12. How to...röcöh, cöcöh, rödök

‘Oh’ to be in Trengganu when the sutong* meets the ccandak** people!

But that’s not the oh that we’re interested in here.

A true Trengganuian will know where to place his or her ‘oh’ when push comes to shove, when it’s time to röcöh or cöcöh . This is the öH that goes up the nose like the wasabe on your sushi, not that usual glottal burst of outgoing air.

But first let’s rödök our way into this whole quagmire, armed with the knowledge that no one rödöks without meaning to hurt. It is the course of the jouster, coming at you with a long rod, albeit blunted with a pineapple, but a hurtful act nevertheless — throwing you off your horse, sweeping you clean off your verandah, face flat on earth and all that, nursing a deep wound in your anterior. Sorry about that, life wasn’t all roses in days when these words held sway.

There are things you should not rödök though, not with a barge-pole. A hornet’s nest is one, a person bigger than you is another (unless you’re absolutely certain that’ll spell ‘finis’ for him for the while). The rödökers in those times of alfresco warfare were the spear wielders, the long kris bearers and anyone who could grab a sharp stick that happened to be nearby. Now you’ll gather from these acts that to rödök one has to be in control of the piercing implement throughout, because the implement has to be guided by the hand towards the intended object, and then pushed into the same with the might of your soul. Needless to say, you’ll need a long, preferably sharp, object, such as the said spear, or a galöh. A galöh in peacetime is used to pluck fruits from a tall tree, and that’s galah in standardspeak or in the hands of posh people.

For reasons best known to the arbiters if this kind of protruding activity, you can only rödök with a long stick, but not with a toothpick or your finger. So a poke in the eye is cöcöh, with the nasal terminal. You’ll have to speak to a Trengganuer to know how that’s done, the nasal part I mean, as it’s difficult to know it without an utterer. If, when you’ve meet a Trengganuer, you poke your finger in his/her eye, s/he will — if anging dia molek — say, “La, ba’ape pulök yang mung cöcöh mata aku tu?” which, roughly translated, means, “Now, why on earth did you poke my eye for?” Cöcöh like röcöh is nasal terminalled, and is an act of well-meaning people.

That is the way it is in the monsoon land of Trengganu, it is in the winds that is the direction of our temper. Kalu anging dia mölek, if s/he is well disposed, or, literally, “If his/her wind’s favourable.”

Sometimes when mother bakes a cake, she’d pull the steaming cake from the kerosene tin oven and poke the cake with a lidi to see if it’s ready. The lidi is, by definition, a thin stick, but too thin to be an implement of rödök, so a cöcöh it will be, with a lidi. Tied together in a bunch of fifty or sixty, the single lidi turns into a collective noun, which is also a lidi, but the latter is a broom, used to brush the detritus from the floor. If the latter is used to hit the floor it gives an enchanting sound, a swashbuckling like effect , used perhaps by the wife of a wayward husband who comes home at an indecent hour. The sound of a bunch of lidi hitting the floor is also much feared by cats, and is a signal for them to keep away from the grilled mackerel.

The single lidi comes from the spine of the coconut leaf, and is the single most useful item in kampong life. Shortened and sharpened, it is used to staple together the punnet made from the coconut leaf that holds our tepung pelita. In Makyong or Rodat (I’m not sure which now) that used to be performed on a stage built on oil barrels on Padang Malaya, a tarted up lady would appear with a lidi in her hand and a tiara on her head. She’d sing a lillting ditty and then use the bunched lidi to whack the picaresque character, normally a man under a semutar. Errr, errr, errr.... she would go (for such was the tone of her ditty) and then Whack! Whack! Whack!, the lidi would land on the male character.

She was entitled to do so, I’m sure, for there came just mild protestations from the male. She was, after all, the Leading Lidi.
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* squid
** Multiple hooks for catching squids. Musing ccandak sutong. Squid catching season.

NOTE: All acts mentioned in this blog may be dangerous and where required, have been done under controlled conditions or between consenting adults. Please do not try them at home.