The JRB presents an excerpt from Curry and Bread, Pravasan Pillay’s new memoir. 

Curry and Bread
Pravasan Pillay
Dye Hard Press, 2025

On Indian Overpacking for Beach Trips, Breyani, and Pilchard Sandwiches

I have always felt that Indian families in Durban vastly overdo it when it comes to packing for a day trip to the beach. It’s no exaggeration to say that they pack like they’re prepping for the coming apocalypse.

We’re talking: towels—and backup towels on the off chance that the first towels get slightly damp; a sprawling encampment of gazebos to ensure that you never have to encounter the sun; blankets, in case you suddenly feel chilly in the 36-degree heat and want to snuggle; every kitchen utensil, condiment, and spice known to man; fifteen cooler boxes filled with Sparletta Creme Soda; braai stands and enough charcoal to go off-the-grid for at least three months; Cadac gas cylinders in order to prepare afternoon tea, which will be accompanied by a jumbo pack of Bakers Choice Assorted Biscuits; cricket gear, which will be abandoned after a drunk uncle hooks the only tennis ball into the sea within the first five minutes of the game (‘You know, me, I could have been selected for the Proteas if it wasn’t for apartheid’); portable radios to provide helpful traffic updates for the entire beach-going public; reams and reams of old newspapers for no apparent reason (‘Trust me, we’ll need newspaper’); fishing rods in the event that the shad are peckish and decide to bite (they never do); fax machines—wait, I need to stop listing stuff now because I’m starting to get traumatic childhood flashbacks. 

And I haven’t really even touched on the insane amount of food. Oh my God, the food. Lamb chops and spicy mut ton sausages bought from Nagiah’s butchery for the braai, baked beans salad, packets of Frimax potato chips, traditional snacks such as samoosas and bhajas, and, of course, the most popular beach food of them all—breyani. (That’s right—rice.) The breyani is transported in a large—and I don’t use this word lightly—cauldron, and is usually carried from the bakkie to the beach by three tribal- tattooed cousins who are all bodybuilders (one of them is always named Ajay). It will eventually be eaten on paper plates by the eighty-nine extended family members who have gathered for this spur-of-the-moment beach reunion slash- rehashing of old feuds. 

And this is not to forget that sometimes the aunties will prepare the breyani at the beach itself—I suppose you have to find something to keep yourself busy with while you’re at the beach, right? You wouldn’t want people to think you’re lazy. 

But breyani aside, my ultimate overpacked beach bite has to be a pilchard sandwich. It’s usually made with a can of Lucky Star pilchards, which has been drained of its tomato sauce, deboned, chopped up, and mixed with diced onions, tomatoes, and finely sliced green chillies. This then gets slathered onto buttered white bread and the resultant sandwiches are packed—like, heh, sardines—into old ice cream containers. There’s nothing quite like the comforting feeling of emerging from a dip in the Indian Ocean and grabbing one of these delicious, fishy, spicy sandwiches—which are warm from being in the sun all day—in your wet, salty hands and munching down. 

The only disappointing thing was that pilchard sandwiches seemed to be reserved exclusively for the beach so I wouldn’t get them that often. But, then again, I suspect they wouldn’t taste as good as they did when I was eating them sitting on a sand dune in Park Rynie watching the foamy waves, the blue-overalled fishermen, and an aya dressed in a sari shouting at her grandchildren to not wade in water deeper than their ankles.

Indian Aunties and Ice Cream Containers

If you’ve grown up in a South African Indian home you will know about the habit Indian aunties have of storing leftover or prepped food in old margarine and ice cream containers. Open the fridge or freezer in most homes in Chatsworth and you will find, say, Rama margarine containers holding leftover egg chutney or Country Fresh ice cream tubs holding, say, pre-boiled and frozen sugar beans ready to hit the stove on a busy Monday work night. 

Tupperware and similar products—much like the idea of phoning ahead before you visit—are largely foreign concepts in the Indian home. This is due, of course, to their often exorbitant prices. But a lot of Indian aunties also have an inbuilt thriftiness that has been honed over gene rations of privation. This has created in them an almost psychotic aversion to throwing things away. Why buy a Tupperware when a margarine container could serve just as well? It’s as if the Indian auntie watches the tele vision show Hoarders, and instead of thinking, ‘Aiyo, these people have problems’, they are busy jotting down notes and looking up to them as role models. 

But, in their defence, it’s actually a smart way to save both money and the environment. Not to mention the fact that when people come over to visit you can send them home with leftover breyani in a throwaway container instead of an expensive Tupperware, which you would probably never get back. That said, I have had at least two people ask for their ice cream tubs back.

The habit of reusing these containers is so common in the Indian community that there are even memes about it. One of the most popular is about the joy one has as a child in an Indian home when you look in the freezer and spot an ice cream tub and then the crushing disappointment that follows when you open it and find it filled with gadra beans. 

