In a village she had never stepped foot in before, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar rhythms, Vanessa Govender found the space to write louder, truer stories. Leaving behind the noise of Chatsworth and the emotional weight of her first memoir, she arrived in the Western Cape feeling fractured. But that quiet was the beginning of something softer, something stronger.
Her latest memoir, The Village Indian, unfolds in a place that appears still on the surface but brims with unpredictable life. As a minority Indian woman in a mixed-race family, Vanessa encountered awkward silences, casual prejudice, and the unspoken politics of small-town life. She didn’t respond with bitterness. She responded with wit.
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Humour as a coping mechanism
“Our ability to laugh and crack a joke even when things are very serious is a South African superpower,” she says.
That humour holds the emotional weight of her story. This is not just another book about racism. It is a book that dares to smile through discomfort without erasing it. She uses humour as a way to soften the sharp edges and still keep the message intact.
“If I write it through an Indian lens and include Indian lingo, those uncomfortable moments can be softened.” Her stories are layered. One moment she’s defending a principal accused of racism, the next she’s calling out real bias with grace and irony. She invites readers to pause and ask questions. When does discomfort reveal bias? When does silence become complicity?
“Our South African stories are messy. They’re inconvenient. They can be awkward. But we laugh. We laugh at each other. We laugh at ourselves.” Leaving Durban wasn’t a clean break. It was raw and painful. But in the quiet of the village, healing crept in. The days were slower. The people were curious. The silence made her confront everything she had buried.
She started mixing and selling her mother’s chili powder. Her curry nights became more than just a meal. They became a space for storytelling, for laughter, for belonging. “I’m not the same person I was before I came here,” she says. “I’ve become more emphatic, more fiercely proud of my identity, my culture, my background.”
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Finding beauty in the mess
For Vanessa, home isn’t just a location. It’s a feeling. “Home is the spirituality of a place. It’s what it does to you, what it brings out of you.” The village was not perfect. She was betrayed. She was scammed. She saw the ugly parts too. But she stayed. Because the good parts, the human parts, mattered more.
Vanessa Govender’s book does not preach. It reflects. It doesn’t solve. It shares. With every page, she reminds us that humour can carry grief, identity can carry kindness, and healing can begin in the most unexpected places.
“Compassion should never be the casualty of discomfort,” she says.
To find out more about Vanessa’s story, watch the following video:
