July 2005 Editorial

Life is full of imponderables. Indeed when you start to ponder about our own life, we marvelled that we have today reached somewhere, more often than not, it is not what we had planned for but it is there all the same. Of course if it turns out to be good, we have everything to thank Allah for it, and if it is the other way around, we resign our thoughts to accept it as fated to be that way!

I cannot help but reminisce on my childhood days when I was staying with my grandparents in Sri Menanti. I was never a good climber because I was scared of heights and I am still today. However, on the few occasions when I did climb and succeeded in getting some fruits, I would get stuck at where I was and not able to climb down. My whole body started to freeze on looking down at the height I was at. Being a prince and those days the local boys and girls paid a lot of respect for the royalties around - Sri Menanti being a Royal town, a status which remains till today - I had no problem getting help from the local boys to assist me climbing down. No one would make fun at me but instead in seriousness they would help me climb down and not a word spoken of it later on. I was called "the terror" those days, simply because I was short tempered and always 'must' win in everything. There were occasions when I lost in games, I would either throw away all the games materials or broke them into pieces or at other times, even slapped the boys who teased me for losing ! Such was the commanding position of the royal children of the time. What spoilt brats we were then - the very reason why the majority of royal children of those days never excelled in their studies in comparison to the common folks .

Slacking in studies or better still playing truant from school was the norm for most royal children then. I was no exception and worse still because I was brought up by my grandparents. Being fifth in a family of eight which comprised of five girls and three boys, and my brothers being number three and seven in the family, I still could not understand why I was left to be brought up by my grandparents when all the rest, with perhaps my eldest sister, were with my parents. I was often told by my aunts that I was the naughtiest of the lot and very hyper. In those days, it was common practice among the Malays to surrender a child to an aunt or one's parents to look after for reasons beyond comprehension today. If a child was sickly and the local elders or dukun or religious person diagnosed that the only way to cure the sickness was to find an alternative up-bringer, the child would then be given away at no qualms by the parents ! That reminded me of what had happened to our elders boy too when he was born.

Farahat never seemed to stop crying whenever he was hungry or whenever we put him down to sleep, so much so, we got exhausted looking after him. Granted, he was the second born , with Farah the elder sister being only two years older. I was still the short-tempered guy that I was during our earlier marriage hood and I could not stand all the crying by Farahat. On quite a few occasions I did slap his buttocks hard to try to make him stop crying. That was very thoughtless indeed then - an act which today is classified as 'child-abuse' - but all these slapping made Farahat cry even worst still. My sleep was disturbed. I needed good sleep every night since most mornings I was off for long day trips to visit or inspect the rural development areas that I was in-charge of in my job with The Federal Land Development Authority (FLDA) . It reached a point of no tolerance anymore with Farahat's antics, when finally I insisted on my wife to phone her mother to inform them of our son's problem. My in-laws were about to leave for their Mecca pilgrimage then. We brought our children home to bid them farewell . It was then that my mother-in-law ( God Bless her soul ) said to me, " Would you consent that I be Farahat's mother from now on ? I don't mean literally but figuratively speaking only !" When I consented, she said she will pray for him when she reaches Mecca and the Kaabah.

What a suprise it all turned out to be, that almost from that day onwards, Farahat's cries stopped! That's the very reason why the old folks of old equate the family adoption culture the way to better health for ailing infants. This is the practice which is no longer practiced or even known to the younger generations. Modern folks equate such practices as superstition and a make belief custom and treat success in such method as mere coincidence and totally illogical. But in those days, many a time, even names given at birth would have to be changed to another one, when the infant is sick all the time or seems irritable in nature, simply because it was thought that perhaps that particular name does not suit the infant or deemed to be 'too heavy' for him. Again, it seemed to work too ! What is the explanation to this ? That's life's mystics which the old folks take for granted. It is their beliefs that we all have two souls. Whatever we do must complement both these souls, otherwise there will never be any harmony in our life. Well, does that not remind us of the famous Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde scientific novel popularly read and made into movies ?

