Looking Back to the Sea

Now that the hot months are here, let's feel once again the rustling of winds in the coconut leaves and on the green waxed-paper umbrellas and on our skin as we walk to the beach to hear the roar of the mighty waves.

The monsoon's not as fierce as we used to know, but this photograph above was taken by my friend Ajidul in the blustery months of last year. There's not a boat in sight in the water, not a soul on the shore's golden sands. We were all curled up in bed, or on the veranda, sipping hot kopi-oh with boiled tapioca dipped in sugar or shreds of fresh coconut sprinkled with salt. That's salt that came in sacks woven from leaves by some dainty hands in Thailand, or Siam as we still called it, and brought in by the big boat under the charge of our neighbour Wang Mang. He brought in rice too, and roof tiles from Senggora, and some blonde seaweeds that must have got entangled in the nets of Thai fishermen, and when it came to us we soaked it in water and bathed it in vinegar mixed with chilli and sugar, and we called it kerabu sèrè. Kerabu sèrè was fine if you had a penchant for such things, but for us kids, we simply scopped out the sauce with the curl of the fried kerepok (fish crackers) and felt the sour and the hot and the sweet at the first crack of the cracker in our mouth, and we left the stringy, rubbery sèrè for the delectation of the adults.

Monsoon months came fast and furious, and debris and weeds and logs were swept down to our shore on the milky water from the ulu, and our pantai dropped in bits into the gushing surf, a mixture of the down-flowing river from our inland and the incoming waves from the churning sea. Hujung Tanjong was in danger of disappearing, and the huts along the shore looked very frail.

But soon the hot months will be here again, and the sea that looked intent on swallowing us will calm down as the fishermen hang their sarong wraps and move out once again to the sea.

Class of Old

The photograph I published of two ladies cycling merrily in Chendering in the mists of time and of children palying alfresco tugged many hearts. My thanks to Chorekdaggarik for the photo. My friend Ajidul sent me this paean to nostalgia:

"Foto yg deme selit dalam artikel Les bicyclettes de Chendering itu amat menarik. Ia telah mengimbaukan satu zaman yg indah yg pernah ambe lalui sewaktu kanak2 dulu. Selalunya begitulah pada hari raya . Salah satu acara yg kami buat ialah pergi berkelah di pantai . Betullah gamoknye budak2 dalam foto tu sedang bermain to nnusuk ... Sunggoh seronok bermain-main begitu bercampur lelaki dan perempuan innoncently .... ah, those happy days. Dan pada hari raya beginilah kita berebut menyewa basikal di kedai China Lugal depan kedai Pok . Bayar 20 sen boleh 2 jam . Ambe selalu pilih basikal kechil chap singa yg berwarna biru. Ada tiga buah sahaja basikal kechil yg baru sampai pada masa itu."

"The photo you have inserted into your article Les Bicyclettes de Chendering is most attractive. It harks back to a wonderful time that I myself experienced as a child. That was how we spent our Hari Raya. Among the things that we did was to go for a picnic on the beach. I think you're right: the children in the photo are playing hide and seek...How wonderful it was for the boys and girls to be playing together so innocently...ah, those happy days. On such a day we would rush to the Chinese shop called Lugal in front of Pok's shop to hire a bicycle. For 20 sen we had a bicycle for 2 hours. I always chose the smaller, blue colour Lion brand bicycle. Only three bicycles of that size had arrived in the shop then."

Another photo has arrived from Chorekdaggarik. This time it if the Kuala Ibai Malay School, Class of 1948. The headmaster then was Encik Mohammad bin Ali and I presume he is the gentleman sitting on the left.

Another photo has arrived from Chorekdaggarik. This time it if the Kuala Ibai Malay School, Class of 1948. The headmaster then was Encik Mohammad bin Ali and I presume he is the gentleman sitting on the left.

Once again, thank you Chorekdaggarik, and my apologies as Comments is still dysfunctional. If you are in the photo or know anyone in there, or have any comments to make, do drop me an email.

A Sword in the Stone

From the bend at the house of the Isaacs, whose pater familias founded the Grammar School, to the intersection of Tanjong, was a short, long road with many tales.

Kolam or Kolang as we knew it in the vernacular, is a body of water, but there was no pond (“kolam”) in the area as we knew it. It had gravestones, laid out over a vast stretch just yards from the road as it bent, and the old cemetery stretched all the way to the Sekolah Paya Bunga. This curve on the edge of this old cemetery was perhaps Kolam proper, where the road took an almost ninety degree turn to avoid the Istana, the late lamented residence of Sultan Sulaiman Badrul Alam Shah and the birthplace of the Trengganu gamelan and the joget gamelan Trengganu.

