Duyung Across the Water

On a hot day last February, after my walk from Pasar Kedai Payang to the heart of Kampung China in search of lost hopes, lost places and lost people, I saw a hotel that did and still does irk me more than just a little. It stood in what was once the taxi stand of Kedai Binjai, a place where you could immerse yourself in thought and watch the river flow.

And there was Duyung across the water.

I was annoyed because the planners of our town never felt that a good scenery should be shared by all, and that it should never, never be obliterated by an ugly man-made thing from where only a select few could see the river. Well, it has been done, and it is there now, a hotel that blocks a view of the Trengganu, built on the tumult and the people and the tyre-marks of an old taxi centre that took people from Kuala Trengganu to Besut and Tepoh and Wakaf Tapai. It is built on the shadows of hefty market women carrying on-head bundles of goods, on the silhouettes of kampung folk, their lips gripping thin cigarettes of rolled, dried leaves, and there on the ground, the shadows of their heads showed the outlines of their semutar.

There was dust on their shadows, but dust is the end of us all. There was a cool breeze that bore faint whiffs of the sweat and toil of the Duyung people; and Duyung, as Mother used to tell us, was a cool place. She used the word 'cool' (sejuk), to convey to us that it was special, a place of contemplation and much learning, and a blessed colony of boat-builders. She was quite right, I'm sure. Duyung gave us in Trengganu its sons as kadhis (judges) and muftis, and Tok Duyung was a well-known saint and scholar.

I decided to walk into the hotel at just after noon-time and found it quite empty. Deep into it, walking through the dining tables, I found an open annexe that looked out to the river. The few people I saw sipping their drinks chose not to sit there as it was cooled by overhead fans and lacked the air-conditioned comfort that is now the climate of built-up Malaysia. I sat there and ordered my pot of tea, and occasionally (I went to sit there more than once), a plate of mee. On the few occasions I was there the book that I was trying to read just closed itself; more alluring was the water.

I looked across, and my head and heart ached a little.

[To be continued...]

Photo Credit: Top photo of Ferry to Pulau Duyung courtesy of Backpacking Malaysia.