Deaths in The Family

Deaths In The Family
LIFE AND DEATHS IN THE FAMILY (AFTER AND BEYOND) In my opinion, the deepest schism or dichotomy between the East and West, when you get down to comparing and contrasting cultural or spiritual beliefs or customs, is the attitude towards death. This is particularly true, if you were to examine the difference or differences in attitude of others with that of Asians brought up in the traditional way. In an era where Asians are being Westernised through the globalisation of trade and mass-communication or through Western-type education, traditional Asian spiritual values are rapidly being eroded or lost, and none more so than the attitude towards death. This apostasy in the East is not due to any significant proselytising on the part of Christian missionaries but to the much applauded and sanctioned New World quest or desire for material wealth and the good life. It would appear that in the West, and soon in the entire Far East as well, except perhaps in places like Tibet or Burma, the greatest fear of all is the fear of death itself. Conversely, in this otherwise materialistic age there is no greater human obsession than the clinging or attachment to life, and particularly to youth, beauty and wealth and other narcissistic aspects of or associated with the good life. This fear of death is invariably compounded by the intuitive human fear of the unknown, since in the New World death is simply taboo, a subject not to be seen or talked about. Most people die without having experiencing anything cadaverous, unless you are in the medical profession. For most, there is simply no Earthly preparation for the after-life. As a preamble as to what is to follow, (and for ease and convenience in the recollection of my memoirs of childhood), when I write in the singular I, in the broader perspective it should be read as a plural, in the sense that most of what I experienced, were experienced together with my twin brother. I too was once unprepared for death. However I do not intend herein to contribute to any academic understanding of eschatology. There is no intuitive gravitas towards an understanding or appreciation of death. It can only come by way of a deep emotional personal experience that acts as a catalyst to some sort of spiritual awakening. And like most who have come to accept the inevitability of death I came to the realisation of human mortality when death occurred in the immediate family. When I was about 6 or 7 years old my paternal grandmother, Ah Nay, died. I had not seen her for close to 2 years, since she left my parents home in Kuala Lumpur to live with Ah Pak (1st Paternal Uncle) at Klang some 50 miles away. She died from old age. I cannot say that I was in any way immediately emotionally distressed by the news or the fact of her death. This could be because the nature and finality of death had not sunk in my infant mind, but more likely because Ah Nay had only stayed with us for a short time after her arrival from China. This short period of living with us, and the vernacular language difficulties, as she only spoke Hakka, did not provide ample opportunity for any of her grandchildren, (through my fathers line), to form any ingratiating intimate relationship with Ah Nay. My mother was sombrely sullen but otherwise did not appear to me to be particularly moved by the sudden news of Ah Nays death. Later, and in retrospect, I realised that this was just the strength in her stoic character, the ability or capacity to remain in equanimity and calm in a crisis. She quietly settled the outstanding transactions with the customers present at my fathers workshop. She then told Ah Ming, (who later became an uncle-in-law after he married my mothers adopted sister through an arranged marriage), the foreman, to inform the workers to stop
Deaths In The Family/VC/08/06/11
Page 1 of 28 Vince Cheok
work and to switch off the Rediffusion radio. Ah Sum [Aunty], the cook and servant, got into the act as well, and with her better knowledge of Chinese (albeit Cantonese) traditions and customs, gave further orders to Ah Ming to plaster the doorways with white paper X, to indicate to the public that there had been a death in the family. This was to advertise to superstitious people, who saw death as bad luck or for astrological reasons, depending on their birth signs, not to come near a place of bereavement or where death had recently occurred. This was so as not to taint their fung shui. Ah Ming was also told to remove all mirrors from the public areas or have them covered up. I do not know the basis for this custom, but I presume that looking at mirrors is a sign of vanity, which is not appropriate in a house of mourning. It was also suggested that spirits cannot or would be shocked to see an image of themselves in a mirror, and therefore one should not frighten away the spirit of the recently departed. Spirits or souls of recently deceased are said to return on or before the 7th day after death, to say goodbye to their Earthly habitual surrounds and their relatives. The house and the workshop were to be cleared for space, and swept clean, and arrangements made to provide sitting for relatives and friends who had come to express their condolences. Aunty gave orders to the family members to put away any ornate or gilded or red-coloured objects and items of personal clothing, that were inappropriate to be worn, or to be seen as having in a period of mourning. I think the general idea was to give the place a cheerless, sombre and disconsolate look about it, so that no one could say that the household was not in true grief and mourning. But nothing could have been as sombre and disconsolate as my father. Immediately, on receiving the phone call from Ah Pak, he became teary-eyed and started sighing dejectedly in Hakka, Aiya! Ma, Ngai pu how (Cursed! Mum, I have not been filial). He went straight away to clean himself in the bathroom and came out wearing a white shirt and black pants There was a black band around his right sleeve, that Aunty had sewn on for him, almost immediately after she heard the bad news. My father then sat himself in the corner of the kitchen refusing to talk to anyone except Aunty. Any of the children coming near him to provide querulous solace, (for we were totally lost and floundering, in the flurry of exigent going-ons around us), were simply told to leave my father alone. We all sensed that something drastic had happened but we were not yet quite able to comprehend the magnitude or the gravity of the catastrophe that had befallen. We could only see in the crumbled, heavy-hearted, grief-stricken form of my father, that Ah Nays death was something that had hit him really hard. Eventually, my mother her-self, after a busy schedule of notifying relatives and making other funeral arrangements over the telephone, emerged with dark clothing She told us children to clean up and to dress ourselves in white or dark clothing for the journey to Klang. Since the entire family of 10 could not fit into my fathers Austin Seven, some family members had to travel with some of my fathers relatives in Kuala Lumpur making the journey with us. The only reason I remember this journey was because it was my first long journey out of Kuala Lumpur, and my first trip to Klang. The furthest journeys out of town until then were short trips to places like Rawang, Ampang, Cheras and Sungei Besi, all Hakka mining villages just outside Kuala Lumpur These are places where my father had Hakka relatives or friends. I have since over the years traversed almost the entire length and breadth of the country, but somehow the first journey out of Kuala Lumpur is always remembered. The novelty and excitement of the rural scenery soon wore off and I fell asleep. The sleep was induced by the somnolent monotony of the homogeneity of landscape. For, the car just kept chugging past never-ending sentinel rows of rubber trees; of the rubber plantations lining the verge of the trunk route to Klang. Another factor was that, unlike the usual vociferous car trips, my mother never said a word, nor were my twin brother and I allowed to break out in song or chatter incessantly with each other. I could only contemplate to myself, wondering why death was so demanding that it put people under an imposition of silence and no outward expression of normal exuberance. Further, those were the
days before car air-conditioning. The pervasive and stifling heat and humidity rapaciously made one lethargic and languid. My parents must have found the journey testing as well. At a small village outside Klang, called Batu Tiga, my father pulled over to refuel, and mother woke us up from our listless slumber. We stopped for refreshments at the local Chinese kopitiam (coffee shop). There was an Indian hawker stall out front of the kopitiam, (on sub-rented space), selling coconut juice and cendol, a Malaysian coconut milk ice shavings dessert. The juice of fresh green coconuts cooled with ice cubes was a welcomed relief, as was the iced cendol dessert. There is no more refreshing drink or treat than these in the tropics; perhaps other then iced freshly squashed sugarcane juice. We also had fried kwayteow, (Chinese stir-fried flat rice noodles). Here in the Klang surrounds they have kwayteow with mussels instead of the blood-cockles favoured by the Chinese in Kuala Lumpur. But after refreshments and while waiting for my father and mother to finish smoking, my twin and I were forbidden from frolicking around. My mother was not in a good mood. For, whatever reason, she ordered us to wait in the car. Of course, now I appreciate that my mother lost face in front of my fathers relatives. Our complacent, carefree behaviour gave the impression that she did not instil in her children not to be frivolous in a time of bereavement. Leaving Batu Tiga we crossed a railway crossing, at which point my father muttered his first words since leaving Kuala Lumpur we are nearly there! And soon the imposing grand artdcor Hokkien Association Building, (the largest Hokkien clan building in the country), astride a hill, (at the outskirts of and on the left-hand side of the trunk road into Klang), came into sight. To this day when I think of Klang, I think of this imposing building. It made a grand entrance to a town. Kuala Lumpur, those days and still do, has many magnificent buildings and stately institutional buildings. But these are all in the civic heart of town. Only when Kuala Lumpur was declared a Federal Territory in the 70s, did it get a multimillion-dollar arch or gateway monument, at its border with Petaling Jaya. Before long, late in the afternoon, we arrived at Ah Paks upholstery shop located off the main street in Klang. In Malaysia, and I think this might apply throughout the Far East, funerals are rather hurried affairs. The Moslems have to bury their dead by the next sunset. The Chinese have 2 or 3 days to bury their dead. But until the advent of dry ice and other chemicals to enbalm or slow down deterioration, (which then permitted the face of the deceased to be viewed through a glass window for a longer period), even for the Chinese, the coffin had to be closed as soon as the immediate family have had the opportunity to say goodbye, face to face. For those sons who had to come from long distances, and who did not make it in time before the closing of the coffin, (which takes place as soon as there are signs of facial puffing or gross discoloration, and in the tropics putrefaction sets in very quickly), the further penance for them is that they had to kneel and crawl all the way, (from the entrance of the driveway to the house), to where the coffin is positioned for the wake. Another custom is that the coffin can only be located inside the house if the deceased died in the house; otherwise the coffin is to be located outside the house. This cannot be a firm rule, for obviously it cannot apply if the house is too small or when, as in these days, people live in high-rise units. There is a distinctive colour code for the different generations of mourners. All are garbed in pyjama-type sum foo clothing and wear only black or white kung-fu (peasant) shoes. The sons and daughters and daughters-in-law are dressed in black. The sons-in-law are dressed in white with a red armband on their left sleeve. The grandchildren are dressed in blue. The greatgrandchildren are dressed in green. When it comes to the repeating rounds of funereal ceremonies during the period of the wake and finally the funeral procession to the cemetery, the sons have to put on a hessian vest as well. The eldest son also had to cover his head with a hessian hood-cowl
and brandish a bamboo branch, with leaves and all, tagged with a white cloth scroll enscriptured with apparently propitious, (but more likely imperspicuous occult), Chinese writing, when he led the ceremonies and the funeral procession. Black is a universal colour of grief. The hessian cloth, I surmise, was to signify the impoverishment that one suffers when one loses a parent. As soon as we arrived, we were rushed off to change into our respective mourning garb and to start kowtowing before Ah Nays coffin. Those days, traditional Chinese wood coffins were used. Those were the days of huge tropical timber logs aplenty. Ah Nays huge Chinese coffin was hewn out of a single tropical tree log about 4-5 feet in diameter. It was made in the traditional shape called mooi-fah or spade-shaped, when seen as a cross-section, from either ends. From the side, the coffin looked like it had humps. The coffin was higher at the top or head end, than the bottom or feet end. After the initial kowtowing we were simply told to stay put, that is, we knelt on the straw mat with both hands clasped in prayer and grasping 3 smoking joss-sticks, and supposedly, (which I only found out when I was much older), in supplication to Ah Nay to make her journey, and find her way, safely to the other shore. There was nothing worse in Taoist terms then for the recently departed to be lost and trapped as a wandering ghost halfway between the human and spiritual realms, (which apparently happened to people who died violent deaths). I was of course at that tender age simply going through the motions of a spiritual or ceremonial funereal ritual that I had totally no comprehension of. In fact I thought that I was praying to Ah Nay, which is of course quite different from the real intention, to pray for Ah Nay. My mother had already whispered to me not to look at Ah Nay in her coffin. But I was and had always been an inquisitive child. I sneaked a glance at Ah Nay as I went past the coffin to join the rest of the retinue of the Cheok Family mourners already in penitentiary stance. And so, whilst teary-eyed from the voluminous incensed smoke wafting from the multitude of joss sticks around me, (rather than from any emotional grief), and with my ears bashed by the deafening discordant cacophony of Chinese funereal music, (of clangourous cymbals, stridulous trumpets and raucous wooden drums), I contemplated, (for the first time in my life), in puzzlement on the mysterious state of human mortality or death and its impact on the grieving. Ah Nay had looked very peaceful, in her permanent repose, albeit still and jaundiced, and rather doll-like, due to her diminutive frame. However there was something scary and devious about her lifeless posture. It was human and yet looked eerily unpleasant and unwieldy to mentally grasp. Slowly, it became factually clear. Ah Nay was dead. She was no longer moving or breathing. She was no longer with us. She would no longer be there to be with, to talk to, or to otherwise call out to reverentially as Ah Nay. If Ah Nay could die, naturally and at an old age, not through sickness or by accident, so can my father, mother and all other human beings? So can I? Everyone will get old and then die! I started to wonder. Why live? What is the purpose of life, if one had to die eventually? How will I die? Will I die from an accident? Will I die from sickness? Will I die, like Ah Nay, after a long life? But is it good to live a long life, if you are not happy? For, Ah Nay did not appear to be happy in the short period that I knew her. Similarly, my father did not appear to be happy in life, in the sense that he was never ever jocular, although in his quiet way, he also did not appear to be unhappy. He seemed to treat most things around him with equanimity. My mother, on the other hand, appeared to be unhappy sometimes, that is when you catch her unaware in a depressive mood. But otherwise, (except when she was having a domestic squabble with father), in the presence of others she always appeared quite happy. She was always effusively pleasant and polite and ever smiling with customers and relatives. Or was this a false front of inscrutability that she had. Which adult then is really and truly happy? It appears that only children are really happy, except when they do not get what they want or when they get into trouble and then get punished.
