An Affair To Remember

My affair with India began in the mid 60's, deep in my dormitory days. Life without smartphones and Facebook was tough. Physics and Chemistry classes were stressful, what with teachers talking mostly to themselves. What did we do for rest and respite? For some of us, watching Hindi movies and listening to Hindi songs.

It's strange for a country of one billion creative and enterprising people, the music industry was dominated by only three  names: Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. We could match songs and singers as early as the first note. The movie industry was more vibrant, but everybody in my school wanted to marry either Sharmila Tagore or Saira Banu. I remember a  friend who memorized 20 Hindi songs, quite a feat without YouTube. Ask him on the periodic table and he'd stumble every time.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I keep a playlist of twenty-five old Hindi songs in my Samsung, with my favourite, Main Gaoon Tum So Jao (from hit film Brahmachari), right at the top. Just a tap away if ever need a nudge of nostalgia.

I went to India early this month and didn't come back.

Well, we did come back. But for two weeks after, we were suffering from flights of flashbacks. We just couldn't stop replaying and reliving the terrific times in Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, Indias's famed Golden Triangle.

With me on this trip were the usual suspects: wife, a fine-looking brother-in-law, his loving wife, and three active sisters-in-law. Seven of us. Another active sister-in-law pulled out a day before we booked our flights, citing work commitment. I've lived long enough, so it was easy to see that she'd actually succumbed to second thoughts.

Since we didn't use travel agent, we'd to apply Indian visa on line on our own. It was expensive (RM 350 apiece) and complicated. We'd to provide our mothers' names for no reason and we'd to repeat all over whenever it crashed. All seven of us were digitally blind, so I'd to get my busy son to do all seven visas in between his day job. It was so tiresome that he kept asking why I didn't go to Korea instead. We booked hotels and transport and drew our own itinerary. Fun and flexible, this is our normal way of travelling. Except that India isn't normal.

I'd my own qualms and questions about India. The rampant India jokes and horror stories spread by friends and bloggers were scary and deeply depressing: water, toilet, food, air, people, traffic, scams,  snakes, you name it. Going by these rumours alone, the only conclusion I could draw was: if I go to India, I'd die. I didn't want to die in India.

But the lure and  temptation was great and hard to resist. Those Hindi movies and Hindi songs and Kajol, India can't be all bad. So I'd to rely on my instincts. My sisters-in-law, like all sisters-in-law of this world, had no instincts of their own. They wanted to share my instincts.

I thought it was one of my best decisions to go ahead. If Bossku could pull it off, we could pull it off. India is incredible beyond my wildest imagination. The colour and texture are gorgeous to the last pixel. Its sights and sounds (and smell, don't forget) are dazzling.  The people are diverse, friendly and fun. We came back and kept casting back.

The names Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Rajasthan would conjure up the unmistakable images of mad Maharajahs, British viceroys and Moghul emperors. They're no longer with us, but their vestiges are still standing for us to savour and wonder. Magnificent forts, palaces, mausoleums and monuments are strewn all over the place, a testament to human endeavours and excesses.

Unlike my previous travel tales, I'm not going to write a lot. I'm going to post pictures instead, with captions and commentaries that might persuade you to include India in your bucket list, if it's not already there.

Now let's roll:

New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport was surprisingly tidy, orderly and quiet (this is already India, remember). The only hitch was the passport clearance where we 'd to stand up facing the  immigration guys, all of them were Indians (this is India, hey). We'd to get all our ten fingers scanned and stored in Indian cloud. The machine was so slow that it took 15 minutes to read all ten fingers. Where were all those Bangalore IT champions when we needed them? 

Nuts drive me nuts. I've lost lots of teeth due to nut-chomping. Do you know the best place in the world for nuts? Kim Yong market in Hatyai. My pulse raced at the sight of this hawker peddling bright, colourful nuts outside the Gandhi Memorial. It's a kind of Indian snack called Bhelpuri, a concoction or rojak of nuts, dhal, tomato, lime juice and water. Water!  I circled the cart four or five times trying to decide whether to buy or not to buy. This was my first morning in India, and I saw the word DIARRHEA hanging high. No. 
         

