My Solar System - an observation on Hari Raya Aidilfitri May 2022

 

We expected Eid on the third of May!  But the panic was felt most by all the Emak, Mama, Ibu, Mummy and Umi in Malaysia - the cooking, the children's outfits, the curtains and cushion covers to be changed, the sweeping and cleaning inside and outside the house, the cutlery, crockery, glasses, tablecloths to be laid out and on top of it all, the last minute shopping that had been planned for the last day of Ramadan.  

But we all know Mothers are superwomen!  They will see all this through no matter what.

I can recall two occasions when this happened - when Hari Raya fell on the day before the expected/scheduled date on the calendar.

It happened the first time when I was a young teacher in Sekolah Menengah Yusof Ishak / Yusof Ishak Secondary School, West Coast Road, Singapore during the late 1960s, sometime between 1967 and 1970.   On Hari Raya Day, all Malay and Muslim students (including those in the English medium) were allowed time to attend the Hari Raya prayers and they had then to report back to school as usual.  Their Hari Raya holiday would be officially celebrated on the second day of Hari Raya Aidil Fitri.

Well, the Malay-Muslim teachers in the school, all men, most of them older than this female in her early 20s turned to me and said, 

"Cikgu pergi lah jumpa Mr Lazaroo (the Principal) dan minta cuti satu hari untuk kita orang!" (Teacher, why don't you ask Mr Lazaroo (the Principal) for a day off (on Eid) for us?)

They forgot I am the bolshie/maverick AnaksiHamid and I replied very nicely, "Cikgu semua pergi lah sendiri minta rayuan Mr Lazaroo!"  (Teachers, why don't all of you make a plea to Mr Lazaroo?) That was the end of that.   Good try! To put my head on the block while they skulk in the background.   If it works, great for them.  If it doesn't, only Maznoor will be in the dog-house.  We shall just go home and and carry on, our record remains intact.  They would certainly say,  "Tak cuba, tak tahu" (If you don't ask, you will never know).   Except for my record, if it fails!!!!  Aaah, the early signs (for me) of Malay-Muslim-Males' strategy and tactics.   Hardly Malay Sun Tzu, but very typical.

So all we Malays and Muslims had to go by the book.  On Hari Raya all the teachers duly turned up after Prayers, but - bully for them - hardly any of the kids turned up at all.  They took the risk and were willing to face the consequences!  The bravery of youth - the young who are unaccountable to the boring mores and dregs of the old.

The second time occurred some ten years later in 1977 at the Chinese/English Integrated Jurong Secondary School, Corporation Road, Singapore.  I was as usual in the minority English stream.  But I was no pipsqueak!  I was now the Senior Assistant for the English Stream.  Mind you, it took me some years to get there.  Some or most of my peer group from Singapore University were Principals by now - despite my very extensive Curriculum Vitae and my post graduate qualification from London University.  But beggars can't be choosers, can they?

By the mid-1970s, the Malay (and Tamil) medium schools  in Singapore were dying out, as more and more parents decided to send their children to English schools.  The tail-end of the the Malay stream from Yusof Ishak Secondary were all shifted to Jurong - about 2-3 classes if my memory serves me well. When the Public holiday for Hari Raya Aidil Fitri (I cannot remember the exact year) fell on the second day of Hari Raya again, life and school went on as usual.  Hari Raya or no Hari Raya, Malays and Muslims reported for school after the Prayers.

In the next few days and a week or so after that, stories, snipings and grumbles were coming back to me, about how Miss Hamid (my nomenclature then in JSS, not Cikgu Maznoor as in Yusof Ishak), as a Muslim and the Senior Assistant, should have spoken up for them, especially the Malay medium section to give them concessions to celebrate Hari Raya in the full sense of the celebration - to grant them an additional 'Public Holiday' so to speak.  I left it alone until it became personal, very personal, and I feared a repetition of what happened to me in Yusof Ishak when they applied the tactic of "tak dapat dengan cara kasar, kita gunakan cara halus" (If we can't get you one way, we shall find a subtler way) 

I had to do what was then necessary to maintain the morale and administration of Jurong Secondary School- and with the permission of the Principal we had an emergency Staff Meeting to explain the policy of the School (and the Government ) about Hari Raya Public Holidays on the second day of Hari Raya.  I also asked that this should be explained to the pupils as well and that Miss Hamid does not have the power or the credentials to make adjustments to a government edict.

I had had enough of teaching in Singapore - whether in a Malay-English Integrated School (1967-1974) or in a Chinese-English Integrated School (1975-1977).  

