I. Grocery Boxes

The Montford Shopping Centre, which served the neighbourhood I grew up in, was a compact, brick-faced collection of squat buildings, located in the heart of Chatsworth, a township in Durban, South Africa. The township was built and designated by the Apartheid government for Indians, forcibly removed by the Group Areas Act.

Although it has changed a lot since, in the eighties and nineties, the centre had everything that the residents of the Montford community required: grocery shops and poultry vendors, a baker and a butcher, a dentist, doctor and a pharmacy, a hardware shop and gift shop, barbers and hairdressers, video rentals, game arcades, takeaways, a bottle shop, a prayer goods shop, and shoe repairs.

The majority, if not all of the shops in the centre, were family owned. There were at least four grocery shops, and as the customer you were expected to pick just one, and to stick with it for the rest of your life. As crazy as it sounds, despite how tiny the shopping centre was, there remained grocery shops that I never stepped into, nor bought anything from. It was just not what you did; you chose your regular shop, and bought bread, milk, newspapers, and cigarettes exclusively from them.

A lot of these shops had a home delivery service which they offered, free of charge, to people doing their end-of-month bulk shopping. This was particularly helpful given the hilly landscape of Montford, and the fact that most residents didn't own cars. Without the delivery service there was no way for a person like my mother, a single parent with no car, to do a time-and-money-saving bulk shop.

My mother would do her month-end shopping at a small grocery located near the entrance of the shopping centre. The home deliveries would happen in the evenings, usually after supper. We would hear the "grocery van", as we called it, pull up outside our house; the delivery guy would rush up the stairs, with a box of groceries balanced precariously on his shoulder, knock loudly, and my brother or I would sprint to open the front door. The delivery guy, always in a rush to get to his next stop, would nevertheless pretend to need my help getting the box down from his shoulder.

Although the deliveries were exciting to me, the groceries held little interest. The expertly-packed cardboard box was filled to the brim with dull items such as canned food, household cleaners, flour, toothpaste, rice, and floor polish, with neither a bag of chips nor candy in sight. The box had originally held something like Omo, or Sunlight soap, so all the groceries smelt soap-like for a day or so. I ended up loving that smell, because of my association with those deliveries.

When we eventually got a car, we stopped getting home deliveries, and shopped at the Chatsworth Centre mall, in the massive Shoprite-Checkers superstore. We took home our groceries, in plastic bags not cardboard boxes, and our groceries never smelt of Omo or Sunlight soap ever again.

II. Butch Bunny

Butch Bunny, a pool hall, arcade, and takeaway, was one of the institutions of the Montford Shopping Centre. The front of Butch Bunny was a small, homely space, often smelling of incense, and was divided neatly in half by a narrow counter. Behind the counter were idiosyncratically-packed shelves of snacks and, off to one side, pots of curry for making bunny chows – the cult Durban street-food consisting of a hollowed-out white bread loaf filled with curry.

If you wanted to get to the more spacious pool hall and arcade at the back, you had to shimmy between one end of the counter and a fridge, before entering through a beaded curtain. The walls of the smoky pool hall were plastered with posters of football players and pinups, and wooden benches for waiting pool players lined them. Most of the patrons there were teenage boys from the neighbourhood.

I began going to Butch Bunny when I was about ten, to play video games after school. I was also often there as soon as they opened on weekend mornings. There were other shops with video games – usually a better selection too – in the shopping centre, but Butch Bunny was the only one that felt welcoming. It was more like a community centre, than a business. I never felt pressured into spending money there, or chased away for loitering. A lot of times, I didn't even have money for games – I would just watch others play.

Butch Bunny was staffed by two men – an older gentleman and a man in his twenties, who both, when not reading newspapers or shooting the breeze, gruffly ensured that no fights broke out. If you were lucky, they would crack a joke with you. It was considered by most parents, including my mother, a relatively respectable place for their sons to hang out.

My friends and I wouldn't often buy food from the well-regarded takeaway section, preferring to sink our meagre pocket money into video games, but, sometimes, usually during summer vacation, about four or five of us would scrape together our money, and treat ourselves to a quarter beans bunny, and a few ice-cold bottles of the local soda, Coo-ee Iron Brew.

We would sit on milk crates on the pavement outside the shop, with the bunny chow, nestled on an unwrapped newspaper, and messily devour it. Sharing it amongst us, we were lucky to get two bites each, but somehow that was enough.

III. After Party

I sat on the top of the grass embankment at the entrance of the Montford Shopping Centre and watched the cars and minibus taxis on Road 701. I had just left a house party and hadn't slept the entire night. It was an early Sunday morning, and there wasn't much traffic, mostly just churchgoers, judging by their smart clothing.

I lit a Peter Stuyversant, inhaled, and coughed. I still hadn’t gotten the hang of smoking, even though I had been at it, off and on, since the age of fifteen – two years before.

I coughed again, and spat. I looked over my shoulder towards the parking lot of the shopping centre. I saw Myan walking briskly, almost jogging, towards me. I was surprised he had that much energy left, after such a long night.

In one hand, Myan held a blue plastic bag, containing a half beans bunny and, in the other, a bottle of Coke – the after-party meal we had pooled our money to buy. He had a wide, mischievous smile on his face.

Myan sat down beside me, placed the bag between us, and rubbed his hands in anticipation. Throughout high school, he had had a reputation for a big appetite. I wasn't sure that half of a half bunny was going to be a satisfactory breakfast for him. He opened the bag, splitting it wide open so that it formed a tablecloth on the grass, and then unwrapped the newspaper around the bunny.

The steam from the curry escaped into the morning air. It smelled great. Myan dumped the salad and pickle sides onto the newspaper and, without a word, dug in. I broke off a piece of bread, scooped up some curry, and put it into my mouth. It was hot. I took another piece of bread-curry and blew on it until it cooled. Myan was doing the same. 

I was tired, but it was good to sit there on the cool grass with a good friend, on a Sunday morning. In a few weeks we were both going to start our first years at different universities. I was going to miss going with him and the rest of my friends too.

Myan was wolfing his way through the bunny. I reminded him half-heartedly to stay on his side. He broke off a piece of potato and handed it to me as an apology. Two minutes later, and five minutes in total, the bunny was finished, along with the salad and the pickle. We licked our fingers and used the newspaper to wipe them clean. 

Myan lit a cigarette, took a drag, exhaled with a satisfied grunt, and handed it to me. I took a drag and coughed.

"That was genuine," Myan said, his smile returning.

I smiled, and handed the cigarette back to him, before drinking a sip of Coke.

We sat like that for a few moments, passing the cigarette and Coke back and forth between us, and watching church girls walking by.

"Let's get another bunny," Myan said, eventually. "I got two rand. How much you got left?"

"Five," I replied, nodding.

I scrunched the plastic bag and newspaper into a ball and threw it into an overflowing garbage can. Myan and I raced each other through Montford parking lot, back towards the takeaway.