Just as an aside, when I came across the description of Chinese as inscrutable in High School literature, my mother immediately came to mind. Strangers could never see through her public mantle. But I could. It was all in the deep recesses of her eyes. Hidden away were twinges of sadness or twinkles of delight that only her offspring, (particularly her favourite twins), was able to detect. It was also in her disposition and mannerism. When she was overly quiet or overly talkative she was only socially acting to suit the given audience, for example, as an illustration, with my maternal grandmother in the former (listen and obey) and relatives in the latter (being social). So with my mother, her being conversational and pleasant with you is not a sure sign of intimacy or close friendship. In her natural and intimate self, my mother was quite unlike a typical woman. In the company of the very few close friends, (surprisingly childhood friends, most of whom were relatives), that she enjoyed being with, (and you can count the total with less than one hand (in Chinese parlance)), she said very little or shall I say, only said things that had to be said. She never gossiped nor did she ever spoke about her wealth or secret passions or fetishes. Nor did she unburden her problems or sorrows on them. She was more like a conductor, listening and orchestrating the course of the conversation. For with the same circle of friends, the same score or topic of conversation kept on being repeated, sometimes over and over again the same evening. But even so, the communal conversation was only the thread joining the tapestry of food, tea and tobacco that they partook. What was the substantive fibre binding the friendship? I can at least say that I have learnt this from my mother about friendship. If you have to make conversation with someone, he or she is, (or at least not yet), not a friend. If you do not enjoy the persons company for simple food pleasures, and singing the same old songs, or repeating the same old jokes week in and week out, he or she is not your friend. And if you have to speak or boast of or exhibit your wealth, in any manner or form to someone, he or she is not your friend. For a friend is not someone you have to impress or conversely, unduly burden. Friendship in the sense of egalitarian fellowship, unlike loyalty, is not to be put to test by allowing human emotions like pride, vanity, envy, greed or jealousy to creep in unguardedly. If you allow a situation to arise where friends become envious or jealous of you or get hurt by your arrogance or pomposity, you are no friend and soon they are also friends no more. Thus I would suggest, (from my own experience), that children learn about morality and related matters, like friendship, love and loyalty, (in their formative years), from the adults bringing them up; and that these concepts come tainted or adulterated, with the standards and values of the cultural environment, that they grew up in. It may be an opportune moment to talk about what my mother taught me about the incomparable love due or owed by a son to his mother. This may seem strange by Western standards, but it seems every Chinese mothers dread is an incompatible daughter-in-law. The irony really sank in when I thought of how my mother treated Ah Nay. As if to prevent herself from suffering the same fate as her own mother-in-law, the first thing my mother taught me about life in general, (as soon as I was old enough to ask questions and to reason), was that there was no higher love than the love for ones mother. It started off quite innocuously enough and rhetorically with the constant enquiry Who do you love the most? To which, I learnt to reply by rote Mother. Soon, when I got to the age where I had started school, the lessons got more illustrative. One of my mothers favourite storyline went as follows. If by chance, (speaking hypothetically), my mother, my wife and I were out on a boat in the middle of a lake, and a sudden storm broke out. If the boat was sinking and I could only save my mother or my wife, who shall I save? The correct answer as my mother would remind me en tedium, was Mother. For, I could always get another wife but I can only have one mother! So, simple and logical! It is important to appreciate that in a Chinese cultural context, the word love has a more complex and comprehensive meaning than it has in the West. In the filial context it carries with it the ingredients or values of
debt, duty, loyalty, respect, honour and subservience. As the Chinese saying goes A million years is not enough to repay your debt to your parents. My fathers grief and loss at Ah Nays death can only be measured or appreciated if one understands the whole cultural enchilada of a sons love in a Chinese context. If I could speculate on what went through his mind, it came down to this Ah Mah (Mother) - the one who brought me into this world is gone. When Ah Mah was alive, have I measured up in repaying my filial debt and duty? In a self-assessment like this, only the person actually involved can weigh the extent of worth or failing; for it is a unique one-to-one personal relationship. It would be difficult to hypothetically stand in anothers shoes to evaluate whether one had been filial. Since the love for ones mother was of the highest order, I will never really know whether my father felt he had failed or succeeded. However or whatever he felt, for my father, Ah Nays death was now the greatest test of his filial piety. The whole world of relatives and friends and the rest of the Chinese community were watching at Ah Nays funeral. Was Ah Nay being given the proper send-off? In a very Chinese sort of way, the more elaborate the funeral proceedings and ceremonies, the more demonstrative one was of ones filial duty and respect. Were all available and affordable religious resources brought to assist Ah Nay getting to the other shore? Certainly, no expenses were spared in ensuring a continuously ongoing stream of ceremonial services One after another, every hour or so, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian priests or animalistic shamans, arrived to perform the spiritual rites of passage for Ah Nay. There was even a Christian lay preacher, (since Hakkas were or are also Christians, in a nebulous sort of way), who read a passage or hymn of blessing from the Bible. It was much later in life that I discovered that my father belonged to a particular Southern Chinese spiritual cult or movement, (popular with the Hakkas), called The Moral Uplifting Society (Tuck Kow Wooi) which, (in Bahai like fashion), regards Lao-Tze, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Prophet Mohamed as spiritual emanations of the Eternal Way. Like candles in the dark, all these Sages point deluded mortal souls in the right direction, towards the Eternal Way. At Ah Nays funeral wake, (understandably for a child like me, untrained in spiritual matters), the diversity of droning rituals, (engulfed in smoking incense), held no attraction, but rather, further added to my soporific disinterest. In no time, I just lost any attention to all that was going on around me. All I wanted to do was to have a bite to eat and then go to sleep. I quietly slipped away from the congregation, and that was what I did. When I woke the next morning, it was already time for the funeral procession. Thus sadly, I must say with some regret, that I slept through much of the wake at Ah Nays funeral that night. And as there were not enough vehicles to transport all the mourners to the cemetery that morning I never made it to the cemetery either. The children were allowed to stay behind. To this day I do not know where Ah Nays grave is. The one good thing that came out of this short break away from the adults was that I got acquainted with my paternal cousin brothers (Ah Paks children), one, a year older and the other, a year younger than me. Once we started playing, Ah Nays funeral became a remote fact of the past. A couple of or more years later, there was another death in the family. This time it was my maternal grandfather Ah Kong. My mother was the eldest child, (if you exclude my 1 st Maternal Uncle, who was a Thai orphan adopted, to help start off the family), and also the only child of 1st Maternal Grandmother Amah. Ah Kong had 3 wives and I do not know how many mistresses. 2nd and 3rd Maternal Uncles were also adopted. 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Maternal Uncles were very much younger, and were children from 2 nd and 3rd Maternal Grandmothers. 7th Maternal Uncle was only 5 years older than I was, and I was older than 3 of my 13 Maternal Aunties! Most
of who were adopted! So this placed my mother in a special status not usually common in a large traditional Chinese family, where the daughters held no rank. Ah Kong had been suffering from lymphatic cancer. He had lumps growing on his chest and neck and had been taking opiates to ease his pain and suffering, as he was slowly emaciating away, growing thinner and more feeble by the day. For a tall and heavily built man by Chinese standards, he became unsightly thin. Once diagnosed as having cancer, everyone knew it was a death sentence, and so it was a protracted 8 to 9 months waiting for the impending day of his death. Ah Kongs terminal cancer meant that my mother went to her parents house more often than usual. As a result I got to visit and got closer to my maternal cousin brother Boon Hooi; who himself was adopted by 2nd Uncle! It might appear blasphemous or unfilial to say that in all these visits to ailing Ah Kong, I did not feel any tinge of sadness, even though I knew Ah Kong was sick or that he was going to die. I think it might be the insensibility of youth, or perhaps there was no atmosphere of doom and gloom in Ah Kongs household. It was a very large, noisy household and everyone went about their business, boisterously laughing and joking as usual except in the area near Ah Kongs bedroom. When I got to Ah Kongs house, I would go to his bedroom and reverentially greeted him and bowed [kowtowed] in respect. He might give me some coins to buy treats or simply ask Have you been a good boy?, and then I would rush out and play with my maternal cousins. My mother and Amah would stay in Ah Kongs room and kept him company or gave him his medicines or opiates, until it was time for us to return home. Most of the time I think Ah Kong was asleep and it was just mother and daughter in session, discussing the foreboding. That is, Amah was doing all the talking and my mother was doing all the listening. It was a strange oneway traffic sort of relationship. Amah was always nagging, chiding or demoralizing my mother. I think the bane of Amahs problems was that my mother was not born a son. And there was nothing my mother could do to remonstrate how she resented being blamed for Amahs hereditary barrenness. Soon the time came when Ah Kongs condition worsened to the extent that he had to be hospitalised. A few weeks later, Ah Kong died. My mother was at Ah Kongs side when he died. From my mothers account of his last moments, Ah Kong must have been prepared for or at least contemplated on or about his death. Close to his death Ah Kong was either in delirium or he had been communicating with the other side. More than once he had said to my mother I am going. I am going. The man is calling me. When my mother asked who was calling him, Ah Kong replied The man in green over there, by the door with the bright light. He is calling me to follow him. This anecdote slipped my mind until years later when I myself contemplated on the after-life after my own near-death experience, (when I had a life review), when unconscious during a heart attack. My mother, oblivious to her female and married status accompanied Ah Kongs body home. I was told that she sat weeping alongside his body all the way home to Ah Kongs house. This is at best old wives tales, or absurd superstition, which is the best way to put it, but whatever it is, Ah Kongs death was the preamble to a series of misfortune for my mother which later culminated in her death at the young age of 38. As she was no longer family, it was later speculated, she should not have sat in the shadow of death, that is, in the shadow of Ah Kongs dead body. Considering that Ah Kongs death was anticipated, given his terminal cancer, yet when he died, my mothers grief was immeasurable. She must have loved her father very much, in contrast to how she secretly detested her mother. I also think that Ah Kong loved her like a son. Yet, there remained many family secrets that have been kept hidden in the inner crypts and recesses of minds of people and witnesses that have all since died, locking away the truth in perpetuity. Even those who know of things second-hand are not inclined to open their mouths. Of all people, Ah Kong knew everything, but unfortunately or otherwise, for who is to judge, all the secrets about my mothers complex past died with him.
