10 Jul 2010 New Delhi.
When was it that I made my last posting? I am not proud to say that it was posted in early February of 2008. We are now in the 2nd quarter of 2010. Many events had happened that signalled my father’s grandchildren have come of age. My daughter was married last November. My sister’s son too was married and her daughter will follow suit end of this month. The family’s 3G (3rd generation) are increasing and growing up.
On the 2G front, the eldest of my family, i.e. my brother had officially retired. So would eventually my other siblings who are working. I being in
I am going to stop apologising for not writing in this blog as frequently as you would like. However, I do promise to try to finish my story of growing up soon. It is only about less than 10 years to go. As I said from the beginning that I will stop once the chapter of my story reached to point before I married your Aunty Sue.
Telok Anson episodes provided more stories to tell simply because that was the place where we stayed the longest at any one place. In this part I would like to tell you about the friends we made there, not so much of school friends, but those that spent time with us that had entrenched themselves in my memory forever.
Remember I told you earlier that our Quran reading teacher stayed very close by? Well she had a son of our age. He was very gentle and soft spoken but quite naïve in many ways. Mainly he was very timid. His name was Sharul.
The next one was Saw Swee Leong. He was my brother’s classmate. He eventually became our adopted brother. Let me tell you how this came about.
One day my brother invited him to our house after school. He spent time with us doing homework, playing outside the house and even helped us doing the chores of gardening and watering the plants. Came the evening, he stayed for dinner. After dinner, he didn’t make a move to go home until my father told him to stay the night with us. He happily slept on the floor in our room.
From that day onwards, during our years in Telok Anson, he stayed with us more than at his own home. As you should know Tok Ayah’s character by now, he had quietly met Swee Leong’s parents. What transpired he never did tell us except to mention that he had met them. But after that so called meeting, he was always concerned about Swee Leong as he was with us. If Swee Leong didn’t come home, you would ask us where he was or why was he late for dinner and so on.
You now try to imagine that our house had basically 4 boys most of the time, although Sharul very seldom stayed overnight, whilst Swee Leong did go home once in a while. With 4 boys in the house you would expect a lot of rowdiness, but in fact the only rowdiness that occurred were the times when my brother and I had arguments which at times we ended up fighting. Swee Leong was always the one that intervened to stop our fights while Sharul would be crying. Neither of them took sides in our altercation. Good of them.
As there were always 4 of us, we took up playing badminton more seriously. We made a court at the front lawn ourselves using used engine oil for the lines and two poles planted into the ground for the net. Mum didn't like it that much as we had to move some of her potter plants elsewhere.
We played badminton almost everyday and at times after lunch when Tok Ayah went back to his college, we followed him so we could play at a proper court there.
Now I going to reveal to you something about Tok Ayah that you may not know. When we started playing badminton at our own court, Tok Ayah while doing his gardening would at time glanced at us playing and made comments what we should do or pointing our the mistakes we made. We all knew that he was an ardent badminton fan especially during the Thomas Cup when he would not only be glued to the TV but was highly animated (jump ing up and down if Malaysia won a match, and showing deep concern if we lost). We never thought that he could play very well until one afternoon he stopped his gardening and came to our court and took my racket saying he would show us the right techniques.
Our jaws dropped almost reaching the floor when he showed the strokes like changing your grip for a backhand to give more power, slicing the shuttle to drop shot instead of gently pushing the shuttle like we did. Slight cuts for net play, proper way to lob and smash, he had all the techniques which we never had or knew because we were happy just to get the shuttle over the net.
Swee Leong asked about his badminton skills, and he said he used to play when younger. OK, we were not that impressed by that because in
From that day on, we always tried to get him to play with us. Sometimes he did but most of the time he preferred to do his gardening. But Swee Leong was the one who always went to him for advice on his strokes, why his slice didn’t cross over the net etc.
Eventually, the 4 of us got to quite good at the game and we started playing against teams that were willing. Sometimes we lost but we won more than we lost. The ranking then was my brother being the best, followed by Swee Leong, and then it was me and lastly Sharul. Sharul wasn’t that serious and also he was quite meek. Nonetheless, as a team, my brother would almost always win the first singles and Swee Leong the second singles. Sharul and I played at doubles, which I can say we lost most of the time, but because the 2 singles were won, we would win the match overall 2 to 1.
I tend to lose to my brother all the time. It was easier to lose than to win because he was such a sore loser. Swee Leong on the other hand could not accept if I won against him. He would insist on playing another game until he won. Again, I found it much easier to lose to those 2 guys.
