When Napoleon Entered Me

By Ujjwal K. Chowdhury

Cape Town had given us a day off after two intense days at the Global Entrepreneurship Network’s Africa Congress. Mathew and I, exhausted but unwilling to behave like exhausted men, decided to explore the city on the red hop-on hop-off bus. After breakfast, we boarded at Long Street, armed with cameras, curiosity and the dangerous confidence of two visitors who believed the timetable would obey them.

Our first major stop was Constantia, Cape Town’s green wine country – part vineyard, part living museum, and part very successful argument for postponing work.

Groot Constantia dates back to 1685, when Simon van der Stel established what is regarded as South Africa’s oldest wine-producing farm. Cape Dutch buildings, ancient trees and orderly vineyards rolled down the slopes as though history itself had been landscaped.

Its fame travelled across Europe. Frederick the Great of Prussia and Louis Philippe were among the celebrated buyers of Constantia wine. Jane Austen mentioned it in Sense and Sensibility as a remedy for a broken heart, while Charles Dickens gave it a supporting role in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Napoleon, too, was served Constantia during his exile on St Helena.

At the cellar, our guide, Thabesa, gave us a detailed dekho of the winemaking process. Red wine, we learnt, is fermented at a warmer temperature, while white wine prefers a cooler and more delicate arrangement – rather like guests at a Bengali wedding.

The estate’s old bottles, labels and stories made the centuries feel as if they were still resting quietly inside the walls.

Then came the official tasting: five wines, some red, some white, some dry, some sweet, some slightly bitter, and all presented with the solemnity usually reserved for a diplomatic treaty.

After the stipulated five, Mathew launched a diplomatic campaign for a sixth – the famous Grand Constance, the modern naturally sweet wine made from Muscat de Frontignan and associated with the old Constantia legend.

I assumed the request would be politely rejected.

But Thabesa was kind. Perhaps Mathew’s sincerity helped. Perhaps my video of her and the promise of a good still photograph had quietly strengthened our case.

She brought out an empty case and bottle for a picture, followed by two cut-glass wine glasses containing a small serving each.

The wine was smooth, rich and almost dangerously friendly. It slipped down like a gentleman and arrived in the bloodstream like a military commander.

Within ten minutes, I felt Napoleon enter me.

My walking speed increased. My laughter became louder. My voice rose into a patriotic high pitch. I began speaking casually about doing difficult things immediately, efficiently and preferably before lunch.

Mathew watched me with the amused concern of a man travelling with a newly self-appointed emperor.

At Hout Bay, we stopped at Mariner’s Wharf for beer, chips and fried snoek. I jumped off the bus as though disembarking from a victorious campaign.

A sea lion was being displayed by a man charging visitors for photographs. I ignored the commercial negotiations and clicked my own pictures. Then I wandered across the ramp into the port, speaking randomly to seamen and workers repairing, loading and unloading boats.

Over lunch, I got into conversation with the two women serving us. The senior server was wonderfully talkative. We discussed three generations of her family – their education, jobs, habits and, naturally, the behaviour of their husbands.

She declared that she and the other women tolerated no nonsense from their men; consequently, the men behaved with suitable caution.

I laughed so heartily that even the snoek seemed to be enjoying the conversation.

At Camps Bay, Napoleon attempted his grandest manoeuvre.

I marched towards the rocks, determined to stand on the largest one, Vivekananda-style, and confront the Atlantic. The wind, however, had other plans.

Waves roared, sand flew into my face like airborne needles, and my heroic expedition ended at the roadside – after several dozen photographs and selfies.

As the red bus moved past the ocean, Table Mountain and the city, the Emperor gradually withdrew.

By the time we reached Long Street, six hours after departure, I had returned to my sombre self.

Mathew looked at me and pronounced:

“Napoleon has left.”

The lesson was unforgettable: five small wine tastings can create a cocktail of courage, but the sixth – Grand Constance – does not merely enter the bloodstream. It appoints a field marshal, gives him a cape and sends him marching towards the Atlantic.

# Cape Town Animals and the Lessons Humans Avoid

### A short date with animals that Ujjwal K. Chowdhury will remember for a long time

People travel thousands of miles to meet people, admire architecture and photograph nature. On my last full day in Cape Town, nature reversed the arrangement: it gave me appointments with animals, and I arrived with a camera and the usual confidence that the world was arranged for our inspection.

## The Peninsula at the Edge

We set out for the Cape Peninsula, towards the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. The names sound interchangeable, but they are not.

The Cape of Good Hope is the celebrated southwestern promontory; Cape Point is the nearby headland with two lighthouses. The real southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, a fact geography supplies whenever tourism gets too poetic.

Bartolomeu Dias called this coast the Cape of Storms in 1488; Portugal’s King John II later gave it the hopeful name that survived.

All of it lies within Table Mountain National Park, stretching roughly 70 kilometres from Signal Hill to Cape Point. This is not merely a mountain reserve but part of the Cape Floral Kingdom, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape where fynbos – fine, tough, fire-adapted vegetation – produces abundance from stingy soil.