I will never get to know why my mother, the only child and daughter of the 1st wife of one of the richest man in the local community, and one of the few local girls English-educated at a Catholic Convent, was quickly arranged to be married to a poor illiterate Hakka. My father was a man almost ten years her senior, whose only credentials were that he was renowned or reputed in the neighbourhood as a very honest and hardworking man; a man who did not gamble, did not drink and did not visit brothels. Additionally, my father had previously worked as a foreman for Ah Kong, before he left to go out on his own. According to my mother, my father never failed to account for every single cent to Ah Kong. Ah Kong was so impressed that he helped my father start his own panel beating and welding workshop. I suspect that when Ah Kong unloaded my mother on my father, the honourable man that my father was, he had to accept, out of gratitude or debt for past favours done. One version of the basis for their marriage, (related to me recently by my foster brother Victors father, and which appeared plausible, unless one took into account my mothers strong personality), was that when the Japanese soldiers entered Kuala Lumpur during the 2nd World War, they were taking away single women, as comfort women. To avoid mishap, Ah Kong found it necessary to marry off my mother straight away to a man he could personally trust. And Ah Kong, knowing the reputation of all the local eligible men, (since he knew all the local brothel owners), found only my father untainted in character. In sharp contrast to Ah Nays funeral, Ah Kongs funeral was a grandiose affair, in line with his wealth and status, as one of the business leaders in the local Chow Kit/ Batu Road community. At the time of his death, he had progressed from being a trader and mechanical workshop proprietor to a building contractor. His coffin was gargantuan, (even for a wooden Chinese mooi-fah coffin), hewn and sculptured out of a single massive teakwood tree trunk. From a side elevation, the humps or ridges of the heart-shaped cross-section looked monumental. The wood was unpolished, (teak is a hardwood and termite resistant), except for painted patterns along the sides and top and bottom edges. Given the size and the numbers in the immediate family, there was a sea of black, blue and green mourners to denote the different generations. The wake was held over 3 long nights and days. There were 5 cooks continuously cooking for the neighbours, friends and acquaintances that came to offer their condolences. At the funeral wake of a wealthy person scrumptious food, (including meat), and drinks are offered, giving the mistaken impression of festivity, when this is not so. Ah Kong was a Taoist, and Taoist funereal rituals and exequies are the most cacophonous and dissonant of all Chinese funeral services; so strepitous as to make you wonder whether the jarring la-pahs (Chinese trumpets) were there to scare away evil spirits or to awaken the dead. In contrast Buddhist ceremonies are more sombre, with harmonious chanting of mantras and prayers. Also no meat is ever eaten at a Buddhist funeral, as this would be bad karma. Like at Ah Nays funeral, there were never ending rounds of ceremonies and rituals, being repeated ad nauseam. In between these sessions the younger mourners were obliged to keep burning inappropriately labelled hell notes, (imitation paper currency), and imitation silver and gold origami ingots. Another group spent the whole time folding these origami ingots. To this day I have no idea what the hell notes are for. Are they to bribe the hell guards to get the deceased out of Hell? Or, is there an assumption that all departing souls initially go to Hell to serve time in penitentiary, before being released to the other shore? On the second or third night, I cannot remember exactly when, there was the more elaborate burning of meticulously modelled papier mache palaces, cars, servants and other things, to ensure that Ah Kong would be leading a kingly life at the other shore. These were made from rice paper and bamboo. To give an idea of the size of these paper models, a car would be the size of a dodgem car, and the palace about 12 feet high. I am sure if this ridiculous idea ever worked, Ah Kong would now be living in celestial splendour. But back then, I actually believed as I was told.
Still, maybe it is the filial thought that counts. Perhaps it is just all a charade, the expected customary public demonstration of ones filial piety. There seemed to be a casual attitude towards the behaviour of friends and distant relatives at a Chinese wake. They were allowed to gamble - play cards and mah-jong (a Chinese game like gin rummy, played with domino like tiles). So, at Ah Kongs wake we had the mourners grieving around the coffin; and yet a few feet away, some of his friends, (who had dropped by to offer their condolences), were inexplicably gambling and jesting, (without a care to the funereal surrounds), as if, at an Irish wake. Ah Kongs funeral procession was like a State funeral. He was a local philanthropist and had donated generously to various Chinese schools, societies and trade guilds. But instead of the military or police bands at State funerals, you had marching bands from the various local Chinese schools and Chinese clan associations and guilds. All of these marching bands, (with epauletted and drilled uniformed bandsmen, and playing western music and western musical instruments), appeared somewhat insignificant and incongruous against the kung-fu loh-ku drum ensembles from the various local kung-fu associations (many being fronts of triad associations). By sheer volume of noise and the intuitive cultural affinity that the Chinese have for them, the kung-fu ensembles, (in their kung-fu outfits and brandishing multicoloured triangular kung-fu pennant flags, with their giant rumbustious tom-tom kung-fu drums booming away incongruously, with the equally raucous cymbals), were the focus and magnet of attraction. Pelting aggressively away at the huge tom-tom drum, with batons for drum sticks, to the traditional dragon and lion beat, each drummer could only last 15 minutes. Thus, there was a continuous rotation among the kungfu drum exponents. For this were power drumming, more befitted to ancient war games and dragon dances. The police had to be enlisted to help control the traffic jam, worsened by the hundreds and hundreds of curious onlookers, (which the racket drew in from the immediate neighbourhood), particularly Malays and Indians who have seldom seen such a private processional spectacle or public outpouring of grief. My mother and her sisters were crying their eyes out; their wailing was so touching and heartrending, that I was also crying, because my mother was crying. There were even strangers I had never seen, crying and sobbing. They could be the professional mourners hired to charge up the level of grief. The funeral procession, comprising the kung-fu ensembles, the hearse, the mourners walking and trailing behind, the marching bands, the relief vehicles, (supplying palmleaved fans, cotton towels, lollies, (tied with red strings), and (aerated) soft-drinks, (at room temperature!), to attendees), St Johns Ambulance crew, cars travelling in convoy, all stretched over a mile, as it made its way down Batu Road. At the destination, the cemetery, (which was located behind Loke Yew Road, and a stones throw from my alma mater Victoria Institution, the high school that I later attended), it was obvious that Ah Kongs burial plot was in an auspicious fung-shui position in geomancical terms. It was located on the face of a ridge, overlooking the valley below. More Taoist ceremonies were performed, firstly at the cemetery temple, to get the blessings of the guardian spirit of the cemetery, followed by various, just as equally incomprehensible, rituals and taboos at the burial site. I ignored various taboo instructions like (a) not standing in the shadow of the coffin as it was being conveyed up the hill, (b) turning your back to the coffin as it was being lowered, so that your spirit is not tempted to follow it down, and (c) keeping one of the coins, thrown by the Taoist shaman over his shoulders during the burial ceremony, as a talisman for spiritual protection. After the burial, there was the cleaning up and the sharing and parcelling out of leftover food. My mother however, was still weeping and it was very late at night before, my father took us all home.
For a few weeks, my mother was an unusual melancholic figure. Amahs more than frequent visits in these circumstances only made matters worse. I think it was from this period on that she began to resent Amah more and more. For one thing, Amah came more and more to ask for money. Having no sons and in fact no other children that were her own, she came to pester my mother more and more for money. My mothers misfortune, whatever the cause, began soon after Ah Kongs death. At or by the time of Ah Kongs death, my mother through her business acumen and also the fact that she was English-educated, (which gave her an advantage in an English common law environment), had acquired a 5 acre housing estate (at 3 mile Ipoh Road), 2 industrial estates (2 acres and 3 acres respectively at Setapak), and a couple of small rubber plantations (1 at Subang and the other at Ulu Klang). This was to be the pinnacle of her wealth. It was downhill all the way after that point. I must make it very clear that I am in no way being disrespectful to my father, when I credit the familys prior wealth to my mother. After all I am very much my fathers son, in nature and in character. When my mother was alive, I was the apple of her eye, and in that sense I was also my mothers boy. I should correctly say, the twins were the apples of her eye, but as between the twins, she had a very special place for me because I was born with a hole in the heart. Later, at University I was found in fact to have ventricular septic congenital defect. When Dr Leela, using her stethoscope, (those days that was the only medical device available), for auscultation, told my mother after I was born that I had only a week or two to live, she made offerings to various Chinese deities, and brought me up on birds nest, ginseng and other expensive Chinese herbal concoctions till the day she died. She considered me a miracle baby each day that I was still alive. I am the living testimony of her triumph against adversity. My father, the simple man that he was, never had the ambition or the drive to be rich. One should be contented, when one have food to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over the head, he would always say. Other samples of his simple words of wisdom are What you eat, what you wear, is all destined, A simple man has few friends, but he has no enemies. A show-off has many friends, but he also has many enemies. My fathers only indulgence, in his simple ways, was food. Not food in the sense of culinary delights of the rich, but just simple day-to-day hawker food. And some of his favourites were delectable but unhealthy Hakka peasant fare like pork trotters, belly pork and rice porridge with salted duck eggs. Some of the hawker food stalls he frequented were those frequented by poor labourers and trishaw pedallers. One favourite hawker centre of his was the one at the junction of Ampang Road and Church Lane, opposite the Len Seng Bus Terminal, and down the hill from St. Johns Cathedral. He would often eat like the trishaw pedallers, squatting on a stool, with an unbuttoned shirt and his cotton singlet rolled up to mid-chest, so as to keep cool in the afternoon tropical heat. He felt at home with the simple poor folks, and in return for their company he would generously pay for their meals. My father naturally became fat and rotund. One night out with mother for supper of Cantonese Crispy Fried Noodles at the hawker stall at Tai Shee Kiok (Beneath the Big Raintree), located at the corner of Pudu Road and Sultan Road, near Chinatown, my father suffered a heart attack at the age of 45. It was a year or so after Ah Kongs death. Halfway through the meal, my father thought he had indigestion from heartburn, so he went to the toilet. After 20 minutes, he was still in the toilet. My mother asked the shop assistant to investigate. When my father did not respond to the thumping of the toilet door, they bashed it down and found him unconscious inside. When my father was in intensive care, my mother went to khow chim (a form of Chinese augury) at the Chinese temple in Setapak.