Haha this is highly hilarious. This cute auntie was attempting the old, boring "touch-the-tip trick" on the Qutb Minar, and the result was a total disaster. Looks more like a clumsy classical Indian dance move frozen in time. Who's to blame for this flop? The husband, if you asked me.

Now you see how the true and tried professional aces it. You could feel the flair and artistry. If not for the slight underexposure, National Geographic would've scored this shot 5 star. I'm not sure whose camera was used, but I suspect my brother-in-law's antique Galaxy S2.

Humayun's  Tomb, New Delhi. I'd no slightest idea what this 16th century world heritage site was all about until I was right inside. Apparently it's a mausoleum or memorial or monument or whatever for the Mughal Emperor Humayun,  the great-great grandfather of Shah Jahan, and this elaborate structure was a forerunner to the ultimate structure, Taj Mahal. It was built by his grieving first wife named Bega Begum (real name).  You can Google if you're interested in the other wives and why they weren't grieving.

Our hotel in New Delhi. It was a Bed and Breakfast run by two Kashmiri Muslim brothers in an upscale locality called Green Park in south Delhi. Don't be motivated by that "Upscale" bit. It's all comparative. This was still very much part of Delhi and India, same air and water. But the place was comfortable enough with good water filtration system so that we can wash and brush our teeth with confidence. Breakfast? What breakfast?

Masjid Jame' New Delhi was a sad state of affairs. Located in Old Delhi, this massive Mughal mosque can accommodate up to 30,000 people at one time, and only one time in a year (Idil Fitr). It looked rundown, like nothing had been done since 1650.

A bird's eye view of Old Delhi and old couple from Masjid Jame'. I don't know what bird, must be quite dead by now. Joke aside, Old Delhi is chaotic, crowded and noisy and we'd to navigate our way  around on death-defying rickshaws. I'd never seen so many Indians in my entire life (This is India, stupid). In hindsight we should've spent at least one night in this Old Delhi area for an authentic India experience. 

Amber Fort, Jaipur, was a riot of red clay and sandstone. The morning crowd was thick, half of them were traders and touts hawking local bric-a-brac to the other half, tourists like us. Price typically started at 3,000 rupees before settling at 300 after brutal haggling. This Hrithik Roshan dead ringer was supposed to scam and rip this auntie off with his beads and bags and bangles. But this clever auntie, a  seriously low-cost traveller,  turned the table, and I quickly shot this lovefest. From his telltale smile, you'd guess he wasn't all that excited. She'll turn 60 next year.

This is the Taj Mahal in Agra. You know it. One of the most photographed and painted building in the world. The sight literally stopped me on my tracks. I'd seen the picture countless times, but nothing compares to the real thing. So pure, so perfect, such a joy. No words are enough. It's unbelievable that men could achieve this.   

There's no better place to renew your vows and commitment, and reboot that long-lost fire, passion and drive. This senior couple were doing just that. How long will it last, you ask? I guess it would be business as usual as soon as they're back home. But at least they tried.
               

Let's do a Di. This young auntie did her best to reprise the Lady Di at Taj Mahal iconic pose. She'd prepared well for this, shelling out all of RM 35 for that red jacket at a bundle in Balakong. She certainly needs to perk her poise and composure to close in on the late Lady. Try harder.   

We bumped into this group of seven free-spirited Malay girls in Jaipur. Nothing peculiar about them except that they'd never met each other before this trip. They were Facebok friends who met for the first time at KLIA boarding gate. Apparently this is a growing trend among young, shoe-string travellers who'd travel in groups to minimize cost. Being cost conscious myself and tired of travelling with sisters-in-law, I wouldn't really mind joining this group on their next trip. But when one of them asked me "Pakcik dah berapa hari kat sini?" I just dropped the idea and decided that I'd better off travelling with sisters-in-law.

The long hours of riding the four-wheel drive up the Amber Fort, haggling with hawkers, avoiding the touts and converting tens of thousands of rupees was taking its toll on our physical and mental shape and state. My knees were creaking.  One of us mentioned vertigo, another complained about ringing in her ears, and, of course, headaches and migraines running through this family for the past ten generations and next ten generations. But the moment our transport dropped us all at this shop, lo and behold, all the illnesses disappeared like magic, gone for good.

