20. How to...Bbalöh

Whilst ggöcöh and bbalöh stand like feuding cousins at arm’s length from each other, it is the main feature of bbalöh that gives the game away. In bbalöh the Richter measure is the örat merèh which is the heaving windpipe that pops up with the rising decibels. There’s arm-waving, finger-pointing in bbalöh, but its real measure is in the spittle-in-the-face windpipe raising sound of door-slamming vocals.To make ggöcöh bear fruit it is essential that the proponents are at close quarters, but bbalöh as verbal assault can be done across time-zones and many miles, though a bad connection may blunt some of the bluster such as the jereköh which may just drop out as a damp squib out at the other end of the wire. For the jereköh to be effective it must come with full ingredient of boom and spittle and the full cerlöng of the glare, but in this age of internet telephony even the cerlöng that appears as a cross-eyed portrait on the frozen screen will have to do. There are many phrases that one can pick from the repertoire of time-tested bbalöh vocabulary, pickled over the centuries in bitter acid and barbed with the sharpest of ancient brier, but even that can be defeated by the travails of modern fiber-optics, stretched and mitigated as it is by the wows and flutter. In this context, even the sharp taunt of ppala bapök mung! (your father's head!) may just land at the opponents lap as gently as a soft hello.

So to keep bbalöh in its true nature of battle royal one must, if separated by distance, take the Easyjet and come to the venue of the chosen quarry. When push does finally come to shove, it will make it easier for one party, after having drawn a dividing line in the sand, to step on the opponent’s side and say, “Aku jirék ppala mök mung!” (“I step on your mother’s head!”) though this is not a line recommended for siblings in battle. To take it to the brink in this latter feud, it is better for the thumb and index finger to be placed in full stretch over the opponent’s face as a seriously defiant and demeaning gesture. This is called, in ancient Trengganuspeak, the jeka muka, the ‘face measure’ which, for some reason, is insulting to the core. These are acts in extremis which will only end in drawing blood, something that will be avoided at all cost by a true proponent of the bbalöh as the vocabulary of fisticuffs is unsurprisingly poor compared to the rich pickings from the windpipe raiser.

The sound of bbalöh is generally said to be wöwa-wöwa, which can also be used to describe the scene in old Tanjong on market day, which also happened to be the place where most bbalöh duels took place in the heyday of the verbal. For bbalöh to be effective it must be in public view, savoured by attentive ears, for bbalöh in a deserted alley is like punching with the ghosts of shadows. In the thrusts of bbalöh it pays to be a hard hitter, and even better for the spectators if one or both party in the fight is hard (kerah) in the kèng (jaw) or hard in the head (ppala). But even in bbalöh there are dirty-fighters who think nothing of raising their sarongs on days when their smalls are out at the dhobi, but such practise is fortunately extremely rare as most bbalöhers, when the verbals have taken too long to win the day, will just be content with inviting their opponents to follow them to the pata (beach), which was a signal for the bbalöh to take on a different tone in a different place. But as the pata is normally far from the place of bbalöh, it raises the question of what to do or say in the long walk to the continued saga, so the arguments fizzle out then and there, ending the bbalöh in a draw. Both parties then repair to different stalls for a teh tarik where they separately indulge in a long belèbèr (rant) in solo.

To see the elements of bbalöh in practise, go here. This is a good example of good bbalöh in full swing, with everything thrown in - the devil, animals, cerlöng and bluster. And an invitation to another place. The one person out of his depth here is the man called the Speaker.