Most Chinese temples in Malaysia are multi-denominational if not multi-religious. Thus within the Chinese temple, the altar is lined up separately with statues of Buddha, Bodhisattvas (like Kwan-Yin, the Goddess of Mercy and Tei Chong Wong, the Earth Store Bodhisattva), Taoist Gods and Deities and so on. The Moral Uplifting Society Temple, at 2 Old Klang Road, that father was a member of, has statues of Lao-Tze, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and a green crescent flag at the altar. Westerners who are ignorant of Chinese spiritual or religious culture often come to the mistaken impression that Chinese are idol-worshippers. On this basis Roman Catholics might also be idol-worshippers! Each devotee in a Chinese temple makes supplication to his or her chosen God or Deity. The procedure is quite simple. You say your prayers to the deity that you wish to seek divination directions from or intercession on your behalf with the Heavenly Father and then make your supplication known. You then shake and rattle a bamboo container containing a hundred or so numbered bamboo splinters until one falls out. You then check that the supplication had been heard by throwing a pair of crescent shaped wooden disks, like castanets, each with a rounded face and a flat face, into the air. Alternatively, you could use 2 coins. If it comes out head and tail, that is, a flat face and a round face, then the process is complete. If not, you repeat the routine until you do. Then you obtain a verse couplet written in ancient Chinese poetry, corresponding with the divined number (of the bamboo splinter) from the priest or the temple attendant. For a small reading fee, the priest or temple attendant will act as the augur and interpret the couplet against your supplication. In my fathers case the couplet referred to an episode in the Chinese Buddhist fable The Journey West, (about Tripitaka, Monkey, Pigsy & Sandy). My mother could not read Chinese characters. But when she heard the words - Chee Pak Kwai koh foh san i.e. Pigsy crossing over the volcano, she her-self knew my father was going to be better. Which, he did. He came out of hospital within a week. Like the rest of the family I was dreading for the worse. While he was not exactly the sort of father that you would hero worship or that you see as an ideal role model, (since most Chinese children of my generation and background wished for a clever, successful, rich businessman for a father), my father was however simple and kind and non-interfering and non-demanding. He never forced us to do our homework or to excel in anything. All he ever said was work hard and do not be lazy. If you did well, he did not praise you. He would just say - you must have been endowed to study. If you did badly, he would just say do not worry, we are all gifted in different ways. My father only asked that we children be honest and hardworking. He asked nothing beyond that. For him all other things were destined. I began to see the simple virtues of my father, when closed to losing him this first time around. I also became a bit more interested in my fathers strange spiritual ideology. For one thing, he had no fear of death. How often had he said when the time comes, the time comes, everything is destined. For an illiterate man, he seemed to know of things that educated men have no idea of or have no concern or time for. Maybe he was not being cynical, when he said You are born with nothing, you also die with nothing; you cannot take anything with you; even your bones you leave behind. My fathers near-death experience did not have the effect of making him make the most of his new lease of life; such as what others would term as to take time off to enjoy life, like splashing out on holidays, dress better, eat better and live like there was no tomorrow. He went the other way. He became quieter and more contemplative. He became a recluse. The only time he ever got excited was when his elder brother Ah Pak came to visit, which was usually to borrow money. And my father always obliged, like he always did, with whoever asked him for money, particularly if my father knew they were poor or needy. He even stopped rushing to finish his jobs before time. He refused overtime. He refused to take on new jobs if the workshop was full. And what was more apparent, he began to ignore my mothers nagging altogether. He stopped
pleasing her just to keep the peace. He stopped being a wallflower. He stopped sitting alongside my mother all evening, whenever her friends should come visiting. My father would sit outside under the moonlight, with a lit mosquito coil for company, and puffed away quietly and contemplatively, on his pipe until he retired for the night. Sometimes Aunty, the servant would keep him company, and they would reminisce of China and of Chinese history and folklore. My mother could do nothing but to explain to her friends that father had never been quite the same since his heart attack. And everyone then assumed that my father was suffering from some sort of dementia. I think the marriage had simply come down to what it was always meant to be from the beginning a marriage of mutual convenience. For my father it was, now, as long as I am not unfaithful, please stop bossing me around and nagging me; and accept me, as I am, an illiterate Hakka and all. For my mother it was, I am past 30, married with close to a dozen kids; this illiterate man is not much of an ideal husband, but he is an honest hardworking man, no other man will have me now, so I should stop nagging him or risk losing him altogether. However, equally, my mother was quite determined not to be deterred by my fathers new lack of interest in a wealthy life. To her, to live was to strive for wealth. It was always money, money, money. It was like a life mission to prove to her late father, Ah Kong, that she was after all the son that he always wanted to have from Wife No 1. Ah Kong, in his Hokkien sort of way, measured success by ones ability to make money. My mother had to prove her worth to her father, by his standards, even if she were to die in the process. It was heavy cross to bear, to be born a girl, when your father expected a son. To be unfairly blamed for anothers fate. Would Ah Kong have married a second and a third wife, had mother been born a male? So many unanswerable questions! So much anguish and disappointment by so much customary expectations! So mission-charged, my mother went around my fathers withdrawal from business life by employing more foremen and workers, and in no time even my father was relegated to the role of adviser and consultant, rather than the executive foreman that he was. I think, to be fair, having regard to all the new welding technology that were introduced over the years, my father was slowly out of touch with some of the new ways of doing things. Competition could not have come at a worse time. Many of my fathers senior hands, including Ah Ming, with his blessing, had gone out and started their own workshops. They were now in competition. If my father was no longer in charge, they had no reason to be loyal to the new foremen. My mothers greed for wealth was her eventual downfall. My fathers near-death experience opened her knowledge to the world of life insurance. This was then still an inauspicious thing to do for most Chinese. To insure against death was likely to incur the wrath of the gods and thus invite death itself. But when there was money to be made, it was taboo no longer. Just about that time, there was a life insurance scheme being widely promoted, which was later declared to be an illegal scam and prohibited by law. The life insurance scheme was labelled mushroom insurance, because the scam flourished like mushroom all over the country and the fact that it grew or lived off the dead. The legal loophole was the definition of the term insurable interest. Chinese customary law, when superimposed on English common law, meant that in an extended communal society, (like the traditional Chinese society), you could take out a life insurance policy on a distant rich uncle or relation; (as long as you could prove that you were financially dependent). There was no shortage of the postulant class of dependents in this cultural context. An ideal insured life was to be found, and ideally, someone terminally sick, with no western medical records, that is, someone who only believed in Chinese medicine. Following that, all you needed was for a promoter to tie in financiers to finance the yearly premiums. For this crucial role, the financiers were expected to get the cream of the insurance payout. Consequently, for almost 2 years I shared my bedroom with thousands and thousands of life insurance policies. With mushroom insurance they each took the form akin to a bank savings passbook.
When the bubble burst, financiers like my mother were left high and dry. She had borrowed heavily to invest speculatively in the scheme. My mother was thus faced with a cash flow crisis, since she was disinclined to sell any of her real estate to raise cash. She was brought up to acquire but not sell her real estate (unless she was upgrading). For in the traditional Chinese way, real estate and gold jewellery were the insurance policies against financial disasters. She started pawning her jewellery, but not her silk-cloth collection. But more ominously, of things to come, she started borrowing more money. Not in the conventional way, from established banks and the chettiars, (Indian caste of moneylenders), but from the piew wooi club, or in my mothers case, numerous piew wooi clubs. The piew wooi club was a traditional Chinese communal housewife financing arrangement; wherein a small group of women, (between 5 to 10), would meet regularly, (weekly or monthly or more, depending on how active or commercial the arrangement), to equally contribute a determined sum to a tontine pool. The tontine pool was then put up for loan to those within the group wishing to borrow. The successful bidder was the one offering the highest discount by secret ballot. As a simple illustration, say each members contribution is $1000. The successful bidder is prepared to accept $900 as full receipt of a $1000 loan from each of the other members, thereby offering a discount (or interest) of $100. So, if there were 5 members in the tontine club, you would receive $4,600 ($1000 being your own contribution); but you would pay back $1000 each to the other 4 members, in a pre-set number of instalments, in theory that is. In reality, there was a roll-over of the principal and you only ever paid back monthly or regular discounts in cash; which in a sense reflected the discount rate charged. It would have been very exorbitant when expressed as an annual rate! So in that sense, it was like bill discounting in modern banking parlance. There is a wooi tao (the club head), who kept the books of accounts and managed the pool or fund like a merchant banker. I suspect somewhere along the way, quite by accident, Amah introduced piew wooi to my mother. It probably began when my mother had to assume or pay off Amahs loans that Amah owed to some piew wooi clubs. This led mother to becoming a lender at various piew wooi clubs, and through these club meetings, she also got to know some of the rich housewives who were big time lenders, (and making side income without their husbands knowing). As fate would have it, the change in financial circumstances forced my mother from being a lender to a borrower at these piew wooi clubs. She might have even gone further, for I think she could have even borrowed directly from some of these rich housewives as well. In her financial desperation and stress, my mother became very hot-tempered and quite often physically violent. Since she no longer picked on my father, the family members, (except the twins), became her punching bags. The worse off were No 3 Son, (1 year older than me), and No 1 Daughter, (2 years younger than me). Both were subjected to constant belting with a rattan cane or slapping on the slightest excuse or provocation. At one stage she even tried to coerce No 1 Daughter to arrange-marry the son of one of the wooi tao; but No 1 Daughter vehemently refused. She was being a good English educated Catholic Convent Bukit Nanas schoolgirl! Mothers tantrums knew no bounds. She would start throwing things and objects without any concern for any injury that these missiles could cause. The workshop workers were not spared. They were often scolded and shouted at for the slightest mistake or delay. They dreaded the dragon lady. If you could only see some of them, supposedly triad gang members, (who were reputed to have maimed or killed in gang warfare), in total dread of the dragon lady, (in total trepidation and fear), you will understand the extant of my mothers strong personality and gross temper. If she had you in her sights for punishment, you could only hope and pray that the punishment would be quick and swift.