Prices were ridiculously cheap. But we'd bought only 75 kg of luggage for our return trip on extortionate Air Asia. So I'd to keep reminding them not to buy the whole shop.   

Hawa Mahal, Palace of Winds, the famous pink-painted landmark in the heart of Jaipur, the Pink City. Splendid architecture, cool air and beautiful people, Jaipur was a real delight. You must visit.

One of the little pleasures of travelling for me was reading street signs. Well, not exactly street signs, but all the notices, warnings, wordings and signs at airports, hotels, monuments, shops, toilets, just about anywhere. China is notorious for mangling the English language. Its quirky and hilarious English notices and signs are now a tourist attraction and part of its GDP.

Travelling through Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, it's hard to find even one English blunder. The explanatory notes on the Moon Gate at Amber Fort above are straight and simple, with no spelling errors. The Gandhi Memorial on the right showcased the life stories of the late champion of humanity in poignant black and white images. Reading the accompanying texts and footnotes was an exhilarating exercise. Articulate, expressive and eloquent, it's English in its full glory. Kudos, India.

I'm not sure whether security or employment was the major issue at Indian airports, but I was stopped seven times by seven different people at seven different points at Jaipur Airport,  from the terminal door all the way to the aircraft door. My boarding pass was checked and chopped seven times, and I could barely figure out my seat number. So I was glad and relieved to finally reach my seat, although I still kept my boarding pass handy and ready just in case. This is India, you'll never now.

And then there's this street music to refresh and remind us of the amazing India experience. I was overcome by the music the very first time I saw and heard it from our tuk-tuk on the way to  Johari Market in Jaipur. One of my sisters-in-law somehow had the instinct to record  the procession. I'm used to lush studio orchestra music by the likes of Shankar Jaikishan or R D Burman in Hindi movies. This live music by Ashok brass band maybe rough at the edges, but it's sweet and pleasing. And it's free. Listen and enjoy.


 


       

Kelas Dewasa

I'm quietly celebrating the first anniversary of my Kelas Dewasa.

It's Arabic class. This time it's different, I can promise you. No, it's still Arabic language, not Arabic dancing. But unlike the normal, garden-variety Arabic classes where you've to memorize each Arabic word and its sex (male or female, not that sex), this one only teaches you how to translate and understand the holy Quran in a literal way. That's all. No note taking, nothing to memorize, sans textbook, zero homework. Repeat after me: no homework. I just have to show up twice a week in my beat-up Crocs.

This is my third attempt at Arabic. Each of my previous attempts imploded in self-proclaimed martyrdom after two weeks of brain fog and manic depression. I've been holding on to this class, braving it out, and as soon as I realized it, it's already one full year. I've somehow managed to navigate, adapt and finally learned to live with it.

Previously I just read the Quran. Now I can read and (faintly) feel it. I'm serious. I can now declare that I know Arabic. I  can tell you the meaning of Hum, Kum and Thum. Three words out of 70,000 words in the Quran. Some way to go admittedly,  but you've to start somewhere.

But why Kelas Dewasa? Because we, the students, are technically and figuratively dewasa.  We're late bloomers, where late here means really late. I'm one of only two "boys" in the class. The rest are mothers or grandmothers or both mothers and grandmothers. Just like the proverbial roses, we were conveniently conspicuous, and easy pickings for the teacher every time he was high on a sadistic streak. 

It's either me or Rashid (the other boy), but mostly me (you guessed it). The teacher would scream "FAIL, FAIL" before we could scramble up some semblance of an answer. But the ladies,  man, they're always so clever, I mean, they asked lots of clever questions and the way they vocalized and translated the verses, so smooth and dynamic, with all the right tone and pitch. I'd never felt so uneducated.  

Religious classes everywhere are dominated by the fairer sex. My wife attends classes three days a week, and three days a week I've to buy and manage my own lunch. I've no major issues with this creative disruption. She deserves a rest after thirty-five years of sustaining my food chain. But it begs the obvious question of why ladies are partial to religious classes.

Is my wife intellectually more curious than me? Is she turning to religious classes to fill some social and cognitive void that even a good-looking husband can't meet? Or maybe, just maybe, I'm already promised bidadaris in later life, so I can ease off a bit and let my wife fend for herself? Too philosophical. I hope somebody is doing a PhD on this.

