Kalim Rajab is the chair of the Helen Suzman Foundation and director of the New National Assurance Company, but he’s also a devotee of culture in all its manifestations – including DVDs …
What’s the best book you’ve read in the past year? And why?
Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. Khalidi is the intellectual heir to Edward Said, and this book is both the culmination of his scholarship as well as a personal family history. I love that one of Khalidi’s last acts before his retirement as emeritus professor at Columbia University was to address students protesting the genocide in Gaza, reminding them that they stood on the same stones as those who protested Vietnam in 1968 – and that, like the class of 1968, they were ultimately standing on the right side of history.
How do you keep fit?
I go to the gym twice a week. I’ve also taken up tennis again after a long time away from the court, and it feels great. But for me, nothing beats walking. After a long day, I love walking under the trees in my neighbourhood.
Weekday, low-key restaurant go-to? What do you order?
The romance may fade eventually, but for now, I simply can’t get enough of the cucumber salad at Asian Twist in Parkview.
What is the one artwork you’ll always love, and why? You needn’t own it!
I’m going to interpret this question unconventionally and choose a particular collection of poetry by the Indo-Pakistani writer Faiz Ahmed Faiz – a first edition that belonged to my grandfather. For me, Faiz’s poetry is art of the highest order. It became particularly poignant during the KwaZulu-Natal riots of 2021. My family faced the real threat of imminent invasion, and as we wondered what we’d take if the house burnt down, I decided that all I would want is my grandfather’s prized collection of Faiz, where alongside the Urdu script he had written his own thoughts. Faiz speaks for the dispossessed and the subjugated, standing up to the mighty, and I remember the love with which my grandfather used to cradle this book.
What do you regret most?
Not going to film school.
The one unusual item you can’t live without?
My DVD player. I absolutely love cinema, and despite the ubiquity of streaming, there’s a surprising amount of great film from the past century that’s not available on those platforms. So my DVD collection keeps growing, not shrinking.
Who was your high school celeb crush?
What delicious memories you’ve resurrected! I was once besotted with the ravishing Greta Scacchi. Once? I still am!
Three songs that you’d take to a desert island?
Oh, you cruel interrogator, limiting castaways to just three selections. You’d be condemning me to live out my days hunched over in guilt over all the songs I’d have to cast aside.
I’d begin with the raga Hem Bihag, performed by Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan in 1972. Two musicians sitting on stage, playing for an hour, without accompaniment or a prearranged score. Both had just lost their guru and family member Allauddin Khan, and that evening at Madison Square Garden was about two brothers coming to terms with loss, in a way that was both public and intimate. I’m very moved by it.
Next, I’d choose the raga Sindhi Bhairavi, by Vilayat Khan and Bismillah Khan. It’s what my parents listened to, separately, for six years while they lived apart on different continents in the 1970s – a very long engagement!
And finally, I’d choose the finale of The Marriage of Figaro – “Gente, Gente”. The most sublime piece of music one could imagine.
Yet always, while listening to these pieces, I’d be aware of the ghost of Miles Davis, lingering on the edge of the deserted island and enveloped in a kind of blue, for not having been chosen …
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