No 3 Sons fault was that a few months after Ah Kongs death, he had committed a hideous crime. For no apparent reason, No 3 Son, then only 11 years old, had poured a large pot of boiling water over Ah Ooh, (a workshop apprentice, and also a distant relative, the same age as him), while Ah Ooh was soldering a car radiator on the workshop floor. When asked why he did it, No 3 Son could only say he did not like the way mother was treating Ah Ooh more like her son then how she treated him. This was partly true, for my mother did outwardly treat her godsons or Hokkien relatives more favourably than some of her own children or my fathers Hakka relatives. For example, for some unknown reason, she virtually ignored the existence of No 6 Son. Years later, No 3 Son was diagnosed as having a psychotic personality disorder, and No 6 Son as suffering from schizophrenia. Such are the consequences of years of apparent mental abuse. I said that No 3 Sons raison dtre was partly true, in the sense that those who knew mother; knew that it was all a matter of giving face in a traditional Chinese society. My mother was prone to praising other peoples children, and belittling her own (except the twins) in public. In the case of the twins, when friends or relatives praised her for our academic achievements, she would say in false humility No, they are not smart really, they were just lucky in the exams. The Ah Ooh incident was never reported to the police. His family was financially compensated and Ah Ooh sent for medical treatment; and the whole matter treated as a family or clan secret, and hushed up. All I gathered was he suffered hideous injuries. It was rumoured that Ah Oohs family sought spiritual vengeance and got a bomoh [like a witchdoctor] to put a curse on No 3 Son or even our family. Mother, being superstitious could and would never ever forgive No 3 Son after that. And in a time of continuing bad luck for her, despair only led to more incrimination against No 3 Son, as possibly being the instigator of bad luck. I have still never understood why my mother treated my sisters badly. She treated them more like servants than daughters. They had to help Aunty, the servant, do the household chores like, sweeping floors, laundry, washing dishes, cleaning shoes and ironing. After all, my mother never had to do all these things when she was a girl. She had servants to attend to her needs, being a rich mans daughter. This is a very strange trait among traditional Chinese women, as if they despised their own sex. Sons are accorded a privileged status and daughters regarded as a burden. Luckily, my father compensated to some degree. The Hakkas by tradition treated their daughters highly, if not equal to sons. During the Manchu rule in China, the Hakka women did not bind their feet like the other Chinese did, or were forced to. And, during the Hakka led Taiping Rebellion, the Hakka women were renowned for courageously fighting alongside their Hakka men. To this day, the Hakka women are known as Woman Warriors, in the vein of the famous Hua Mulan, the Chinese Joan of Arc. My father gave no attention to the sons but instead, whenever my mother was not around, he would buy snacks for No 1 Daughter or gave her money to buy things for herself at the shops. She was my fathers favourite. My father would say If you do not want a wife who spends most of her time powdering her nose, go and marry a Hakka girl; she will fight alongside you all your life. My mother was Hokkien. She did not powder her nose either. Nor did she bind her feet. Maybe the relevant attribute in particular that my father was referring to in a Hakka woman was fight alongside, and not henpeck like my mother did. I never ever met any Hakka girl to fall in love with and marry, when I was of marriageable age, so I do not know whether such Hakka girls as epitomised by my father actually exist. A couple of years after Ah Kongs death, and for reasons not known to me we had to move from the workshop in Batu Road to a new house which my father had built at our 3-acre industrial estate, off Pahang road, at Setapak Town. I think it was to do with some city regulation against having a residence within a workshop in the city. It was probably time to move on in any case, since there were now 10 children in the family. The old house with only 2 small bedrooms was getting overcrowded. And another baby was due. By bicycle, the new house was only 30 minutes
from the old house, so I was barely moving out of my childhood hunting grounds in Batu Road. Pahang Road was a continuation of Batu Road, heading northeast. To get into the industrial estate from the main road, (Pahang Road), my father built a mile-long meandering access road through a Malay kampung. It was a fairly large house with 5 bedrooms, a large lounge and had a very large kitchen/dining area. The house was on a separate allotment and separated by internal roads from the dozen or more factory buildings that my father had built in the industrial estate and rented out to tradesmen like a tinsmith, car-painter, motor-mechanic, carpenter and joiner etc. It was sort of a mixed industrial complex. One large warehouse building was rented out to a guano (bat droppings) factory; part of which was later sub-let to a motor-cycle helmet factory. So on certain days, depending on the wind direction, there was a certain faecal stench in the air. The western boundary of the industrial estate was the convex side of a bend in the Gombak River. There was therefore a small cliff-face at that boundary line. North of the river bend, there was a pedestrian bridge across the river, which took you to the Indian village of Sentul, on the other side; where I later resided as an adult in the 90s. Whether it was Ah Oohs curse or my mothers miang sui (destiny), in the new house we found ourselves in the hands of a poltergeist, or if Aunty, the servant, were to be believed, there was more than one of these evil spirits. No wonder my mother had managed to buy the land for a cheap price! The locals would not go near the place, for it had been used by the Japanese as an execution centre. It later turned out that our new house had been built directly over the area where the Japanese beheaded Chinese insurgents and guerrilla fighters during the Japanese Occupation (WW2)! The Japanese had chosen this location for an execution centre because it was some distance away from the main road and the nearby cliff-face was a convenient point to throw dead bodies into the river. It was Aunty who first noticed the strange happenings or demonic manifestations. Her bedroom windows would open and shut on their own volition, even when there was no wind. The kitchen door would open and shut at night on its own, with a creaking noise, even though the door and hinges were brand new. At first, everyone thought Aunty was imagining things in her old age. Her bedroom was at the rear of the kitchen, and all these strange things were in her part of the house. Then one night, a few weeks after we had moved in, and everyone had or just about retired to bed, we heard the local dogs howling eerily in concert, in the way you see coyotes howling in Western movies. I have of course heard dogs howling at night before this. It was explained to me then in early childhood that this was an indication that there was a death in the neighbourhood. So I was and had been accustomed to dog howls. But the pack howling I heard this time sent shivers through my spine; making my body hair stand on ends and my skin goose-pimpled. For someone who, until that stage, was never afraid of the dark, (for I used to enjoy torch lighting for rats and cockroaches and spiders, and the best time to catch these vermin was in the dark), I was a nervous wreck. I ran out of my bedroom to see Aunty switching on all the lights. From that night on we slept with the lights on in the veranda, kitchen, lounge and all the common areas of the house. Aunty later made some discreet enquiries at the neighbouring Hokkien Chung Hwa Chinese village, and thereby found out about the areas horrid, gruesome past. She also found out the canine howling regularly took place 2 to 3 times a month, but that it had got worse since we shifted in. My mother gave birth to my brother Aw Ling (Black Dragon), a few months later. No 8 Son was born quite normal and healthy, except that he was very dark-skinned like me. So unlike the other siblings who were fair by Chinese standards, (taking after my father), Aw Ling and I were darkskinned like my mother. I often wondered about the racial background of Amah, my maternal grandmother, for she was quite dark for a Chinese and she had crinkly Negroid-type hair. But Aw Ling got his name only partly because he was dark. Before his first month or moon yuet, which the Chinese regard as the first birthday, he became very sick with some kind of tropical fever. Before giving birth to me, my mother had lost another son. But he was stillborn, which perhaps
did not count as a birth. Otherwise I would be No 5 Son instead of No 4. As mentioned earlier, my mother almost lost me, when I was born a blue baby, because of a heart defect. My mother must have gone somewhat psychosomatic with Aw Ling. She was untypically attached to Aw Ling. No 7 Son, born 15 months earlier, was simply left to Auntys care, the day he came back from maternity hospital. As he was a healthy boy, he never came to my mothers attention. Aw Ling however was very sick, and his crying pulled on some inner motherly heartstrings, that only a mother could understand. Maybe Aw Ling must have reminded my mother of me when I was a sick baby, and like the case with me, she was not prepared to have a baby dying on her. My mother went to khow chim at the Chinese temple and came back sullen and withdrawn. Whatever the divination couplet said I will never know, but it was certainly not good. Aunty must have advised my mother not to give my sick brother a proper name, in accordance with Chinese customs, but to simply to call him Aw Ling to deceive the evil spirits. A proper Chinese name is normally chosen and given, taking into account the Putt Chee (the 8 digits signifying the time and date of birth), and incorporating the surname and a generation name denoting the branch of the family. Thus my full name is Cheok Hong Chuan; Cheok being the surname or clan name, Chuan being the generational name and Hong my own designated selfidentifier. All my brothers are some sort of Chuan or another. Hong Chuan means Great Waters or Distinguished Mountain Spring to be exact. Aw Lings fever got deliriously high despite medication, both Western and Chinese. In the end when he expired away, no one was sure whether it was Western or Eastern medical procedures or otherwise, that might have been responsible for his death. In his last few hours before being taken to hospital, Aunty was covering him in thick blanket, to make him sweat more, so as to cool him down, a preposterous idea unless you think in a Chinese yin and yang kind of way. At the hospital, he was placed in an ice bucket, the Western medical procedure to bring his temperature down. He died soon after from pneumonia without gaining consciousness. In her grief, my mother could only and illogically take and accept the blame for Aw Lings death. Both my father and Aunty were unanimous in their belief that the ice bath caused the pneumonia, which killed him. They had an inherent suspicion of Western medicine and procedures after that. I do not know where Aw Ling was buried nor did any family members attend his funeral. Under Chinese custom, you do not attend the funeral of somewhere lower than you in genealogical rank. Aunty, as the surrogate mourner, attended to the funeral and burial. Aw Lings death refocused my mothers and the rest of the households attention on the possibility that the death was caused by evil spirits haunting the house. A week later, Aunty came scurrying back from her late evening walk, pale as a ghost, but otherwise quite composed. She said she saw the apparition of an old man with a protruding forehead, with flowing long white hair, in ancient Chinese costume. He was holding a walking stick with one hand and in the other he was holding the hand of a little boy. My mother was terrified until Aunty explained that it was a good apparition as it was probably the famous Taoist Heavenly Saint, (whose name I cannot think of at the moment), leading Aw Ling to the other shore, instead of Aw Ling lingering around like a lost soul or spirit Amidst all the trepidation and fear of evil spirits or the supernatural, by supposedly the entire household, it appeared that Aunty and father were not in any real sense afraid or otherwise fearful of our diabolical tribulation. From their equanimitous behaviour, I concluded that Aunty, like my father, did not fear death. Listening to bits and pieces of their secret discussions, they did not appear to talk of moving away from this haunted house or about exorcising the spirits. They were instead talking in terms of how to appease the spirits and alleviate their (i.e. the spirits) sufferings. My mother, was not however of the same mind. It was one thing for her to believe in Chinese fortune telling, but another thing when it came to treating demonic spirits that killed her
beloved Aw Ling with compassion and sympathy. Her Catholic convent education, when brought to bear, told her that the only way to deal with evil spirits was to exorcise them. There was none of this nonsense of treating them like lost or deluded souls, and to help them get their proper bearings to the other shore. Ironically, she did not call in a Catholic priest. Instead, the Taoist Na Mo Loh (Shaman) was called in. A Taoist exorcism ceremony is even noisier than a Taoist funeral ceremony. It is certainly more theatrical and full of intriguing mumbo-jumbo, for here the shaman was compelled to show off his prowess in wizardry. There were 2 ceremonies one during the day and one at night. Whether they were quite separate ceremonies serving different purposes or comprised in the same exorcist programme, I do not know. The day ceremony itself was divided into 2 components. The first component involved the consecration of a shrine at the rear of the house, basically outside and adjoining Auntys room and the kitchen. The shrine, dedicated to a deity called the datuk-kung, was in the form of an altar enclosed in a kennel-like structure, all painted in red. The altarpiece comprised of a porcelain figurine that looked like native Malay, since it had a songkok (like a fez without the tassel) as headwear; and before it a large joss stick bowl and 3 small tumbler teacups. This datuk-kung represented the spirit of the local surrounds, in this case the industrial estate. The second component was the cleansing or blessing of each room of the house. The Taoist shaman was dressed in sacramental Chinese robes of bright red and yellow and was wearing a headgear that looked like a graduation mortarboard without the tassel; except that the front part of the mortarboard was longer and protruded forward like a cap. With one hand he was holding a book, which he referred to, as he continuously chanted out incantations, (in an unrecognisable, ancient Chinese dialect); while intermittently ringing the little brass bell that he held with the other hand, (in between stanzas). 2 disciples or acolytes, similarly dressed, (except that their robes were plain black), assisted him. One was beating out a woody chanting rhythm with two handpieces of bamboo, while the other kept harmony clanging 2 brass cup-like cymbals, (that gave out a tinkling sound, like a percussion triangle). Both provided the vocal chorus when the shaman came to the end of each verse. In the consecration ceremony, an offering of fruit and cooked food and rice wine was made to the datuk-kung. In the cleansing ceremony, in each room of the house the shaman would burn a foo, (a small yellow rice-paper scroll enscriptured with red propitious arcane Taoist blessings in Chinese writing). The night ceremony took place entirely outside the house. There was a cast iron wok-like receptacle, which the shaman and his disciples encircled while reciting, chanting and otherwise conducting their exorcism rituals. Every now and then foo and other types of paper talismans, papier mache caricatures and ingots were set alight and thrown into the receptacle, followed by the sprinkling of unidentified powder or liquid. When this happened the receptacle suddenly burst out into sparks and firewheels or into a large ball of fire. The shaman would at certain points in the ceremony jump over the receptacle, in one instance almost setting alight his robe. All these took place in the dark; the only lighting came by way of the red candles on the trestle table where the shaman stacked all the joss paper and other paraphernalia used in the ceremony. Consequently, the ever-shifting shadows and the flickering candles, together with the blazing bonfire that sprang up every now and again, under the command of the shamans thaumaturgery, all conjured the impression of a spellbinding interaction or discourse with the spirit or nether world. The ceremony reached a crescendo when the shaman set alight a huge packet of firecrackers, with the objective of chasing away any lingering evil spirits for good. Things did return to normal, and days turned to weeks and weeks into months, and soon almost a year or more had gone by. I was spending less and less time at home, even during the weekends.