For me this Kelas Dewasa moniker comes with a whiff of nostalgia. It brings back fond memories of my childhood days in the old Tanah Melayu in the late fifties. Yes, that long ago. The great wisdom of our founding fathers had found it urgent and expedient to educate the people, and mooted the novel idea of Kelas Dewasa (compare that with their progeny who are now busy enriching their wives).  It took the fledgling country by storm, and in no time Kelas Dewasa simply popped up almost everywhere, even in rural Kelantan.

I was still running around unshod and unbuttoned, and Kelas Dewasa had to be my favourite past-time. Watching the proceedings from the windows, Kelas Dewasa would make my day everyday. Fully-grown adults struggling with the alphabets, ribbing one another and clutching for fresh air, it was a riot every time.

Now back to my very own Kelas Dewasa. I don't have the age statistics, but I'm very sure everyone else in the class, the teacher included, are younger than me. But thanks to Tun, "old" is back in fashion and, like him, I can walk and talk in class with a swagger. He he.   

I know your idea of a Kelas Dewasa teacher is young and sweet Roseyatimah in Pendekar Bujang Lapok (pic above, blurred for effect). Our teacher is not like that. His name is Johari, Ustaz Johari. He's a teacher like no other. To the adoring ladies he's Ustaz Jo, or is it Joe? To him, we're all his students and we're all old. So, he teaches us on a no-fear, no-favour basis.

For some reason, he's not very forthcoming about himself, probably to preserve that Ustaz aura and mystique, leaving the ladies in the dark about his age, education, wife or two. The only clue he's ever volunteered is that where he comes from, people speak English. Yes, he has a huge sense of humour. No surprise he'd call our class Kelas Dewasa every time he'd to repeat something. "Every time" here means many times and "something" is many things. I can imagine his exasperation, so who can blame him. We took this jibe in our stride, seeing it as nothing more than his flippant way of motivating us.

       

Ustaz Jo, or Joe, speaks his mind, and takes no prisoners, if you know what I mean. Everybody is fair game. He'd get any of us to repeat twenty times or more if he'd to. Against this force of nature, my 35 years of corporate culture and soft power count for nothing. The trick here is to forgo your ego and gung-ho, and things will just fall into place.

His hard-driving and military method is a radical departure from the modern-day psychological and soft-sell approach built around overrated Malay sensibilities. His teaching style is founded on the simple premise of "Ingat, Lupa, Ingat, Lupa, Lama-lama Ingat". So he drills and grills us to death. You'd go back home all drained but you'd come back the next day asking for more. Our hardworking Minister of Education should have a look at this teaching technique. Forget Finland. Come to USJ and watch Ustaz Jo in action. 

I hate to admit it but the teacher is one reason why I'm staying on. Please don't let him know this. Let's not allow him to swell and spread with the pleasure of knowing that his abstract art of teaching is working, at least for me. Arabic is no cakewalk. But in his hands, it's fun and surprisingly joyful.

The class is lively and littered with his wisecracks, dark humour and his life stories. I can now count three favourite stories he'd relate to press home his points: his early Arabic class, his first date (aka RM 50 note), and his late friend with a Lamborghini. Nothing wrong with these heroic tales, except that our great Ustaz would replay and reproduce them every other week. By now any of us in the class can repeat the stories with little or no effort. Well, everybody has a weakness or two, even a teacher with so much expertise and experience. I'm not sure whether it's deliberate or late-life lapses. Either way, I guess age has just caught up to him, too. Kelas Dewasa sounds so right.    

           

sCambridge

I'm not a fashion follower. My exposure to sartorial performance is limited to flashes of Neelofa on Astro and Nurul Izzah on her rounds. Regardless, I still think that YB Yeo Bee Yin, picture above,  is ramping up her style to a new level. What would the fashion industry call the garb or gear she's just got herself into? I'd call it hideous. On a bad enough day it might even qualify for cross dressing. What's her statement here? I'm cool? I'm hot? I'm going to Puchong?

YB Bee Yin, you're already aware, is our Minister of Science, Climate Change, Plastic Bags and other fancy stuff. That perhaps accounts for the minimalist, carbon-free look. She did her postgraduate in engineering at University of Cambridge, the best university in the UK, if not the world. Impressive. But her fashion sense is so uninspiring that it's hard to imagine why anyone else  would want to be associated with Cambridge.