The movies have always been my favorite hobby which remains to this day. Those days, the movies were seldom colored and if they happened to be one, it's always called Technicolor Film and what a treat it was to see one ! I recalled the first Tarzan film that I saw, which was "Tarzan of the Apes". It was black and white of course, which gave astonishing effects to some of the tribal scenes which involved cannibalism, voodoo etc. And when Tarzan called for his animal friends, it sounded so exciting and thrilling when the calls were made to rescue him and his friends etc. Long after the show was over, we could hear the kids imitating Tarzan's call. It was such fun. But of course there's the other serial films too such as Captain Marvel , Spy Smasher, G-Men , Flash Gordon, Zorro, Batman and Robin, Superman, and many others which were usually serialized one to fifteen chapters, with the first eight chapters shown for a week and the next from the eighth to the fifteen and final chapters, the following week. Each of these segments would be no shorter than three hours showing time. What a treat it was.
The thrilling but nevertheless arduous part of getting the tickets was having to find your way to the ticket booth. There simply was no queuing up procedure those days. Everyone would find their way with their hands already fully clenched with the money and fighting all the way with the others to insert their hands into the small ticket booth hole. Quite often, the hands would come out slightly bruised but amazingly enough there had never been any incidence of broken arms or wrists and better still everyone took the whole thing sportingly without a fight ! Of course, there would be black market sales of tickets with the black marketeers reaping double profits every time a new film was shown. The amazing thing was, each change of film would take at least two to three weeks although there were occasions when a film was shown for almost eight weeks continuous running. In later years of the great movies such as "Gone with the wind", " The Ten Commandments", " Ben Hur","The Bridge at the River Kwai", " Guns of Navarron", "David and Goliath", "Qua Vadis," "Spartacus", "The Sound of Music," "South Pacific" "Anne get your gun", "My Fair Lady" and other blockbusters of the time, these movies would be shown for weeks on end . And later years came all the James Bond series especially the earlier ones with Sean Connery's. These were simply full house movies when the movie goers had to que for hours for the right tickets.Having got the tickets is one thing, but getting into the cinema hall is another - what with massive crowd that include the others still in the que for their tickets. Hence, more often than not, we look for a short break somewhere nearby for a drink or a bite .

I recalled an incident after eating durians with my friends while waiting admission to a James Bond movie at a leading cinema in KL then. The movie was " Dr No ", the first James Bond movie starring Sean Connery . It was the nine o'clock evening show and naturally a full-house at that. As was expected after a good durian feed, there came many instances during the show when each one of us would burp out and the durian pungent smell polluting the air all around us - the whole place being air-conditioned. Those days in the"Reserved" seats, which was on the first and top viewing floor of the cinema hall, these being rather exclusive and indeed expensive by standard in those days, there would be a lot of English or Europeans at this Reserved Class. The smell of the durians whenever we burped were simply uncompromising to these people. We could hear such exclamations as " Bloody hell ! What's that smell ?". Whilst others would utter simply " My God ! What's that !!!". All of us would simply pretend as if nothing was amiss but we could not help giggling amongst ourselves and making a lot of fun out of it after the show !
There's a lot of stories about the durian, this amazing Asian fruit. Apart from being the most difficult fruit to choose as the best and most tasty, for generations it is called the King of Fruit simply because Asians go crazy over them especially so the Chinese in our country. It has been said, if not for the Chinese craze for the fruit, the durian would not have been expensive at all. In fact, in our country, it is the norm that when the Chinese take a fancy for any kind of food, that food will become expensive. Just take the simple 'Ikan Bilis' which used to be the poor man's food, the "petai" and even " chili padi" or chilies for that matter. These are all expensive these days because the Chinese have learned to like them ! Coming back to the durian, there was this peculiar notice to the resident guests of a leading hotel in Kuala Lumpur which stated " No Durians in your room, please". Quite often the foreign guests were heard to exclaim, " What a cute way to name their prostitutes !"