I had in my last few years in primary school, got hooked on reading through the encouragement of one my teachers at Batu Road School II, a Mr Vincent De Paul Dicom, and was now gradually spending more and more time at the various public libraries, (U.S.I.S., British Council and City Council), in town. Having my own bicycle meant I had independent means to travel to these public libraries even though we now lived out of town. Books opened up new worlds of adventure for me to explore. I had started with the Famous Five and other Enid Blyton series, then progressed to Biggles, Inspector MacLean and Billy Bunter, but was now into Shakespeare and other classics (at least the abridged versions). At times I would be going through a dozen storybooks a week. Any spare time was now expended on sports, in particular, badminton and table-tennis, and to a lesser extent, soccer and rugby or listening to pop music. I had in adolescence become infatuated with Elvis, Cliff Richard, Everly Brothers, The Platters, Johnny Tillotson, Ricky Nelson and others; thus graduating from Patsy Cline, Perry Como, Tony Bennet, The Mills Brothers, Frank Sinatra and others, that my mother preferred. I was so thoroughly absorbed in and totally lost to my newfound world of unlimited knowledge to enquire about, and new experience to be gained, and speculative ideas to explore, that I hardly noticed nor was I concerned about my parents and the rest of the family. In turn, on their part, my parents left the twins alone in their scholarly pursuits, for unlike the elder children the twins were winning academic prizes each year. Neither parent wished to discourage or in any way stifle our natural enthusiasm for academic learning. Neither were they ever worried about me mixing with bad company, as my best friends at school and outside school, given the large extended family and Batu Road neighbourhood kinship, were my cousins and kit pai hing tai (foster brothers), offspring from my mothers childhood neighbours in Batu Road. Essentially and in totality we were all scions of Soon Co., (my maternal grandfathers family), or Yuen Co., (Victors maternal grandfathers family). Soon Co. and Yuen Co. were the 2 largest business houses in the Batu Road neighbourhood, in my mothers childhood. With the advantage of hindsight, I can see now that I started to lose my parents when I started High School and others outside the family then became my teachers and mentors. Soon after shifting to the new house, a point came where I was no longer around them, studying and observing, and watching them as the principal protagonists in my little world. They were no longer at the interface of my life. At this phase of my life, when I woke up, they were still asleep. When they came back at about 10 pm at night I was already asleep. The Batu Road workshop closed about 7 pm. But friends and relatives, including my maternal grandmother, would only visit my mother at the Batu Road workshop. Word spread fast that our new Setapak house, off Pahang Road, was haunted, so nobody ever visited us there for fear of spiritual contamination. Consequently, my parents stayed back at the Batu Road workshop if they had or had to have visitors. On a 6 day working week, any possible contact with my parents was during Sunday and even these were far and few in between because of my other extracurricular interests. For on Saturday nights I had started staying over at my maternal grandmothers house at Batu Road with my maternal cousin Boon Hooi. But when I did catch up with my parents, out of necessity to get a school report signed or to ask for pocket money, my mother was always full of loving praise, pride and admiration. My father was however more reticent or in his usual reticence. He usually did not go beyond a reminder to continue to work hard. I also found out about my parents from Aunty, who now became a dinner companion, and daily newscaster, for she kept me updated on the going-ons in the household. Thus I found out that my father spent most of his Sundays at the local Cantonese restaurant called Loke Fatt at nearby Setapak town, smoking, chatting and eating dim sum with the old folks of the small local Cantonese community. It was good for my father that he had found an affinity group, for he never really felt at home with the Hokkien Chinese. The Hokkien Chinese were however in the majority all around and outside Setapak Town, in neighbouring Sentul, Gombak and Ayer Panas (Hot Springs).
Then the spate of bad luck began again. This time it was a fire. One night we all woke up to cries and screams of Fire! Fire!. The factory building opposite our house was on fire. This was the building containing the wood joinery, tinsmith, motor mechanic and motor-paint shops. The fire spread like an inferno through the zinc-roofed wooden building. The presence of petrol and diesel oil, and paint cans probably caused the fire to spread rapidly like a conflagration. By the time the local fire brigade came and put out the fire, 80% of the building had been gutted and razed to the ground. It all took place in less than 30 minutes. We were lucky that an internal road acted as a firebreak, thus stopping the fire from leapfrogging to our house. Had the fire brigade not been stationed only 10 minutes away, the fire could have spread to the neighbouring Chung Hwa Hokkien village. The building had been insured but apparently my mother had not paid the current premium. Further, although the loss adjustor had assessed the fire as due to an electrical fault, he had also queried as to whether the electrical wiring had been professionally done, i.e. by a qualified electrician. Luckily we had been doing business with China Insurance Co. Ltd. for many years. My mother knew the management of the insurance company well, as my father was one of their approved motor repairers. The Chairmans son was also my classmate, since Primary One. My mother agreed to settle on a reduced payout. This meant that she had to procure additional funds to rebuild the factory building. This put her into further debt. She took the opportunity to build a bigger building as a warehouse, with the objective of securing more rent. As fate would have it, this new large spacious warehouse was soon to be her funeral parlour. A few months later, my mother gave birth to another son. Like Aw Ling, he started to get sick just before his first month. This time Aunty advised against using an auspicious name like a dragon. Aunty suggested that Aw Ling had ended up having an 8 (a lucky number), as the No 8 Son, and a dragon against his name, which meant he still attracted the attention of evil spirits. So my mother called No 9 Son - Ang Kow (Red Dog). In Hokkien kow (dog) and kowh (nine) sounded almost the same. She must have thought no evil spirits would come near a child with such a ridiculous name. She was wrong. Ang Kow died in a matter of days. Maybe like 8 Red was auspicious? He did not even make it to the hospital to die there. He was to be one of those dead on arrival statistics. As with Aw Ling, Aunty saw to the funeral arrangements, and nobody in the family attended. I was not to have any contact with Aw Ling and Ang Kow again until 1981, when in events that I have to relate in another episode, I attended their ghost weddings in Singapore with my father and my twin. I do not know what Auntys excuse this time was in relation to Ang Kows inauspicious name, which might have turned out to have an element of auspiciousness with the Red. Maybe, the colour Red, an auspicious lucky colour should not have been used. But how do you double guess the evil spirits when they are out to get you? In looking back, I think this second time around, my mother lost her will to fight, even before it began. She was not even overly anxious as to whether Ang Kow would live, when he was in delirium and high fever. She appeared to be prepared for or resigned to his eventual death, as if she had a premonition. I cannot explain this change in mother since Aw Lings death. We had grown apart, or strictly speaking, I had somehow grown apart from her. I had not bothered to keep attune to her business trials and tribulations since the mushroom insurance fiasco. She might have been to a few more fortune telling sessions, but what these augurs foretold I shall never know, because I had stopped asking her about anything occult that she had been up to. My natural inquisitiveness was now diverted to Western culture and things otherwise foreign to Chinese culture. From a Western point of view superstitions and idol-worshipping were heathenish and uncivilised. She had also in her own way become more introverted and depressive and despaired in her spate of misfortunes. I had sometimes wondered subconsciously, whether I was being academically studious, so as to hide in another world, one which protected me from my mothers depressive tantrums. For, by performing well academically, granted me immunity from the anger and wrath
that she often let off on the rest of the family, particularly No 3 Son and No 1 Daughter. Another possible factor could have been that Mr Dicom, my mentor, (who introduced me to Western education and literature), had also introduced me to Roman Catholicism, and as a result of this religious indoctrination I was beginning to be ashamed, embarrassed or felt inferior of being or of many things Chinese. Funny, how in life, things often seemed to be better on the other side, or the grass seemed greener on the other side of the hill. The Christian West seemed to be better off and more superior than or to the East, when you are in the East. When I later settled in Australia, it did not take me long to see how things were, for me, conversely, really better in the East. Or was it nostalgia or a longing to be with ones own kind? After Ang Kows death, my mother had to admit that she was unable to defeat the poltergeist or whatever evil spirit or spirits that had been troubling her in the new house. She decided that we should vacate the new house. And so, we shifted nearby to the third floor of a 3-storey shophouse in Pahang Road, in Setapak Town. And, conveniently for my father and me, as things turned out, the new house or apartment was 150 metres diagonally opposite the Cantonese Loke Fatt Restaurant. It was also convenient in that the Reddy Medical Clinic was just downstairs and bus-stops were nearby. I disliked the new, my third, family home for various reasons. One, was that, for a large family, we were now crammed into 4 small bedrooms. All the 4 bedrooms put together was less than 2 bedrooms of the 5-bedroom house we had shifted from. Moreover there was no front-yard or backyard to provide for overflow, in terms of household effects or personal space, when you need it to hide in a corner or to pursue a hobby or two. It took some time to get use to sharing a limited space, for everybody and everything seem to collide with each other. Next-door now meant the people behind the common wall next door, rather than the next block. There was only enough room to cook in the kitchen. From the largest room in a traditional Chinese house, the kitchen was now the smallest. It had something to do with Western architectural design. Obviously Western culture and home-life do not centre on and around food and the dining table. Now meals had to be delivered and then taken in the sitting room; rather than immediately in or near to the kitchen. Secondly, there was the ever-constant noise of the passing motor traffic and people. For Pahang Road was the main highway from the East Coast to Kuala Lumpur. The noisiest vehicles were the logging and rubber trucks; and they often passed through in the middle of the night. Thirdly, Son No 2 had got married soon after we shifted to the flat. It was an arranged marriage forced upon my mother by my maternal grandmother. The latter wanted one of her grandsons from her bloodline to get married. She wanted great grandchildren. She had a few eligible distant Hokkien relatives from Jinjang New Village in mind. My 1st Brother was ineligible for various reasons, one being he was an adopted child. I will delve into the other possible reasons in some other episode about my 1st Brothers sad, forlorn life as an adopted child; and his search for identity and quest for belonging. It is enough here to say that I missed my 1 st Brother dearly, since his death. I cry every time I think of him and about how he had been mistreated; particularly by the usurper 2nd Brother. My 2nd Brother complied with my mothers and my maternal grandmothers wishes. He flicked through the assortment of photographs he was given to choose from, and we ended up with our 2 nd Sister-in-law. She was my maternal grand-aunts daughter-in-laws sister. She spoke no English and further spoke a type of rural Hokkien, that we city Hokkien found rustic and quaint if not otherwise sort of uncultured. We would have accepted her if she was just simple and plebeian. But she turned out to be a viper in disguise. All the appearances of shyness, modesty, and humility of a virgin bride soon disappeared after the wedding. She would scheme and tell tales and continually conspired with her maid, (one of her