You can imagine my dismay and disbelief when the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs was recently exposed as a bogus Cambridge graduate. He and his political party were, understandably, vilified and berated nights and days on end. The clamour and commotion triggered by this scandalous discovery is piling ever more pressure on the drifting government already creaking under the weight of constant cluelessness and daily volte-faces.

The so-called Malaysia Baru or Baharu, whatever it means, isn't going to fall any time soon. It'll need more than a factory degree to bring it down. Why? Because we Malaysians are a forgiving lot. We've been brought up in a culture of chicanery and shamelessness. We're so used to frauds and ruses that a minister's misreporting of his degree and alma mater is but a blip. The issue has been blown beyond belief only because the opposition Umno and their corrupt types are short of useful ideas.

Strange as it seems, plenty of positives can be drawn from this episode,  and plenty more in due time. For starters, the fallout has upstaged and buried the Bossku burlesque, at least for a while. Nothing numbs your brain more than the sight of an ex-PM with forty-two (or is it forty-seven?) criminal charges rubbing a kapchai and feted by hordes of abhorred Mat Rempits and bought Umno gangsters. A Cambridge scam smells like fresh air.

The general Malaysians still value education. A pleasant surprise, really. Not just any education, but education from fit and proper universities with physical locations and country codes. A degree from Siberia is OK. A degree from Cyberia is not. I'm not sure what has actually happened in the unfortunate Deputy Minister's case. Did he intentionally plan to pass off his Cambridge degree as the Cambridge degree? Hard to tell, but I don't think so. Probably he didn't know what and where Cambridge really is to begin with. He thought Cambridge graduates had all studied at his Cambridge. The more I see it the more I think it's a misadventure, or an honest mistake on his part. It's a mistake, yes, but at least it's an honest one. Funny, but who really knew. But what we now know is that he didn't manage it very well when the question came, dithering, pussy-footing, and finally leaving it to PM, who was too busy with Samurai bonds.

From now on all politicians and aspiring ministers will think twice about puffing up their degrees and qualifications. Those who are already ministers have to come clean fast before they get found out. In fact, the lovable Minister of Defence has loudly proclaimed what everybody had  long suspected: he was an ITM dropout. Two ministers have, this is funny, declared that they are NOT graduates of any particular university or any university. When was the last time you heard a minister protesting his own academic achievement? The Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng's purported professional accountancy qualification has now been questioned to the very last date and  detail. Bossku ditched his kapcai and wrote to Nottingham for a copy of his scroll to prove that he is actually the genius, and not Jho Lo. 

All in all, we're in for honest-to-goodness politicians. No more quacks or charlatans from Belfords or Prestons. This can't be a bad thing. This doesn't mean that we're going to get only ministers with Cambridge (UK) degrees. Certainly not. We'd still get non-graduate ministers, but who cares as long as they are exactly what they claim to be. Better still if they can cook.

A minister is typically surrounded by a pageant of highly educated and informed advisors, inexplicably called secretaries since the imperial days. It was reported that the office of Minister of National Unity and Social Wellbeing, for example, has no less than five secretaries (all Indians) to advise the minister (an Indian). With so many advisors, who needs a degree from Cambridge in UK or anywhere?

A quick comparison among the current crop of ministers should reveal very little or no difference in performance, regardless of where they got their degrees (if any). For some fun, let's compare our Deputy Minister of International Trade, a graduate of Cambridge (UK) with our unfortunate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, a graduate of Cambridge (somewhere else). Do you notice any difference in performance? Do you notice any performance? They, like the rest in PH cabinet, are really not doing all that much. So all this bother and brouhaha about fake Cambridge is a sheer waste of time.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a graduate from a prestigious and famous and old university as a minister. On the contrary, I'm all for literate and articulate ministers. Listen to Noh Omar and you'll realize the urgency. Singapore cabinet are all Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard for a reason. A minister with a good degree is a good headstart for any government. The concern here is the overly obsession with a degree as a measure of potential competency. The culture of high performance is so entrenched in Singapore that even a UMK graduate should make a good prime minister. UMK is Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, in case you asked.