The durians used to be sold by the fruit until we started to emulate the Singaporeans who bought theirs by the weight. That was when the fruits became expensive and eventually became to be called "the Golden fruit " by some people since it is prized by the weight. In these days, we got a choice of buying and choosing the fruit by either a whole unopened fruit or choosing those that are already opened and displayed in plastic wrapping containers. I prefer the latter since I can at least see what I am buying rather than the old practice of taking a chance and playing guess work with the whole fruit method. Of course the fruit now consists of many classified clone varieties such as D11, D24, D32, or simply the Thailand variety, which everyone knows is very fleshy but not as exciting in taste as the original Malaysian variety, which reminds me of our recent trip to Cameron Highlands. On the way home, following the old road to Tapah, we stopped at a fruit and vegetable stall managed by the Orang asli. We saw a heap of durians and upon enquiry we were told that these came from their own dusun nearby. We at once knew these to be the durian asli.They tasted simply maginificent, each fruit to its own peculiar flavour, colour and aroma ! Anyway, these days, thanks to modern agriculture, and free imports from neibouring countries, we now have choices - visible or non-visible, foreign or local, cloned or the wild ones ! That's progress, don't you agree?

During our early childhood, we would all have experienced some kind of excitement "stealing" fruits from our neighbors trees, especially when their branches crossed over our fences. That's what happened to me and my cousins in our little village of Sri Menanti. There were a lot of fruit trees all around our neighborhood those days and come the fruiting seasons, my cousins and I were all geared for the 'killings' with our "stealing"! Of course our neighbors knew and may be enjoyed shouting at us whenever we were at our acts, and they must have enjoyed greatly to see us running helter skelter when they pretended to chase us. When that happened and we made our escapes, we rejoiced at the thought of not being caught. Hence the occasional nick name given to me as "Ku Culprit" by our neighboring relatives, which indeed I was those days ! It was such fun indeed. But of course I was not about to be dubbed as the culprit only because I proved and showed them that I could excel in other things too.

Take for instance the Koran recital. At one time when there was a recital of the simple verses at the nearest surau and I competed, I won the first prize, although up to these days, I still could not fathom how I won since I am not at all able to read the Koran text in full. Yes I was good at memorizing after hearing the others read, but it's not to read the Koran in the literal sense of the word! Of course when we get old, we feel embarrass to have to be taught to read the Koran But these days, Koran reading is taught everywhere to the elderly and amazingly a lot of people have 'graduated' ! As for me, I am still shy and not about to be exposed on my inadequacy to my friends and relatives, more so, to the younger people who all along had assumed that I am learned at the Koran ! Of course that's not to say that I am not learned on Islam itself ! These days and time, there's a great many books out there for self-learning in Islamic teaching. In those days of old, the learning was all centered around the elderly religious teachers or the elders in the family. What with the Internet nowadays, learning is at anyone's doorsteps ! The Malay saying " Jangan saperti katak dalam tempurong " can no longer be applicable to anybody, ever since the widespread usage and availability of the radios and televisions and the internet. In these days and time, we are all being bombarded by sounds that we are not in full control to eliminate entirely since they are all around us all the time.

When I lived with my grandparents, noise pollution as we know it today was virtually nonexistent. My grandfather was a very religious person, highly respected for not only his religious knowledge but as the great royalty of those days. He had only a bicycle for transport since cars were a rarity then. Whenever grandpa was seen to be on the road heading to his other house - you see, he had two wives - almost instantaneously all the other bicycle riders around him or in the far distance , would disembark, out of respect for him as the royal person of the village. I used to wonder at this and at one time, I made myself ask him as to why it was so. His answer was simply " They like to do it ! " This reminds me of similar actions by the locals when in later years I was working in Kelantan and Trengganu. My first suprised encounter was when I was driving along for an evening ride with my family, when I had to apply emergency brake to avoid hitting the car in front of ours. I was furious and wanted to come down and scold the driver when my wife remarked," We have to stop too. The Sultan's car just passed by !" However, nowadays in Kuala Lumpur, we will see outriders of the VVIP or The Agong, frantically waving to us motorists to get to the road kerb and momentarily stop our driving until their escorted cars pass through ! We city folks have no inklings of road salutes to the Royalty or the VVIP. Every man for himself in this rat race of today !