first selfish demands), to cause conflict in the household, every opportunity she had, but of course my poor love-smitten 2nd Brother was too blind to see. She had him entirely under her thumb, (or by the balls as father had described it). My mother could only curse in silence, when she found out how poisonous my 2 nd Sister-in-law was. It caused her further depression beyond words, for she had gone into further substantial debt, throwing one of the grandest wedding celebrations ever within the clan. Given the size and extent of her family and clan, and to impress all, particularly the brides family, the over 500 guests had to be accommodated over 2 nights at the Lee Wong Kee Restaurant in Batu Road. This restaurant is no longer operating, and if it was would already have been heritage listed, if the Government were but a Malay Administration. It was the premier Chinese restaurant and wedding venue in Kuala Lumpur in the 40s right through to the 70s. In any case, Chinese traditional marriages within the clan are not marriages that you can rescind for breach of warranty or misrepresentation. It was strictly caveat emptor unless the bride was found not to be a virgin. But the person, to whom the marriage mattered, my 2nd Brother, was in any case very happy with his prize. As a consequence, (the only avenue available was to put up with the conundrum), whenever my 2nd Sister-in-law was around, we (the siblings) all spoke English, as a form of passive remonstration. My father in his simple way, only had this to say Brothers remain brothers only until they get married and their respective wives are friends. So beware! For, if you chose the wrong wife, you may end up breaking up the family. From that time onwards, my 2 nd Brother remained as such to me only as a matter of formality. We were no longer brotherly in spirit; but merely in form for public consumption. I hated the tensed atmosphere in the Pahang Road flat at Setapak. Of all things, I hated the sight of my 2nd Sister-in-law and her false hypocritical cheerful demeanour, pretending that nothing was amiss and that all things were blissful around her. This only made her sardonic malevolence more malign and sadistic. Seeking the only way out of this pressure box, I soon adjusted to the change in the domestic circumstances by simply coming home only to sleep. I became like a vagabond. I resorted to staying back and finishing homework at school before returning home at dusk. So instead of studying at night I now spent most nights at the local cinema, (called Alhambra), up the road, or watching people play mah-jong or gambling at the Loke Fatt Restaurant. Other nights, I started going over to my maternal grandmothers house at Batu Road to hang about with cousin Boon Hooi, often returning home by the last bus to Setapak, which was at about midnight. During the school holidays I was staying more nights with Boon Hooi at Batu Road than at home. I also started to mix more and more with bad company, although to me or towards me they were not necessarily bad, since they were in main cousins or relatives or kit pai hing tai (foster-brothers). My mother remained unsuspecting as I kept winning academic prizes and I was not mixing with strangers. After all I was only keeping company with scions of Soon Co. and Yuen Co. We were thus family, for good or bad. Batu Road where I grew up was not an area that generated academically smart kids. 50% would fail Primary 6 (High School Entrance) and then start work. Another 30% would drop off at Form 3 (Lower Certificate of Education). Another 15% dropped off at Form 5 (O Level). Only 5% made it to A Level or Matriculation, and even less to University. Naturally, many of the drop outs progressed to joining the local triad gangs, although the majority were only informally associated, in the sense that they did not get formally initiated into the triads through bloodoaths before Kwan Kung, (the Deity of Business an ancient Chinese General who was elevated to a demi-god because of his prowess). I was even more on the fringe, not actively involved and yet protected, because I was cheh kei yun, (one of us). Nonetheless, I must admit to having benefited from free meals and soft drinks, when I tagged along with my maternal No 6 Uncle, (who was a tax collector), when he made his monthly rounds of the local eateries to
collect protection money. In a sense there was a quid pro quo; for once in a while I was asked to interpret Government notices or commercial documents written in English for some of these Chinese-educated traders. With cousin Boon Hooi, I was also part of a graffiti gang called The Ramblers. This delinquency had nothing to do with the mainly Chinese educated triads, for they found it meaningless to do something that did not generate money. It was only the English-educated teenagers, who were caught up in the 60s pop culture of pop bands, rock n roll and long hair. We scrawled The Ramblers on bus seats and lampposts around Batu Road, hoping to advertise ourselves as a pop band and singing group, in the manner of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Shadows and The Ventures. We were not the only graffiti artists, by any means. But one noticeable thing was that there were no Chinese graffiti. All the graffiti were in English. Of course, we were living in our little dream world of Western-educated youths, for most of the neighbourhood were Chinese educated and more were attracted to Mandarin pop songs and kung fu and samurai film stars. For someone English educated, other than a continued personal interest in western pop music, I too succumbed to the Chinese triad culture and daydreamed of becoming like the yakusa gangster hero character Hak Soon Foong (The Black Whirlwind) portrayed by the actor Akira Kobayashi, and of having a girlfriend like the shy and demure Sayuri Yoshinaga. In terms of heroic fantasy, just like the Chinese-educated youths, the swashbuckling kung fu or samurai sword fighting of film characters like - The One-Arm Swordsman, Shintaro and The Blind Swordsman enthralled me. The only Western movie stars that came close to being desirable heart-throbs, through Chinese eyes, were Audrey Hepburn, for her petite, demure, innocent pixie-like looks, and Audie Murphy, the World War 2 hero turned actor, for his representation of the tenacious and courageous Robin Hood type character in his ever so many cowboy movies. One Saturday night, when I was barely over 14, (in this period where I was living away from home, more than at home, and in a time of lost delinquent youth and dangerous flirting with the triad world), my mother died. She was 38 years old. I had just returned home after a bus trip to the seaside at Port Dickson with Boon Hooi and the usual gang of cousins and foster brothers. We were all in a tremendous partying mood, (having sang Beatles songs all the way back in the chartered bus), and had scheduled, (to regroup after cleaning and dressing up), to party up another Hard Days Night, (which was the top tune that week), at our usual triad haunts in Batu Road. At about 8 pm, (when I was in the bathroom), my mother was rushed to hospital, (for stomach pains), at the insistence of the doctor in the Reddy Clinic downstairs. When I came out of the bathroom, I was told to rush down to the General Hospital, (down the road, at the junction of Pahang Road and Batu Road). When I got to the maternity block, I saw Boon Hooi there and some of my maternal uncles and aunties. Boon Hooi told me my mother had died, apparently from childbirth complications. She was only 6 or 7 months pregnant. I must have gone into a virtual state of shock, for I cannot remember very much of what happened from then on until the day of my mothers funeral, (which took place 3 days later). I have no detailed recollection of my mothers funeral wake, other than fuzzy images of endless days and nights of sobbing and crying. I vaguely recollect that her gargantuan ornate wooden Chinese mooi-fah coffin, (similar to that of Ah Kongs), was laid in wake at the new warehouse building, (and built after the fire at our Setapak industrial complex). However in my grief, I still had a sense or awareness of the huge crowds of people coming to pay respects, (for my mother was more widely known than even Ah Kong), and also the magnitude and scale, and the noisy hustle-bustle, of the funereal rituals and ceremonies. I think my father, following his odd belief in seeing morality and spirituality or the Ultimate Truth in all the various doctrines, gave mother the benefit of Taoist, Buddhist and Christian exequies. Now I know how my father felt at Ah Nays
funeral. I do still picture my mother in her ornate Chinese mooi-fah coffin with her regal Chinese costume and all her jewellery strewn in her coffin; for we were instructed to say our last goodbye before they sealed her coffin. Living in an apartment meant there was no room to have the wake located at home. Luckily we had this warehouse, just nearby to the house. I am often reminded by relatives that the funereal ceremonies at mothers wake were more elaborate and the number of people who attended to offer their condolences outnumbered those at Ah Kongs wake; and that her funeral had more bands and was just as or more stately than Ah Kongs. Sadly for me, I cannot remember the exact full details of the ceremonies nor who all the wellwishers were nor of the funeral procession; as I can with Ah Kongs funeral. But using Ah Kongs funeral as a reference mark, I am comforted that my father gave my mother a regal sending off; whatever it might have cost him financially. My father was a very good man in that sense. He showed that he loved mother; more than we could ever appreciate. As to the intensity of grief and remembering details, it might have been different, were my mother to have died after a long illness, for in such a scenario, one would have been somehow prepared for the eventuality of her death, and be more accepting or accommodating. Her death came so suddenly and unexpectedly, that there was no time to even make remissions or seek forgiveness for not being filial son. True, I have not been a bad son, in the sense of having brought shame or dishonour like Son No 3, or domestic disharmony like Son No 2. However, my unforgivable offence was to desert my special position as a favoured or adored son. I had stopped being around to sing songs to my mother when she was depressed or lonely. I had stopped being around for her just to take as an object of pride and comfort and to make her laugh with my inquisitive sense of logic and humour, as I did before I became an adolescent vagabond. Did I not make her laugh when I said quite innocently that I was dark-skinned because my father and she made me in the dark? Did I not bemuse her with my supposedly academic absent-mindedness, when I left the brand new Raleigh bicycle that she awarded me, at the barbershop, and not realising it until a week later, because I was too absorbed in reading comic books? Did I not pleasantly shock her when I audaciously teased that she should not have married my father, for how could an educated woman marry an uneducated man? In not fully understanding her imponderable personality of hating some of her own children and yet loving others or why she could have allowed my 2 nd Sister-in-law into the family, and many, many more incomprehensible situations of stress and conflict at home, I had chosen to escape from home in my own way. In my guilt I felt that I had deserted my mother in her moment of need. For weeks after her death I remained in shock from utmost uncontainable grief and guilt. She would never be around to test me as to whether I would love her more than my wife. Yes, my mother, I love you more than my wife as I expect my wife to love her mother more than me. True, sons and daughters can marry again but you can never ever replace your parents. As I said, my mothers funeral procession, I was told, was as grand, if not grander than Ah Kongs funeral procession. The funeral motorcade left Setapak Town and took nearly an hour to get to Batu Road on the way to the new Chinese cemetery between Cheras and Sungei Besi. It was a very hot day, and I felt the sweltering heat in my black mourning attire, having walked the entire distance from Setapak to Batu Road. Then the inexplicable happened. When mothers funeral hearse was directly in front of Ah Kongs house at Batu Road, and exactly at that point, there was a sudden downpour of rain. And no further than 50 metres after that the rain suddenly stopped. To this day when relatives talk about my mothers death they still refer to this strange phenomenon, and describe it as my mother shedding tears, as a filial gesture, to my maternal grandfather, or to her birth-home, on the way to being buried.