So where's all this finally leading to? Apparently something closer to home and heart. My eldest, yes, my very flesh and blood, is doing his part-time post-graduate degree at Cambridge. I'm all for good education and strong legacy. Now all this fuss and furore over fake Cambridge, maybe it's time for, quite literally, some reality check. My son's not a deputy minister, not yet, at least. But I still think it's good money to call him over and start a frank conversation. I've already compiled a list of clever questions, like, Why is this not full-time? Is the vice chancellor a Nigerian prince ? Does this  alleged Cambridge have GPS coordinates? 

I'll let you know.     




 



      

     

         

    

               

The Empty Chair

It was one fine mid-morning in late August when the news broke: My English teacher had  died.  

Everyday, somewhere, an English teacher passes away. But this is not your everyday English teacher. Mr Tan Teong Leong was my school's leading light and a true champion. That his passing triggered an immediate outpouring of grief and tributes from all corners of the country is a testament to a near-cult following among his ardent students.

He was a teacher like no other, delivering with passion and aggression, as if English was more than life and death. I've to admit that the things I now read and write owe in large measure to his  tenacious teaching and selfless single-mindedness. His brand of breathless old-school English will keep burning bright and shining on us like the proverbial eternal flame.

I was blessed to have him as my English teacher from Form Three through Form Five at my school in Tiger Lane, Ipoh. Mr Tan had been teaching here since January 1958. I'd never know exactly how many students he'd trained by the time he retired in 1993. My guess is three thousand, give and take, who'd since grown up and flourished in their chosen careers. Teachers, soldiers, lawyers, ministers, doctors, I could fill a page, easy. Some are famous, some are rich, and some, like me, are retired. But whoever or whatever we are, we share one common denominator: our English teacher.

I'd very much like to claim that I know everything there's to know about him. But I actually know very little, or maybe nothing. All I know is that he was our English teacher. He was physically unimposing to begin with. The standard was pretty high at the time when Kirk Douglas ruled the box office. But his coiffed hairdo and crisply pressed white shirts, matching dark pants and sharp shoes were all hallmarks of a teacher and a gentleman with a fine taste and an obsession with detail.  He wasn't an enigma in any way, it's just that his relentless English energy seemed to precede and obscure everything else. So we took him for granted. It's like we'd known him enough and all only from his English classes.

Learning a language is no walk in the park.  But in Mr Tan's hands English language was livelier than Liverpool Football Club. The tortuous subject came alive as he pulled us through the full glory, intricacy and insanity of the language. He'd dazzle us with puns, word-plays and double-speaks, and end his class with something for us to take home, you know, some wacky words, like "onomatopoeia". Go ahead and Google if you're too old to remember anything. You'd hear his purrs and hisses.

The mere mention of his name among us old boys would tease out a tale or two. We'd occasionally flounder and fall like an English patient, and as to why he didn't get that sweet and twisting pinch patented remains a burning question to this day. 

Despite his verbal riches and his vibrant way with words, he'd favour simple and straight English over the complicated and contrived variety any time of the day. Once I tried to show off with the flashy "dilapidated" in a Form Five composition. He struck it out with screaming red ink and scrawled "old" in its place followed by five exclamations. I could imagine him up in arms and yelling and stabbing an imaginary me with all his mortal might.

Evidences and anecdotes of his love and mastery of the crazy language are plentiful. But for the most persuasive, look no further than an articulate textbook he'd authored, entitled  "English Reading And Comprehension". A dull, pedestrian title, if you asked me, but he was an English teacher, not a marketing guru. I'd urge the hardworking Education Minister to make this gem of a book a mandatory English reference for students, lecturers and all ministers. 

The gift we'd inherited isn't so much in what he'd taught us, but the way he'd got us all turned on and sexed up by the language. I wasn't exactly a poster boy at school for the earthly reason that I didn't play Rugby or break the triple jump record. So most teachers only knew me by sight (not pretty, if I'm honest). But Mr Tan got my name right every time. I had the feeling that he quite fancied my products.

