The early nineties were my years at elementary school. I believe my primary concerns were scraping through a dictation test at school, ensuring that Preethi from 2C did not choose Anjali from 2B as her best best friend over me, agonizing over the loss of my hero pen and such.
Elsewhere, for an entire nation, the world as they knew it flipped and a new era dawned, finally putting an end to decades of inhuman oppression and racial segregation. Nelson Mandela, apartheid, suffrage and other such words frequently made an appearance in the tiny slot allotted for International News on the sole National channel. I heard and learnt enough to not fall behind on the GK, but honestly, these developments meant little more than that at the time. Over the years however, every scattered account or book I read around the issue delivered a punch to the gut, hitting home the horrific details and gravity of the apartheid regime.
When I picked up Born a Crime, the anticipation was for Trevor Noah, the comedian, his wry, irreverent humor. I got a very satisfying dose of it for sure but humor, it turned out, was a fairly superficial skin of the book.
The flesh underneath is a sucker punch – it’s the story of a kid who was quite literally born on the lap of adversity – his parents’ relationship was criminalized by the apartheid laws; poverty leached on to his family, unshakeable in its grip; his childhood was fraught with incidents of abuse, which he was forced to normalize because of how commonplace they were, at the time, in his world. Yet, he managed to power through every adversity, not merely surviving it, but turning it on its head to make it a stepping stone for him to rise. The perspectives that he sprinkles about the nature and tendencies of the South African populace and the effect the political climate had on them (the fall of the apartheid regime, for instance) are deeply insightful and eye opening.
At the heart of the book is the awe-inspiring powerhouse who intimidates and endears, at the same time – Trevor’s mother. She throws her entire self at ensuring that Trevor is equipped with every single learning that would enable him to break free from the “black tax”. She is a unique bundle of distinct traits – unorthodox, pragmatic, free spirited and deeply spiritual, her faith unmoved even in the face of near-death. The one constant pivot is the un-soppy, tough love for her child(ren), which is so real that by the end of the book, you feel more thrilled about discovering HER story, than about her son’s.
Born a Crime is the reality of a life that is contemporary of our own, but set in such starkly different circumstances that hit so hard, putting so many things in perspective and leaving behind a heavy, deep seated empathy and admiration.
1/2020 : Born a Crime : Trevor Noah
#2020inBooks
Of all things inconsequential! 