Something has always bugged me about this all too real gadra beans experience: if every time you open a tub of ice cream in the freezer and you find everything but ice cream in it, where is the actual ice cream inside them going? It certainly isn’t being eaten by the household’s children. The maths doesn’t add up here. My best guess is that Indian aunties are buying the tubs empty directly from the manufacturers. I honestly wouldn’t put that sick shit past them. 

Also, Indian aunties are presumably aware of the despondency their children feel when they open the ice cream tub and find gadra beans instead of strawberry and vanilla ice cream. Why not clearly label the tubs to prevent this pain? 

My theory is that the aunties have deliberately chosen to not label the ice cream tubs as a power play—i.e. the number one reason why Indian parents do anything. The child, cowed and scarred by years of freezer disappointment, becomes a mere hollow shell of a human and thus more obedient. But there is also a profoundly pessimistic philosophy or outlook on the world the Indian auntie is trying to impart here. It is this: there is no ice cream.

6 Things You Should Know About Eating a Crab Curry

1. A crab curry—given the per kilo price for crabs—is one of the most expensive Durban-style curries to make. It’s also an intimate dish that involves using your hands and mouth a lot, what with all the loud biting and crunching of shells and the sloppy chiselling out of crab meat with your thumb—i.e. it’s not exactly a first-date dish. So, if someone cooks this curry for you or invites you over to share one, you can be sure that they really like you and are super comfortable around you. You should probably marry this person. 

2. Eating a crab curry is, apart from working on an oil rig, one of the messiest activities known to humankind. Crab juice and curry squirts everywhere, into your eyes, onto the person sitting opposite you. It dribbles down your chin, arms, and it stains your clothing. Crab curry stains are harder to get out than an in-form Hashim Amla, so it’s strongly advised that you purchase a special T-shirt, to be used only for eating crab curry. Of course, you could also use a bib or napkin, but those items are best left for amateur crab curry eaters. After several years, your crab- eating T-shirt will be a beautiful patchwork of built-up curry gravy stains, a sort of abstract impressionist painting of poor table manners. 

3. Warning: no matter how proud you are of your crab curry T-shirt, never ever show it to visitors to your home. It is not, as this author has sadly learnt, the conversation piece you think it is. 

4. A perfect crab curry is brown-red in colour and its gravy is thin yet deeply rich in flavour, both sour and spicy at the same time. In fact, a good crab curry is so hot that it should cause your eyes to tear, your nose to run, and your scalp to sweat. Tip: if your wife, husband, or partner is emotionally distant, feed them crab curry every day and they will be bawling their eyes out in no time. That’s right, crab curry could very well save your relationship. 

5. In terms of etiquette, it’s acceptable, and indeed expected, to stick a crab leg into your mouth and to loudly suck out the delicious, curried juices. However, it is not acceptable to blow into the crab leg, pretending that it’s a saxophone and that you are John Coltrane. 

6. After you have eaten a crab curry, its gravy will have, crab T-shirt or not, left its mark and odour on your body. Thus, it is strongly advised that you take two showers. The first shower should be taken in conjunction with a powerful sheep dip as a disinfectant to get rid of any trace of the curry. Once dried off with a towel, you should take a second shower to rid yourself of the poisonous sheep dip which has now likely seeped into your skin. A little sheep dip poisoning is par for the course when eating crab curry, so ignore the retching and think fondly of your next crab feast. 

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• Pravasan Pillay was born in Durban in 1978. Predominantly a writer of short stories, he is also the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Glumlazi and 30 Poems, a chapbook of horror stories, Aiyo!, and Curry & Bread, a collection of food writing. He has also collaboratively written a book of humourous short stories, Shaggy, with Anton Krueger. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden with his family.

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Publisher information

Blending memoir, humour, lists, slices of life and vignettes into a layered collage, Curry and Bread is Pravasan Pillay’s offbeat exploration of the food and foodways of working-class South African Indians—as well as his own food memories.

The book’s structure is an intriguing interplay between lighter and more melancholic moments. There are tongue-in-cheek guides to eating bunny chows and messy crab curries, an examination of the special relationship between Indian aunties and ice cream containers, an ode to the humble baked beans curry, a ranking of extremely weird sandwiches, a trainspotter’s list of South African Indian tomato chutneys, and much more—a veritable breyani in its construction.

Pillay now lives in Sweden and we are also given glimpses of his culinary adjustment there, ranging from his experimental dhals to his ruminations on frozen curry leaves.

Curry and Bread is a funny and, at times, bitter-sweet book about food, but it is ultimately about memory, home, nostalgia, migration and identity.

Author photo: Jenny Kellerman Pillay