Immediately after my mothers funeral, there came speculations that she took her own life. These speculations could have started immediately upon her death, but out of politeness were not brought to my familys attention until after the funeral. After all, she had died rather young, and not from any existing illness. One rumour was that she had committed suicide. My father had told the doctor at Reddy Clinic that my mother had taken some strange Chinese concoction for tummy ache, before she was taken to hospital. Daughter No 1 confirmed this, but the medical report as to the cause of her death said complications from childbirth. There were rumours floating around that she owed a lot of money and that this somehow had something to do with her death by suicide. My father himself confirmed that my mother had borrowed money for my 2 nd Brothers wedding, but said that the loan was from the Indian chettiar (moneylender) who was also the rent collector for our housing estate at 3rd Mile, Ipoh Road. The loan was thus secured by the future rental income therefrom. Some said she died to get away from my maternal grandmother. My mother could not take her monetary and other demands anymore, not since the fateful misarranged marriage of my 2nd Brother. My father said that he had no idea about the tontine loans that my mother and my maternal grandmother were both involved in. He was never informed of the details nor did he want to get involved with my maternal grandmothers affairs. Some even suggested that my 2nd Sister-in-law was a bad omen and had something to do with my mothers death. This was a highly sensitive speculation and was thus only mentioned in secret whispers among us when my 2nd Brother and his wife were not around. For my 2nd Sister-in-law was quick to assume the role of the motherly figure in the household, without any attempt to seek our opinion or our wishes on this matter. She was to be the new Matriarch. For those siblings who had suffered under my mothers rule it was a case of from the frying pan into the fire. But the one speculative rumour that raised my eyebrow, and to put it into a proper chronological perspective, this version came many years later, was that of the poltergeist at the house that we had abandoned at the Setapak industrial estate. The evil spirit or spirits concerned simply would not let mother have any more children and thus took Aw Lings, Ang Kows, unborn Son No 10s and in addition also her life. These lost souls or spirits of those Chinese beheaded by the Japanese must have had un-vindicated vengeance on their mind. Ah Kong had apparently profited greatly from the Japanese Occupation. He had been a Japanese collaborator in a broad sense. This was one reason for his wealth. As a merchant, trader or supplier, and therefore on a commercial basis, he had supplied the Japanese Army with food and material provisions and even procured the repairs and maintenance of their army vehicles. He had also arranged comfort women for the Japanese top brass with his connection with the Batu Road brothel owners. My mother apparently had even learnt and spoke Japanese, and acted as translator for Ah Kong, using a mixture of Japanese, Mandarin and English. I was attracted by this last version, for it does take a familiar turn similar to story plots found in Chinese ghost stories that I have heard over the radio or seen at the movies. The day after she was buried, my mother came back. She probably came back in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep. Daughters No 1 and 2 and I, had half expected some spectral appearance. We thought that the return might be evidenced in the form of foot imprints, which was why we had sprinkled talcum powder at the front door and in front of the ancestral plaque or altar that we had established to pray to my late mother. Instead mother came back as a butterfly moth. She was a very large butterfly moth, about the size of a mans wallet. Although She did not have the beautiful fluorescent green and blue of tropical Rajah Brooke butterflies; She was however regal black, brown and white, with wavy edges along her wings. She parked herself on her bedroom wall, near her dressing table, and stayed there stationary and
motionless for exactly seven days. And then She disappeared as suddenly as She had come, again probably in the middle of the night. Life was never the same without my mother, and particularly with my 2nd Brother taking over the administration of the family business and properties in a coup dtat. I presume that the fact that my father was not against primogeniture facilitated the coup. Through sleight of hand, my 2nd Brother got my father to sign whatever documents in English he put in front of him. One reason given was to escape death duties, if something should happen to father. In this manner my 2nd Brother became the new owner of all the family properties. For my father, illiterate and alienated by the changing and developing world around him, could not cope with the legal demands of estate and probate administration. My mother had died without a will. With my 2 nd Sister-in-law wielding the real power behind the throne, my father and the rest of the family were soon enslaved by my 2nd Brothers meagre monthly largesse, which he petered out to my father, as if to a beggar. Being financially subjugated to a son he knew was completely under the thumb, demoralised my father beyond all of what he thought imaginable, after having been belittled throughout his marriage to mother. When later my father heard that the Americans had landed on the moon, even his remaining Chinese spiritual world fell apart. My father, very anti-American because of the Vietnam War, simply decided we should no longer pray to the moon, which we used to do on Chap Goh Meh (15th Day of the New Year) and during the Moon Cake Festival. Then, thereafter came the doldrum drudging teenage years of my life. I barely knew where I was in life or where I was going and what I was supposed to aim or aspire for. With my mother gone and my despondent father, him-self lost in his own clouds of ineptitude; the new emperor, my 2nd Brother was in charge. He was more concerned about his new family than his siblings or our father. I can categorically state that my 2nd Brother would epitomise non-filial piety or filial impiety. During this period my 2nd Brother moved all of us to Setapak Gardens, a new housing development, off Gombak Road. Gombak Road turns off from Pahang Road. So now we were 5 miles away from the previous apartment in Setapak, at Pahang Road. My 2nd Brother and his family lived in one house [I forgot the house number] and the rest of us lived in P-11. The 2 houses were about a stones throw distance from each other. I shall not speak further familywise of this period; for I lived outside the house more than in the house. My refuge was with Boon Hooi and home was at my maternal grandfathers house; more often than not. A year or two later after we shifted to Setapak Gardens, and given the financial and mental oppression at home under the new, my hen-pecked 2nd Brothers, administration, and with my fathers acquiescence, my twin and I shifted out to stay with our foster parents, at their new house at Gurney Road. They too had shifted out of Batu Road. My foster-mother and my mother were Batu Road childhood friends and neighbours, and their fathers were respectively the Patriarchs of Yuen Co. and Soon Co. of Batu Road. From that point onwards, my Batu Road foster brother Long Shin [Victor], the only son in a family of 10 children, became closer to my twin and I, then my maternal cousin Boon Hooi. We had all grown up together in Batu Road, one large group of 10 to 15 Batu Road cousins and foster brothers, but as we got to our mid-teens, logistics and other reasons had forced us into groups within a group, the larger group convening only on Saturday nights. Victor, who was the same age as my twin and I, had gone through Kindergarten (Prince of Wales), Primary School (Batu Road School II) together with us, and now we were living together and also attending the same High School (Victoria Institution). The true impact of this shift of residence was that my twin and I basically left home and moved into another family, one with its own colourful story to tell, probably in another episode. After that point in time, I never ever lived with my father again; I only visited him or spent casual time with him. On these occasions, as a filial son, I never queried or questioned him about the merits
or demerits of past family dealings. Intuitively, I knew, through his eyes, he still saw me as a little boy; and I reciprocated accordingly, by just listening and acquiescing to everything he had to say. Most times, he would sit silently and puffed on his pipe. My father died years later from another heart attack, at the age of 69, while waiting for a bus at Pudu Bus Terminal, and coincidentally, just a 100 metres from his first heart attack at Tai Shee Kiok. This time however my mother was obviously not around to save him. I flew back from Australia, the next day for his wake. My father was placed in a walnut-coloured, Western-styled cedar wood rectangular coffin, with a glass window, dry ice and other modern features like chrome-plated railings. That night, with all the family members kneeling around his coffin, a large 3 inch verdant tropical green giant grasshopper landed on the head end of the coffin, just above the glass window, and thus just above my fathers head. The grasshopper sat there still and motionless, glued to the coffin. It was to sit there for nearly 4 days, not departing until my fathers coffin was being placed into the back of the funeral hearse, at the start of his funeral procession. We had to wait for my 1st Brother to come home, to say goodbye to our father. My Father struck fear into my 2nd Brother and my 2nd Sister-in-law upon his sudden appearance and protracted presence. While the other family members showed facial expressions of grief, the two of them showed worried frowns of trepidation and fear. I could almost hear my father whispering to me If you do nothing wrong, my son, you have nothing to fear, not even death or the ghostspirits. I came to a newfound realisation that I really do not know who I inherently was, am or will be. How am I to know? With a grasshopper for a father and a butterfly moth for a mother! Vince Cheok Cendol - Recipe from 101AsianRecipes.Com Cendol recipe is a famous Malaysian dessert recipe. All cendol recipes showcase strands of green coloured cendol which are added to a generous portion of shaved ice, coconut milk and brown sugar syrup which is made from gula melaka. Cendol is not only a popular sweet Malaysian dessert but also a popular Singaporean dessert and Indonesian dessert. Red beans and grass jelly are optional additions that can be added to the cendol recipe. Ingredients for Cendol Recipe 150 g green pea flour (lek tau hoon) 1 tablespoon alkaline water (kan sui or lye water) 20 pieces of pandan (screwpine) leaves Gula melaka syrup tablespoon salt 2 large coconuts Red beans How to make Cendol Rinse pandan leaves with running water. Cut pandan leaves into 6 cm lengths. Put pandan leaves into food blender. Add 570 ml water. Liquidize the pandan leaves. Use a fine sieve to strain the pandan juice. Pour in the alkaline water. Soak green pea flour in 29o ml water for one hour in a saucepan. Pour in the pandan juice. Cook mixture and stir well, continue stirring until the liquid becomes thickens and shiny. Make sure you do not overcook the pandan mixture. Remove from saucepan. Press the pandan dough through a wooden cendol-maker frame with quick short strokes into a basin filled with iced water. The recommended distance between the wooden
cendol-maker frame and the surface of the water should be 15 cm. This distance will prevent the cendol strands from becoming too long. Allow cendol strands to harden for eight minutes. Rinse cendol strands to prevent the cendol strands from sticking to each other. Grate the coconuts. Squeeze the grated coconuts into two litres of boiled and cooled water to obtain the coconut milk (santan). Add the salt and chill in the refrigerator. Put cendol in a serving bowl. Add shaved ice to fill the bowl. Before serving, pour in the santan, gula melaka syrup and red beans on top of the shaved ice Malaysian Cantonese Fried Noodles Recipe from malaysiandelicacies.blogspot.com Ingredients 300g yellow noodles or flat rice noodles (cut into 1.5cm thick strips) 70g chicken meat, sliced 3 medium prawns, shelled A few thin slices of fishcakes 1 tbsp oil A few drops of sesame oil 1 tsp chopped garlic 1 egg 3 stalks mustard greens, cut into 5cm lengths Marinade (A) A pinch of salt 1/2 tsp corn flour Dash of pepper 1 tsp egg white 1 tsp oil Seasoning (B) 1 tbsp oyster sauce 1 tbsp light soya sauce 2 cups fresh chicken stock 1/2 tsp chicken stock granules 1 tsp sugar 1/4 tsp salt or to taste 1 tsp Shao Hsing Hua Tiau wine/red wine (optional) Thickening 1 tbsp corn flour 2 tbsp water Method Put the noodles in a wok and add a little oil. Fry briskly over high heat until heated through. Dish out and leave aside. (If using kway teow [flat rice noodles] add a bit of light soy sauce.) Lightly season the chicken pieces with marinade (A). Heat oil and sesame oil in a wok and saut garlic until lightly golden. Add in marinated meat and prawns. Fry well, then add in seasoning (B) and bring to a boil. Put in mustard greens and add thickening. Turn off the heat and break in the egg. Give it a quick stir and then pour the gravy over the noodles.
Serve immediately.

Deaths in The Family

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Deaths In The Family