THURSDAYS: Dancing through the contradictions of Nairobi
If you have never found yourself alone in a Nairobi Bar, listening to an uneasy band playing to only you, then you need to ask yourself whether you know Nairobi well. Perhaps, you need to visit Rugged Hut, the bar where Vina Wira band plays every Thursday. Vina Wira is start-up band made of four ambitious young people – the sullen Mwendwa, the restless JP, the feisty Halima and Jared, the drummer – with the only common thing among them being their love for music, and their commitment to their small band.
Welcome to Thursdays, Jackson Biko’s second novel. Like JP, Vina Wira’s guitarist, Biko strings and weaves the lives of four young people, who, every Thursday, put aside their struggles, forget their miseries, and overcome their worries to give their best for their band, believing that this is what will give them a big break in life. They do this in a world that has little respect for their art, go against disapproving family, for a boss that is not appreciative, and do so even when Rugged Hut has not patron. And they do so happily.
On days other than Thursday, each has their own life struggles, or pains as Mwendwa calls them: JP has never come to terms with his identity; Halima is restless with the path her parents have chosen for her, while Mwendwa battles with mental illness – alone.
If in Drunk, Biko was intense in narrating how drunkenness engulfed Larry’s life, in Thursdays, Biko, through the stores of the quartet, is more varied; and confronts issues that matter today, but which we would rather not talk about. From Identity to Depression, from contentment to materialism, from marital bliss to marital pretense, Biko reminds us how the youth of today are ‘stressed’ with the things that their parents will never understand, and may never even know they need to be addressed.
Thursdays is told in the same style Biko has accustomed us to in his writings, where he converses with the reader to the extent that as a reader, you feel that that you are there listening to him, you could even ask him a question or correct him. As a reader, you become part of the story. It may be a book that you will read in one sitting, but it will leave you with multiple lessons that you will remember for a long time. My memorable lesson from the book is about mangoes: That You can be the juiciest mango in the world, but there will always be someone who hates mangoes!
So did Vina Wira band get their long-waited big break? Grab yourself the book when it’s fresh on the shelves and find out more.
Thursdays is available in select bookshops.
