware that they live on a knife’s edge, packed and ready to flee across the border. She makes an appearance in a later story as someone else’s wife and you realise that his activism did catch up with him.
The second story references the white saviour complex. Liberal white males put up radical plays, while the special police record it secretly and arrest black men. One chapter deals with the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. And in between the whites and the blacks lies the Indian community, with its red and green tin roofs on a hillside. The Indian community that made its African servants sleep out back even while it was not allowed on to the European section of the beach. That is how the Yngwie Malmsteen-loving, guitar-playing Yash loses his gig at a whites-only restaurant. And eventually his life. Apartheid, black consciousness, labour strikes, racial pride, circles within circles, subtle and overt racial overtones and lines, Coovadia brings each of them out with a subtlety hard to match. Deceptively simple, yet layered, this is not a light read. The fine observations and elegant language, the clever continuity and the unwavering structure make this a compelling and essential novel.