We are like rats in our behaviour. Everyone is for himself and his own survival. We forget our neighbors, our friends and to a certain extent, our relatives too. How many of us really get to know our immediate neighbors by sight, let alone by name ? The excuse ? Oh, we work at different time and return home different time. So when's the occasion to know each other ? The family unit too is disintegrating these days. Those days, everyone took the trouble to look up the old folks or their elders not only on special occasions but almost instinctively. Should a major event took place at a family's house, such as a birthday , a simple "kenduri aruah", or house warming, and most certainly an engagement or wedding ceremony, the way to invite the elders and members of the family would be by personal visits to their houses. This method naturally brought about dual benefits. It fostered closer relationship and ensure who would turn up for the occasion. These days, because of the availability of the telephones , fax machines and the Internet, as well as the wide distribution of the family members who might live States apart, it no longer becomes practical and convenient to do the old traditional way.

When it comes to weddings, my people must be the most wasteful, financially saying. Parents of the bride and the bridegroom will go all out to try to out do the other in their preparations for the big day. There is no denying the amount of money that they would spend just to make the occasion a memorable one for the family to see and experience. Beg or borrow, the money will have to be there somehow. Every parent is ashamed of what the others in the family will say if they do not take pains to ensure that it's a proper wedding in every sense of the word - big dowry, rich jewels gifts, wedding dresses, shoes, skin care products, watches etc. - all seemingly expensive and non-ordinary ! It's amazing what the parents and members of the immediate family helpers will do at great length and time just to ensure the procurement of the right things for the big occasion. Thus, going broke is normal for the Malay weddings. Long after the functions are over, the parents and occasionally the bridegroom too, would still be paying their dues to the lending institutions and nobody cares afterwards. They have had their funs ! The part's over as far as they are concerned.

It's inconceivable for the very rich to spend so lavishly on their children's weddings and this takes place all the time today. When per pax charges at leading hotels can go from RM 60.00 to RM160.00, there have been numerous occasions when the wealthy parents would spent nothing less than RM150.,000.00 for the wedding only to find ingratitude by their children at the end of it when the newly wedded couple broke up after less than a year's marriage ! The old folks would then commented that during their time, their parents never spent anything on them. They had to sweat it out to get everything for the wedding. Hence the marriage lasted since there is real value attached to it as contrary to the former which seems like a birthday present to the child concerned.

Well, there has been so much ramblings from me this time and may be it is time I quit less you get bored reading this semi historical events of my life, which hopefully, relates to some of you too! May be, if I get the opportunity the next time around, I will deal with some other matters of interest to you readers, which reminds me that as at the time of writing, we will all bid farewell to Arman John Jennrich , our son-in-law, who is Farah's husband and father to Aisya Iman. He had tried to settle down in our country but finds great difficulty to get a decent job and pay. What he had for the last couple of months was a stop gap only and not really in his line of expertise. He is more into the telecommunication of which his expertise is not as yet understood or considered applicable to all the major telecommunication companies in our country. What a pity ! I did , however, suggest to him to set up a consultant firm to introduce and sell his expertise to the these companies but Arman has his reservations on this. Anyway, his former boss and company in the U.S.A has offered him a job and position at a higher level than when he left it then. Only thing is, with his departure, his family will be temporarily split - with Farah and Aisya remaining in KL and Arman back in Chicago.

All told, Arman has endeavored to get fully assimilated with the local culture and it goes without saying he is seen to enjoy the local foods and fruits although he fails with the durian though. We have much to thank him for his physical contribution to improve, paint and repair our house during the early days when he was jobless. Hence we wish him and his family our blessing and future happiness. It is something we cannot avoid happening in our life time. Such is life !

Well, I better sign off before I get more itchy to write more and more. Till we meet again, I wish you all the happiness you deserve and May God Bless you !