Walking away from this bend, going towards the visible minaret of Masjid Abidin, was probably the expanse of Kampung Patani, whose name may hold the key to the old cemetery of unknown people. This was perhaps the resting place of travellers from the place that gave the name to this village – when it was a village – and they were probably the henchman and women and the courtiers and the maids in train who came down with the would-be sultan Zainal Abidin the first, a Johorian, who answered the call of Trengganu when he was in the southern kingdom as the adopted son of its ruler, Phra Nang Chau Yang. Johor and Patani had interesting links in history as may be gleaned from the Syaer Dang Sirat.

But I am taking you now, some three hundred years later, to the magnificent tamarind tree in the bend near the istana, to look down the straight path of the Jalan Kolam towards the sea. I knew the tree very well as I used to walk in its shade most days, and there were goldsmiths' shops across the road, and a hair dresser, and the house of Cikgu Wè, brother of the young Döllöh who beat the geduk at the masjid; and there was the house of Mr Isaacs, of course, with his Jaguar in the car port, and in the night when the lights went dim, unseen hands rustled leaves and spirits and ghouls dangled with the boomerang fruits of the tree.

And I look forward now, to the house of Pök Lèh Kastang, a genial old man already long retired from his daily work in the Customs office when I used to see him bathe at the well right by his house as I sat in the trishaw of Pök Mat after he'd dropped my classmate Tay Huay Cheng in Kampung Aur after our afternoon school.

But no, says my friend Ajidul. Look right as you walk away from the tamarind tree (in the bright light of day, of course) and you'll see a strange old grave marked by a sword that also served as the Christian cross, on the edge of what was another old Muslim cemetery. And he has sent me a graphic representation of this mysterious place of repose to bring back a bit of old memory:I am afraid I cannot recall having seen such a place. If I did I would have stopped to look at the sword that was also a cross as it would indeed have been a major object of curiosity in this corner of Kolam/Kampung Patani.

It is no longer there, Ajidul now says. It was pulled down long ago. And as is typical of Trengganu demolition works, no one thought to keep the sword in the stone as a record that some foreign soul was once interred there in the earth of Trengganu. But who? And why was s/he there at all?

Perhaps someone out there will remember, I told Ajidul. Perhaps someone will come and tell us that s/he too saw the sword in the stone just yards from the tamarind tree. And to help jog other memories, my friend Ajidul has sketched a map here to show the house of Pök Lèh, and the cemetery and the haunted tree:

A Wave From Way Back

It is a well-known fact that fish gets to parts other comestibles only aspire to reach. The brain, for instance, and what memories does the Omega 3 rake up and fish protein (kerepok) brings all manner of hidden things back to the top of your head.

No one has yet come up with a description or the title of the school-book that I mentioned in A Book, A Beach & Memory”, and then, Ajidul of Kampong Kolang sends me this note:

“Mase ambe dalam darjah dua di Sekölöh Melayu Paye Bunge dulu, ambe teringat ade membace buku yang dème sebut tu.” When I was in Class II of the Malay School Paya Bunga I remember reading the book that you spoke about.

And then he adds: “Dalam bok tu, ade terulis rangkapan pantun nasihat ....*”
Terang bulan bintang berseri
Ombak memukul ke pantai landai
Rajinlah belajar setiap hari
Supaya cepat menjadi pandai.

Terang bulan bintang berbanjar
Kapal belayar di laut Jawa
Masa budak wajib belajar
Bila besar tidak kecewa.
And there you see it, the line I was looking for, in the second line of the first stanza. As you may well imagine, I was a cock and a hoop with delight.

If you carry an old map of Kuala Trengganu in your head you’ll know that Kampong Kölang is but a stone’s throw from the Sekölöh Paya Bunga (shorter if you walked through the cemetery of the long dead). But as you can see from this gem that has cropped up, Tuang Ajidul was not one to throw stones at the Sekölöh; he did go there to improve his head (and it has now brought results). Thank you Tuang Ajidul, very much!

And then my thanks to all of you who have sent in comments (publicly or privately), and especially to Suhaili [see Comments, below]. She suggests that perhaps the Trengganuspeak word lajök is a noun derived from another word form, just as sounds are turned into onomatopoeias in speech. There may well be something there as verbs are sometimes transformed into nouns in a process known as nominalisation in linguistics; though the reverse (verbification) is what we are more used to nowadays.

Thanks Suhaili, much appreciated! PS I enjoyed meeting all of you at the USM (but forgive me for the boring talk).