My mother, Purnamasi, was born on August 15, 1922, in Surat, India. At the tender age of twelve she married Purushottam Patel, who brought her to South Africa.
They had nine children. In order to support the large family after her husband’s early demise, Mother Purnamasi held three jobs: at a creche in the morning, at the local Gujarati school as a teacher between 2 and 5 p.m., and doing tuitions from 5:30 to 9.
The creche was in a two-story building on Victoria Street in Durban. On the first fl