I would soon have an interview for a teaching appointment in Brunei.   In February 1978, I left my Singapore teaching days for good.  Brunei was good to me (1978-1984) and by then Singapore had become merely a transit station for me.  By 1986 I had no more reasons to stay.

So Hari Raya 2022 brought back this septuagenarian's memorable moments of 'premature'  Hari Raya  days/daze!  

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It also sets her thinking of more ethereal and astronomical things like the sun and the moon and the stars and loved ones.

The moon is such a crucial feature in the life of a Malay-Muslim.  One of his  most significant religious activities like Ramadan and the festival of Eid is determined by the sighting of the moon.  Even the  word for 'month' is 'Bulan' which is the Moon.  Endless love songs and music and poems and novels have been written in honour of the moon.  Even the word for madness is derived from  ' lunacy' , an ailment connected to the transits of the moon.

An old Malay school poem comes to mind.

This is from my Primary School Malay textbook. "Beneh Akal" ( The seed of wisdom) when I was attending Pasir Panjang English School.

I loved these lines :  Bulan tanya pada bintang, (The moon asks of the stars)

                                 Mana jatoh mata hari. (Where does the sun set.)

This Hari Raya, I remember my moon and my sun.  (The title of this love song from the 1960s is "The moon enclosed by the stars")

My mother the moon and my father the sun on Hari Raya 1950,  at 680 Pasir Panjang Road,  Singapore.

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Malam terang, nampak bayang, (The night is bright, the shadows are visible.)

Banyak bintang kawan bulan. (So many stars, so many friends of the moon.)

Emak with her 3 stars - the 4th (Mustakim) was still an infant, having a snooze inside the house.   Abah made those Hari Raya Stars.

                                                     ------------------------------------------------------------

But their second star, is so happy (over the moon!) to have this picture in her keeping.

Maznoor Abd Hamid celebrating her third Hari Raya at Kampung Chantek, off Dunearn Road.
The two stars were made by Abah!

                                                     ----------------------------------------------------------

Umpteen years later - many, many moons later - about 480 months later  and more - came this shooting star into AsH's life.

The shooting star is a streak of light in the sky orbiting round the moon.  At times he can be an asteroid (a small rocky body orbiting the sun) or a meteor (a space rock that enters the earth's atmosphere). 

Whatever he turns into, even when he's howling at the moon - he still draws great pictures for AnaksiHamid.

Eccentrics Extraordinaire.

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Selamat Hari Raya from long ago and far away.

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PS :  Just a little reminder, just so that "pisang tidak berbuah dua kali"  or  "Once bitten, twice shy".

The Last Refuge : "Allegations" and "Presumably"

 As a footer at the end of each of my postings, there is a copyright statement:

This is a  Custom Copyright Statement "letting readers know that you are the original author of your content and that you will not permit theft."

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This is my response to a Comment in my previous posting, 12 March 2021.

Malays have an apt way of describing the intent of  "copping out", of noting but not admitting to one's mea culpa :  Seperti menegakkan benang yang basah.  This is done by shifting the blame and the onus of proof to the other party.

Let's dissect these two words"allegedly" and "presumably".

"Allegedly" is used when reporting something that people say is true although it has not been proven true.

"Presumably" has the connotation of doubt, of suggesting that you think something is probably true, although you don't want to admit it.

Despite the most strenuous effort of my previous posting - to assure all and sundry, as lucidly and as categorically as is humanly possible, that two of the pictures in the video The Last Kampong belonged to Abdul Hamid bin Jala, the father of  AnaksiHamid - aspersions are still being cast at the Truth or may I say "Veritas" of ownership of said photographs.

[ By the way, the word "veritas" meaning "truth" refers to Veritas, the Roman Goddess of Truth.  It is a popular word for mottoes of educational institutions.]     

So let me finally, and categorically, put the doubt to rest.     I'm sorry, but this piece of wet string will NEVER stand straight.

The Pedigree of Photographs - 691 Pasir Panjang Road

AsH, unlike Old Mother Hubbard whose "cupboard" was bare", stores her Abah's photographs in this special album so that they will be easily retrievable for Abdul Hamid's grandchildren and great-grandchildren when she finally kicks the bucket.

The album for 691 Pasir Panjang. Do note it is not coloured.

I have scores of other pictures of the interior, the backyard, the floods, but I am concerned only with the front of our house as seen in the photograph above and below.

This is the photograph, where my ownership is being disputed,  "as not being proven true" or "probably true".

Here's the clincher!

 First, a picture of the house, and the man who built the house - and who went on to photograph it during our life in a kampung in Singapore.