Proteas, ericas and restios fill the slopes, while the King Protea, South Africa’s national flower, announces that elegance need not be delicate.

The road also offered a lesson in Cape Town’s social geography. Hout Bay and Chapman’s Peak carry the glamour of sea-facing homes and high property values. In the same wider valley stands Imizamo Yethu, an informal settlement whose isiXhosa name means “our common effort”.

Beauty and inequality share the same view.

The mountain does not hide who lives beside it and who crosses it for work.

## The Ostrich with the Night Shift

At an ostrich farm, a few birds came close to the wire, not quite tame and not interested in our passports.

The males wore black with white wing feathers; the females a quieter grey. The largest living bird cannot fly, but it can run at extraordinary speed, pivot on two toes and look at a tourist with the authority of a creature that knows the tourist cannot keep up.

Ostriches eat mostly plants, along with insects and other small items, and can go for long periods without drinking.

During breeding, a male may court several females and scrape a communal nest. The female incubates by day, blending into the earth; the male takes the night shift, disappearing into darkness.

Even the ostrich has a practical division of labour.

Humans, with our committees and relationship podcasts, still negotiate who will answer the message.

The guide asked whether Indians eat ostrich meat. Ostrich farming is an established Western Cape economy, linked to meat, leather, feathers and tourism, especially around Oudtshoorn.

I understand that livelihoods are complicated. Still, after a bird tilted its head at me with comic dignity, I could not imagine lunching on it.

I claim no saintliness – human food systems are full of contradictions – but that bird had become a person in my travel story, and people are difficult to order medium rare.

## A Landscape That Refused to Be One Country

We drove through long stretches of the reserve, where fynbos lay low beneath the wide sky. The hills, sea and sharp light made the landscape feel like a meeting between the Andes and the Himalayas, with a South African accent.

In the distance, eland and other antelope moved across the ground. The park includes bontebok, red hartebeest and zebra, but I was denied the cinematic herd I wanted.

Instead, a large snake crossed the road.

It was dark, marked with gold, and unimpressed by our vehicle. I could not identify it, so I will not pretend to be a field biologist after one glance through a windscreen.

It slid away with the confidence of a citizen who had not requested a road.

Humans name everything and behave as if naming grants ownership.

The snake needed neither label nor applause.

## The Bay That Was Named by Mistake

At Mariner’s Wharf in Hout Bay, we took a boat towards Duiker Island, a rocky haul-out for Cape fur seals.

This was the Atlantic side; False Bay lies beyond the peninsula, towards Simon’s Town and warmer waters. Its name is an old navigational joke: sailors returning from the East mistook Cape Hangklip for Cape Point and confused False Bay with Table Bay.

A human error became a permanent label – proof that our mistakes receive official signage.

The seals were the stars.

Some lay in heaps on the rocks, some rolled into the water, and others surfaced with whiskers twitching as if mildly interested.

They were Cape fur seals, not plush toys: social, vocal divers that rest on land and hunt fish and squid at sea.

Their eyes looked gentle, but gentleness is not consent and wildness is not an invitation to touch.

Tourists were offered fish to throw to the seals for a fee. The transaction was entertaining and revealing: humans had travelled to an animal’s home, charged one another for access, then bought a snack to make the animal perform near the boat.

I watched without feeding them.

They were capable of being magnificent without our hospitality package.

## The Abundant Baboons with a Streak of a Memory

The baboons seemed to be everywhere in the nature reserve – along the roadside, on the rocky slopes and near the bends where our vehicle slowed to watch them.

At first glance, they reminded me of the Indian monkeys familiar from towns, temples and childhood stories, though these animals were a little larger, heavier and more powerfully built.

Still, resemblance is not identity: these were baboons, not the Indian monkeys, with their own families, calls, hierarchies and unruly intelligence.

Their presence also brought back my childhood name, “Babun”, a name my mother and her side of the family used with affection.

My maternal elder cousin mischievously turned it into “Baboon” and would explain that I resembled the real animals because of my restlessness and occasional flashes of anger.

Looking at them now, I could not dismiss his diagnosis entirely.

The baboons at least seemed honest about their moods; when annoyed, they showed it openly.

Humans, by contrast, often hide their irritation behind polite smiles, official emails and the remarkable claim that they are “fine”.

## Penguins at the Edge

The day’s final encounter came at Boulders in Simon’s Town.

First there was one African penguin, then two, then a procession from the rocks, sand and sea.

They were small, upright and determined, with the comic seriousness of officials arriving late to a meeting.

Their braying calls explain the old nickname “jackass penguin”, though the birds have done nothing to deserve it.

African penguins are the only penguin species breeding on the African continent, along the coasts of South Africa and Namibia. The Boulders colony began in 1983 and is one of the few land-based colonies visitors can see from boardwalks.

The boards keep fingers, shoes and selfie sticks away from birds already under pressure.

The signs say do not touch or feed them; for once, a tourist instruction is also a moral philosophy.

