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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Childhood memories of a gardener




Childhood Memories of a gardener
Story and illustrations by Wan Chwee Seng

He stood among the leafy plants,  a dark face glistening in the early morning sunlight. 

His hands, veined and coarse, began to pick tiny insects from  pest-infested leaves with deft fingers.
From our favourite haunt,  under the old colonial  house which stood on concrete stilts, young curious eyes followed his every move. He flashed  a broad smile, displaying a set of gleaming white teeth, when he caught us stealing glances at him.

We did not know his name. To us, he was just 'Ayya’.  Ayya was a part-time gardener who worked for our next door neighbour, an Indian family. The family had converted the small plot of land beside their house into a vegetable garden and within the fenced area, Ayya had planted a variety of tropical trees and vegetables. Banana, coconut, papaya, and drum-stick trees vied for the small space. Under their green canopy, vegetables grew on well-tended plots while bean plants and other creepers coiled and intertwined the link fence, veiling the garden with their thick verdant foliage. A creeper with succulent stems and purple berries that grew along the fence became our favourite plant, as we used to pinch a few leaves    for our masak-masak while  the  purple juice from their berries  became our improvised ink. From a wooden pergola, gourds hung like long, lifeless snakes, their ‘tails’ tied with strings from which dangled tiny stones.

Snake gourds weighted with small stones

“Those are snake gourds, and they must be weighted with stones or they will coil like slumbering snakes," Ayya explained to us.

While our next door neighbour could boast of a small lush garden beside their house, all we had to show was a vacant lot with a hard-beaten dirt track. Father would not allow the area to be fenced, as he believed it should be left vacant to enable the residents to have easy access to the nearby Kuala Pilah town and for the schoolchildren to take short cut to their schools. 

During his lunch break Ayya would sit patiently beside a drain at the side of our neighbour’s house with a small piece of banana leaf spread before him. Through the half-obscured mass of vegetation, we watched as an elderly lady began heaping rice onto the leaf and topping it with dhal curry. Seeing him eat the simple fare with relish,  our stomachs began to growl and we hurried into the kitchen.

Ayya would come to our house when mother needed him to clean the drain, split firewood or mow the grass.
Whenever Ayya appeared at our house bearing a scythe with a long curved blade attached to a  wooden handle, we knew it was time to mow the grass. 
From the front steps, we  watched as he mowed  the grass with a wide sweep of the  scythe. Except for the  sound of the razor- sharp blade cutting through the grass and the faint whiff of freshly-cut grass, the morning was still and quiet.
Mowing grass with a scythe

 At regular intervals, the tranquillity of the morning would  be broken by the cadence of grating metal as Ayya paused from his work to sharpen the blade with a whetstone and to wipe  the beads of perspiration from his face.

At lunch time mother would serve him rice on  a plate piled high with rice and generous amount of food. Mother would often ask him to have his meal indoor, but each time he would politely  decline her invitation. She remembered the first time she had asked him to have his meal in the kitchen.  

“Amah, this place is good enough for me, I am used to …," he replied,  voice trailing off. 

Touched by her kind gesture,  he had accepted the food with watery eyes and sat at his customary place beside the drain, next to a standpipe.     

Often, we would wait for him to take his drink, just a  glass of plain water. The way he drank his water always fascinated us. He would raise the glass above his head and let the water cascade into his mouth, glass and human lips hardly touching each other.  He would then reach for his shirt’s pocket and fish out some kacang putih.  Tossing one nut at a time high into the air, he would catch it in his wide-opened mouth.  

We waited eagerly for the kacang putih seller to make his round and purchase the kacang putih which were neatly wrapped in paper cones fashioned from used newspaper.  We were soon putting Ayah‘s 'juggling act' into practice, but to our dismay we discovered most of the nuts landed on the  floor instead of in our mouth.

A 'kacang putih' seller

“Do you want to get choke on the kacang?” a voice came from a room at the top of the stairs.  

We looked up to see mother gazing sternly down at us and our performance came to an abrupt end.

Early one morning we woke up to the rhythmic tinkles of cow bells and the crunching of wheels, followed by a rumble like the sound of  rolling thunder. Out on the front lawn, sawn logs from old rubber trees came tumbling down like ten pins from the rear end of a tilted ox-cart. 