It was really sad that we lost contact of each other after we left Telok Anson for some time. Many years later, we always saw the name Saw Swee Leong in the newspaper who was the number one player for
I had a classmate then, Ramakrishnan, who eventually became the national hockey team captain. This I could say that I played together with him :)
Eventually, before we left, Swee Leong told us about his family. His father worked as a mechanic for the town bus company staying in a small quarters at the bus depot. He had many siblings and his house was really crowded. I understood then why he preferred to stay with us. It was in fact my honour and privileged that he did so. He was not only a very good friend to my brother and I, he was also a good brother to my two sisters who were still quite young at that time. Also mostly he was a good adopted son to your Tok Ayah and my mum, humble, attentive, obedient and hard working. Not all the traits that my brother and I had together at those times.
Sharul on the other hand, was the creative one. Weak in his studies, but I had never seen anyone that could draw and paint as perfectly as he could. He was also into listening to music and could sing any current songs any time we asked him to. The problem was once wstarted, we found it difficult to get him to stop, especially during study time. He would stop when my mum shouted from her room to stop the singing and start the studying. We always laughed when that happened because not only that he stopped even at half a vowel, his facial expression of fear was something that really tickled us knowing how timid he was. But they were good times then when after our Isya prayers and dinner, we would sit outside at the balcony the 4 of us and sometimes joined Sharul in the songs he sang, even Swee Leong. But being a Quran teacher’s son, the whole family would sit quietly listening to him reciting the Quran with such accuracy and beautiful melody. Mum would always ask him to continue when he wanted to stop, Sharul being Sharul never disappointed her. Perhaps he was afraid to but I never told him so.
Although we did have many other friends during our time in Telok Anson, Swee Leong and Sharul were more than friends; they were in fact our brothers. If only the means of communication then were like today, we would never have lost touch with each other. Letter writing was the norm then, but over time, we stopped. I would say the fault was mainly mine, or that we all had new friends by then that although not forgetting the old ones, the priority was lesser for them. It was sad that it happened that way, so I would advice all you 2G & 3G, never ever to lose a friend. Keep in contact, which in today technology, distance and time are never a factor.
One more person that came into our lives during our time there was an uncle. He was my mum’s step brother. He resided further up north on the highway to
Although I mentioned that he was mentally handicapped, he was in fact very street smart. I was tasked to bath him every day i.e really bathe, in soaping and wahing. All he did was stood there. I even had to dry him off otherwise he would just put on his clothes whilst still wet. If I didn’t do so, he would not bathe. He stayed with us for a couple of weeks. He would leave the house and we would not know where he went, but he always managed to come home. Over time, we came to know he had made many friends around our neighbourhood even with the toddy-drunkards (if you remember on my previous part, the drama I enjoy in the afternoons). They knew him by name and would ask me where he was if they didn’t see him around.
Sometimes Sharul teased him by asking him whether he had a girlfriend. Apparently he did, someone working at a petrol kiosk opposite his house. My brother and I didn't tease him as he was our uncle and mum would go into a rage if she found out we did so.
Tok Ayah planned to send him back after a month with us. But after two weeks, he went missing. The alarm bell went off when he didn’t come home that evening for dinner, which he never failed to do so before. We all went out in search for him wherever we knew he hung out. But no one had seen him that day. Tok Ayah eventually roped in the help of the district’s chief of police who was our neighbour. By midnight he was still missing. All of us had a sleepless night thinking where he could be, hoping that he was alright knowing his handicap.
When Tok Ayah came home for lunch the next day, he told us that our uncle was alright. He had gone home by himself. Apparently he hitched a ride on one of the many lorries that passed by the main road at the front of our house. As his house was also along the main road opposite a petrol kiosk, he somehow knew when to get off. That was why I mentioned earlier that he was street smart.
After that, we never needed to pick him up from his house (which was about 200km away) to bring him over to ours. He would just one day pop in the house and stayed with us as long as he felt like doing so. He did this again by hitch hiking lorries. And he would go home the same way when he wanted to without telling us. But his family members would call to ask Tok Ayah if he was with us or they would let us know when he was back home. So got used to his comings and goings.
A few years later after we had left Telok Anson, we received news that he was run over by a lorry and passed away. It happened when he was crossing the road from his house towards the petrol kiosk. I always wondered whether he met his end wanting to meet up with this girlfriend. May God bless him. Mum was rather distraught by the news of his accident. Perhaps although never close, he was in fact the last of her step-brothers.
On this sad part of the story, Tok Ayah eventually received a telegram saying that he was to be transferred to Tanjong Malim, where he was to be the principal of a teacher’s training college there.
But that will be another story to tell in the next part…..
No comments:
Post a Comment