Abah looking at the world from the front window.  The window was bought in Diethelm by my sister as part of the renovation in the early1960s, around 1963/1964.  She was working extra hours teaching in a night class to pay for the windows.  At  that time she was doing her teacher-training and teaching stint in a school at Kota Tinggi, Johor.

This house was constructed in 1950 and we did not part with it until 1967.  During those 17 years Abah made several renovations - like changing the attap roof to a zinc roof as seen in the photograph.  He also had to raise the floor of the whole house because of the constant floods during the early to mid-50s.  Then, in the late 50s, he made an extension to the right side of the house to create a bigger kitchen and bathroom and additional bedrooms as we were growing up and needed more space.  But the most welcoming addition was the verandah to the front of the main house.  Initially (circa the mid-1950s) the wall was made entirely of wire grills, a sort of semi-open verandah.  Later, as seen in the "disputed" photograph, Abah changed it to a plywood wall effectively changing the verandah to a sitting room.

The two photographs below showed what the house looked like at the start of its life around 1950 as evidenced by the photo of Akim as a toddler (he was born in 1949).  In the photograph of my parents, the window behind them was just a simple kampung house window with wooden shutters and wire grills instead of glass. 

So this is our kampung house at 691 Pasir Panjang Road, later re-designated as 27-G, Lorong Abu Kassim.   It was a happy house, which went through many changes, because of a father who wanted to make sure his family had as pleasant and as comfortable a home as possible.

This was the house that Hamid built.

This was the hub of our family from 1950/1951 to 1967.

This was our Last Kampung House.

And no one, but no one can take that away from us.

Here is another clincher to prove that AnaksiHamid aka Maznoor bt Abd Hamid (that "nasty" septuagenarian) did exist at 691 Pasir Panjang Road and attended Pasir Panjang English School.

MYSELF 
 I was not born in a colony like Singapore or Penang.  I was a British Protected Person (BPP) born in Selangor in Semenanjung Tanah Melayu (The Malay Peninsula).

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The Pedigree of Photographs - 680 Pasir Panjang Road

The Album

This is the photograph where my ownership is deemed as "probably true" or "not being proven true".

Someone else's name has been inscribed on the Hari Raya photograph of our second kampung house - 680 Pasir Panjang Road.    I hope the following photographs will dispel any doubts about the true  ownership of the picture.

 Abdul Hamid and his family made this their temporary rented abode while awaiting the construction of his very own house just across the Sungai Nipah.  It was a short stay, about two years, and we had a glorious Hari Raya in 1949 with our cousins from Pasir Panjang Hill and Emak and Abah's good friends from Kampung Chantek.  It was especially happy because we had a new little brother, Mustakim, born in this house on 29 April 1949.

Akim being given a sunny airing at the verandah.  This was the mak bidan's (midwife)  advice to Emak to prevent the baby from getting Jaundice.

Maznoor and Mustapha, just hanging out at the verandah.  The area enclosed in a red rectangle indicates the rear entry to the house.  Behind that door is a well - and around it we were given our daily freezing-cold baths.

Our Emak and Abah dressed in their best Baju Hari Raya.  This photograph was taken in the enclosed courtyard behind that door.  It was a very private little annex for the family.

Hamid's and Kamisah's 3 rapscallions, Maznah, Maznoor, Mustapha and our cousins Abang Hussin and Kak Zainab.

So there we have it..    And just to sum up:  

This once again is the photograph my family "allegedly" owns.

680 Pasir Panjang Road

   

And this photograph below is a group picture of the true owners of all the 'disputed' photographs - minus of course the photographer, my father.

Hari Raya with Emak , her beaming smile, her three children and our 3 cousins.

So all's  done and dusted.  

QED - quod erat demonstrandum.  Our Mathematics teacher Mr Tan at Crescent Girls School preferred us to write QED at the end of every theorem we have proved.  When asked what it means, he said "Quite Easily Done".

                    

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Footnote: This posting was written for a serious purpose : to thwart a contemptuous and contemptible attempt, couched in a farcical "apology", to re-script the ownership of my photographs and my memories of Pasir Panjang.    But it has also been for me a process of remembering, of expressing and  keeping alive my memories of a happy childhood in a kampung.    It has a very personal significance - and my father's record of that life together as a family is also a very personal possession....which no-one can take away from me.

But for all the happy memories, however short or long our life  may be, they are tinged with gloom and melancholy - for the kampung is lost forever.  No amount of nostalgia and photographs and videos can revive it.  The people who built the kampung are gone and the denizens who lived and breathed the kampung are gone forever.  

"Progress is a comfortable disease" writes E.E Cummings.  And Singapore is the epitome of progress in the Nusantara.

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.     

                                                        A.E Housman 1859-1936

SM Salim : Nasib si Panjang