Later, in the evening, the silence of the neighbourhood echoed to the sound of loud, regular thuds and intermittent creaks, as Ayya began splitting the logs. We watched, enthralled, as Ayya raised the axe above his head and brought it down on the log, striking the upright log with measured precision that it split neatly into two like a knife slicing through a cucumber. 

Splitting log with an axe
   
Later cradling the firewood in his sinewy arms, he carried them to the detached kitchen where they were stacked under a concrete platform on which rested the wood burning cook stoves. 


Wood burning cook stove
Photo courtesy of Peter Yong


While Ayya slowly removed the previous month’s firewood, we  waited with a twinge of excitement and anticipation.

Were the tiny creatures there? 

Then as Ayya lifted the last few pieces of firewood we saw them. 

Scorpions!

There was a solitary, big, black scorpion with menacing claws and venomous stinger at the tip of its tail and next to it, under another piece of firewood, was a colony of much smaller brownish scorpions. Startled and dazzled by the sudden brightness, they moved around in circles,  disoriented. We cringed in fear at the  sight. 
Black and brownish scorpions

Ayya told us the black one was not that dangerous. 

"It is the small ones that are poisonous," he said.

We were not sure, but we believed him. 

One morning, as my eyes fell on the few remaining logs on the front lawn and recalling the ease with which Ayya had split them, I was tempted to follow his act. Remembering, the small axe behind the store-room’s door I crept surreptitiously to retrieve it from its secret place. I had just taken a few steps when I felt the axe slip from my grip and land on my right foot. I looked down. The fourth toe, its white tubular tendon clearly discernable,   was hanging by its skin. In a state of shock not a shout or a whimper came out of my mouth, but mother had heard the loud clang of the falling axe and rushed out of the kitchen. Mother re-attached the toe, applied some flavine and had it bandaged. Gradually, the wound healed, but the scar remained until today, perhaps  a reminder  about the folly of my youth. 


With my brother, Chwee Guan in front of our childhood home,
Note the bandaged toe.

There were evenings when Ayya would appear at our house attired in clean, white dhoti and we knew he was going to the Hindu temple. Mother would hand him some money to donate to the temple and occasionally we would follow him to the temple which was located just across the field in front of our house. 

One day, just before the beginning of the school’s term, my sister, Janet and I had to leave suddenly for Melaka, as we had been enrolled in our new schools,  prior to father’s retirement.  
We had no opportunity to bid farewell to our classmates or to Ayya. 

Through the years, I sometimes wonder what became of Ayya and his well-tended garden.

Then one morning in December of 2008, after more than fifty years,  a few of us managed to make the much awaited trip to our childhood home in Kuala Pilah. 

We were happy to discover that out of the three houses that were still occupied, one was our childhood home. We waited on the front lawn for the house's occupant to come back from a temple across the field and when she offered us the sweetmeat from the temple, my nostrils tingled with the remembered scent of vibuthi and the fragrance of jasmine, as I recalled the trip to the temple with Ayya. 


The untended side lane in 2008

Later as we walked down the lane beside the house, I noticed with a tinge of sadness, that weeds, creepers and shrubs were slowly, but relentlessly encroaching onto the lane.


All that is left of the lush garden in 2008

 Our neighbour’s garden was no longer in sight. Where a garden once displayed its luxuriant vegetation only a pathetic-looking drum-stick tree and a few neglected coconut trees with dried fronds stubbornly clinging to their trunks, stood in its place. The front lawn where Ayya used to mow the grass with his scythe and kept it well-manicured was now covered with ankle-high grass. 

It was a dismal sight. Only three houses were still occupied, while others had already been demolished or were just empty shells. Deep inside our hearts we knew it would not be long before the remaining three occupied houses too would be reduced to a memory. 



My sisters on the front steps

In 2010, three of my sisters took a trip to see their childhood home. They came back sad and disappointed for all that was left of our childhood home was the front steps _ the steps where we used to sit and watch Ayya mow the grass.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Tales from Jakarta: (1). Nationality Matters




       
Tales from Jakarta: (1) Nationality Matters.
         as recounted by Joon Wan


It was the  colour and diversity of the place that  caught my attention. As we toured the place, during our three-day stay in Luang Prabang, I saw wooden traditional wooden houses that blended with modern urban structures  and old colonial buildings.





 Against a backdrop of verdant vegetation and rugged mountains, the golden roofs of ancient temples gleamed in the morning sunlight.





A river, its banks cloaked in greenery, meandered along a valley and in its  shallows, monks took their early morning bath.



