Do not sit on paper

Dashalia Singaram wrote the following piece on her grandfather, and former ‘Witness’ employee Govindasamy Vengatas David.

Govindasamy Vengatas David (pictured) is sitting in a picnic chair, an old white plastic one with flimsy joints that strained under even his slight frame.

His back is to the window eclipsing the morning sun. To me, he seemed as big as the statue of Abraham Lincoln. In his hands he holds open the day’s Natal Witness as he scans through every page, every line. His glasses sat far down the bridge of his nose so that when he smiled at me playing at his feet, I could see the slight milkiness in his eyes.

Later in the day, he would sit at the dining table, the paper carefully folded open to the crossword. I didn’t understand why he never scribbled in the tiny printed blocks, instead carefully noting his guesses on a notepad in two neat columns; across and down.

In between, his wife and my grandmother would get her chance with the day’s news. She knew exactly what she was looking for, the announcements and notices. Licking her middle finger she quickly skipped through to the right page. She poured over each birthday wish, engagement celebration and death notice. This was followed by several calls to her friends with the paper in her hand as they debriefed the latest community goings-on. And planned the logistics to the relevant funerals.

GV David, as he was known, worked at the Natal Witness, at Witness Lane for 43 years in the cutting machine department.

Here, he set the machine to cut massive sheets of paper into large leafs before printing. He was a hardworking, dedicated and loyal employee.

He never missed a day of work in those 43 years. Even when a freak accident left him missing a few finger tips, he was back at work in two weeks.

 As a child I remember staring endlessly at the stumps on his hand and wondering if they still hurt. He enjoyed playing jokes and tricks on people as if the stumpies were his sidekicks.

The story of his time at The Witness is twofold. With his simple salary, he and his wife raised five healthy children.

In all the time that followed, we will never understand how the “math mathed”. But they did it. When their eldest finished school and started teaching in town, they bought her a light blue VW Beetle.

After his long night shifts, she would drive down Witness Lane around 9am, wait outside the paper, and take him safely home. He and his family enjoyed the Annual Family Day at Midmar Dam — siblings playing and laughing, sports races and three-legged races, families of the paper coming together in a wholesome community.

In his children and their children, the untenable links to Pietermaritzburg and The Witness flows through their veins. Lessons from him were indisputable. Do not sit on a newspaper, it is a source of knowledge. When you turn each page, fold the sheet along the spine. Knowledge is a gift to be appreciated and consumed with gusto. Take pride in every thing that you do.