Their bodies are marvels of adaptation. They eat sardines and anchovies, dive through cold water, then return to rest. Salt glands above their eyes remove excess salt. Once a year they moult completely, staying ashore for roughly three weeks while replacing feathers on stored fat.

They sleep in short spells between feeding, guarding and colony negotiations. It is a demanding life, made harder by food scarcity, overfishing, pollution, habitat loss and climate change.

The African penguin is globally Critically Endangered, with fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs remaining.

That statistic sat uneasily beside the tourists’ delight.

The colony supports conservation work, guides, restaurants and guesthouses, but the penguins are not a tourism product first.

They are trying to survive the consequences of human appetite.

People often say that penguins choose one partner for life and die soon after a partner dies. The truth is less sentimental: many pairs remain together across breeding seasons and share incubation and chick-rearing, but a survivor can re-pair.

Nature does not need romantic exaggerations.

The real lesson is harder.

Penguins keep returning, feeding, moulting and raising young while the sea changes. Humans, who write poems about loyalty, are often less reliable with the planet that feeds us.

By evening, I had not automatically become a better human.

I had been reminded that animals do not exist to decorate our itineraries.

We travel thousands of miles to see them while they remain busy living, feeding, resting and surviving.

Their patience is not permission.

Their beauty is not property.

Cape Town gave me a day with animals; they returned the gift as embarrassment.

They were trying to stay alive.

We were making captions and clicking photographs.

# What Cape Town Served Us Besides Dinner

### Five evenings of hunger, migration, exile, safety and joy, brought to you by an incorrigible traveller, Ujjwal K. Chowdhury

I came to Cape Town for an official programme. After a day of listening and speaking, the body keeps its own score.

For five nights, Mathew and I ate in five different rooms. The food changed, but so did the city around it.

By the end, dinner had become a way of reading Cape Town through hunger, migration, safety, exile and joy.

## Night One: Pizza and the Two Pieces That Changed the Table

The first dinner was near Cape Town Station, in a modest single-storey pizza shop. We sat beside the glass wall and ordered a double-meat pizza that arrived with the confidence of a dish that had never met a small appetite.

It was huge.

Halfway through, a man over sixty came to the other side of the glass. Visibly hungry, he asked to be fed.

He did not ask for money.

He asked for food.

Mathew went outside and gave him two slices.

The man did not eat them. He ran to a younger man waiting nearby and handed over the pieces.

Hunger had made him a messenger before it made him a diner.

I have seen hunger in India all my life, so it is never abstract. Yet the scene unsettled us.

Cape Town is praised for beauty and administration, but recent reporting based on city data describes a housing divide: 18.8 percent live in informal housing and more than 400,000 were on the social-housing waiting list in 2024.

No urban success story is complete when a meal must pass through glass.

## Night Two: Calamari and a Bengali Voice

After the first day of the Global Entrepreneurship Network Congress at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, we wanted a simple dinner.

We found a smaller restaurant and ordered chips, calamari and a drink.

Halfway through, I heard the man at the cash counter speaking in a Bengali dialect close to Bangladesh.

His name was Rashid, from Barisal.

He had arrived in Cape Town four years earlier after eight years in Dubai.

In his early twenties, he had gone there with his elder brother-in-law and started as a waiter in an Indian restaurant. He learnt English and Arabic, understood the business from kitchen to counter, and grew into management.

A childhood neighbour from Bangladesh had taken this restaurant on lease from an African owner and brought Rashid in on profit share.

He said he earned more than twice what he had in Dubai.

His family remained in Bangladesh, and he returned around Ramadan and Eid.

The calamari was pleasant, but Rashid was the real meal.

His journey showed me that migration travels through language, kinship, skill, risk and hope.

## Night Three: Sushi and Chips Before the City Shut

The third evening was less dramatic, which is also a travel lesson.

At seven, we went to a food mall expecting dinner and found shutters coming down.

We hurriedly bought sushi, chips and whatever else could be packed, then carried it to the Holiday Inn Express.

Sushi and chips made an accidental marriage, but hunger is a generous matchmaker.

Cape Town does have late bars and restaurants around Long and Bree streets, but its evening life is not one continuous festival. It is shaped by location, transport, business hours and safety.

Homeless people were gathering outside as shops closed, and we felt uneasy about petty theft.

But I also had to correct my first impression: a person without a home is not automatically a criminal.

Homelessness and crime may share an urban geography, yet they are not the same thing.

We learnt that nightlife is also a map of who feels safe enough to stay outside.

Cape Town can have a mountain for a backdrop while inequality and violent crime remain awake after the shutters come down.

## Night Four: Kurdish Food and a People Without a State

By the fourth night, dinner became a question.

We went to a large Mesopotamian Kurdish restaurant, described as the only Kurdish restaurant in town.

It was run by Baran Kalay, a Kurdish man living in exile.

I asked to meet him.

He joined us, and the plates became a map.

My background in International Relations made me curious about Kurdish life and the Yazidis.

Baran spoke of Kurdish communities across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, and of a diaspora