  At dawn, kneeling villagers in multi-coloured clothes lined  the narrow road to offer alms to monks in saffron robes,  while curious tourists gazed with interest at the daily ritual.



   At an open market women sat before long, low tables piled neatly with a wide range of freshly-picked vegetables and fruits




   Young women in brightly-coloured blouses, carrying baskets with bamboo poles slung across their shoulders, walked jauntily with rhythmic steps as they headed home after a hard day's work at the market.. 

   Luang Prabang with its varied architectural forms, rich cultural traditions and multitude of ethnic groups is now a Unesco World Heritage centre and has become the foremost showpiece in Laos. Many hotels  have sprung up to cater to the needs of  the increasing number of tourists.
Municipal Council building

 When our six-member team from the Asean Secretariat  arrived in Luang Prabang  for our meeting at the Municipal Council, we were given accommodation in one of these newly-built hotels. Our team comprising  members from the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia is perhaps a microcosm of  Luang Prabang‘s diverse population and like the town's colourful character, our team too had  its fair share of  colourful characters.   

As I walked into the hotel’s restaurant, the morning after we arrived, I caught sight of my Indonesian colleague, Iko, sitting alone  at the breakfast table, a forlorn figure in the dimly-lit room. I took a seat at his table and greeted him casually, 
“Hi morning. You ok?” 
Iko did not respond to my greeting, but kept staring blankly at his still untouched plate of toast and egg.
Then after a few minutes of uneasy silence, he  whispered haltingly,
“I saw something this morning…in my room.”
I sensed he was fighting down an urge to share his experience, but noticing the tinge of nervousness in his voice and his downcast eyes , I decided to give him a little assurance before egging him on.  After he had regained his composure, he began to relate the morning’s incident.  He said he had risen very early  for his morning prayer and was still relaxing in bed when he was startled by the unexpected appearance of a lady and a young girl who had somehow managed to slip quietly into  his room. 
 His narration was interrupted by the sudden arrival of my boss and  another colleague who joined us at our table for four. Before Iko proceeded with his story, I related briefly to them what Iko had told me. 
Iko then continued with his story. The lady assured him that they were real and not a figment of his imagination. She explained that she and her daughter were accidentally killed at a bus station and needed his assistance to bring them home.  As he listened to her , a rising fear gripped him, and he began reciting the holy verses from the Quran, but she seemed unperturbed by the recitation and instead saw her advancing slowly towards his bed. She extended her arms in the customary Muslim greeting and  under her hypnotic spell he absently extended his hands in response to her friendly gesture. Feeling  her icy hands, he instinctively pulled away his hands, recoiling from the touch. His action must have startled the lady, as both of them vanished into  thin air. .  
Curious, I asked Iko, "What does the lady meant by 'home'?
"I really don't know," he replied.
Although I had an available answer, I decided to keep my silence. 
I then asked Iko, “What language did she use when she spoke to you?”
“Oh, she spoke Indonesian,” he replied.
Our team members had two Filipinos and a Thai, who could hardly speak or understand the Indonesian language, while the rest of us had a fair knowledge of the language. It left me wondering how the ghost had the uncanny ability to seek out an Indonesian who could communicate with her.

I asked Iko, “How did the ghost know you’re Indonesian?”

“Maybe, the ghost  checks his passport first,” my boss replied with a faint smile.

We could not help suppressing our laughter , except for Iko who was not in the mood for joke, as he was still recovering from the morning's incident and  had to contend with the daunting task  of  going back alone  to his room. Behind the facade of calmness and laughter, we were harboring our own growing fear. Iko had, meanwhile, crept quietly to the hotel’s front desk to ask for a change of room, but came back disappointed, as all the rooms were fully booked. 
I then asked my Filipino colleague, Joel, who was the only other guy in our team, if he would be kind enough to allow Iko share his room. The bewildered look on Joel's face told me what he thought of the idea. He said,

“ But....what if the ghost decides to bring a Filipino friend and speak Tagalog to me?” 

So, we could only watch  as a lone figure walked with slow and hesitant steps towards  his room, wondering if someone was already waiting for him there.

On the last day, as we prepared to leave for Jakarta, Iko told us he felt relief and glad that on subsequent nights, the uninvited guests did not visit him.

But then .... they too could be   busy making preparation for their flight 'home'. 

Notes: Some names have been changed to protect the individuals privacy.