In hindsight, I thought we also shared a quiet sense of indifference and disbelief towards the Rugby mythology perpetually plaguing the school. Anyway,  I was greatly encouraged and thanks to him, I landed a C3 for my MCE English. Well, a C isn't an A, but it was good enough for a deep Kelantanese who came to this great school with a grand total of three English words: yes, no, sleep.

I stayed on for another two years of Form Six where I'd to learn some real crazy stuff. I'd to read Hikayat Hang Tuah (500 pages) and I'd to memorize all the archaic dialogues and I almost went mad. And no more English classes. The closest was a subject called General Paper, lovingly known as GP. As the name suggests, it was a corrupt and catch-all project, a mishmash of current affairs, statistics, English writing, and English football.

The GP teacher was a fine-looking lady and UM graduate, but, unlike my English teacher, she wasn't even half-inspiring. But since we were all boys and sexually dormant, we still thought we had a good deal. Nobody missed her class. Little surprise that I didn't do that well in GP, and other subjects, if you want to know.

I left the great school in 1973 and didn't meet my English teacher again, not until early August this year -  a lapse of almost half-century. It was all my fault.  I could've easily gatecrashed one of our annual Old Boys Weekends in Ipoh and caught up with him. We might even get to talk about (bloody) Rugby, who knew.

We came to know that Mr Tan's was unwell late July this year. Four of us, one-time classmates, including one ex-Headboy, quickly decided on a day trip to Ipoh to visit him.  This was long overdue, so I didn't hesitate. We took the ETS, paid 50% and talked non-stop from KL Sentral to Ipoh station. The country had just broken the world record for the oldest Prime Minister, so there's plenty to rave and reflect.

There he was, my English teacher, lying on a chair or recliner or something. Alert and jovial, he'd no problems talking and joking with us. Apparently he was down with some intestinal complications. Science wasn't my strong suit,  so the medical term didn't stay with me for long. I introduced myself with full name and the school years, but he couldn't recall, not even remotely. Half a century and three thousand students and I didn't play Rugby, how could he remember.

I handed him a copy of my recently published book "The Asrama Anthology", a collection of nineteen hostel-life stories. It wasn't technically my book because I only wrote two of the stories. He took it, flipped the pages and enquired "What book is this?"  I tried my best to impress "Sir, I wrote two stories in this book. It is a best-seller now. Please read and correct my English".  He just nodded and laughed. I was serious. I really wanted him to correct my English.

It was, in a way, a happy occasion and we took lots of pictures to take away. But we left feeling somewhat uneasy about his chair or what looked like a hastily organized recliner. Well, he looked comfortable enough with that. But we, his students, also knew all about his partiality for perfection and detail. Call it pangs of penitence or crash of conscience, or, simply, an outstanding debt. He wouldn't mind something better. He'd given away more than thirty years of his life just to get us all to speak and write good English.

On the way back, we hunkered down again to discuss. This time something more serious and useful.  One of us floated the idea of crowd-funding among the old boys to buy a new chair or recliner or something comfortable for our English teacher. The good ex-Headboy kicked off the fundraising the very next morning, and in a short space of six days he managed to pool more than enough to buy a better chair.

The chair we'd chosen was a smart and state-of-the art recliner with easy controls and plenty of bells and whistles. I knew Mr Tan would love and approve of this.  The beautiful chair was on its way to Ipoh when he passed away. But it was delivered anyway as a gift from all of us old boys and his students to his family.

The news of his passing left me in abeyance before it completely sank in. The air was thick with a shrouding sense of loss. Slumping in my couch and staring blankly ahead, I cast my mind back to the book I'd given him. I could almost picture him, my English teacher, lounging comfortably in the chair, reading my book and correcting my English.

But it was not to be. The chair was empty. 

 

  




     

     

  

Rocking With Rowling

Yesterday I was notified by Matahari Books, a local book publisher, that "he or she" had banked in a payment into my personal account. Nothing sinister here, I can promise you.

Before the money trail goes cold, let me explain. The money from Matahari was, to use the language of the lawyers, a consideration for having my two stories published in their upcoming book "The Asrama Anthology", a compendium of hostel happenings. The book has been slated for launching on 4 August. If you're still uneasy or in doubt, let me assure you that it is a real, bona fide book with ISBN code and all, and will be available at all serious bookstores. Buying this book will go down as your best decision this year, better than booting out BN.

My two period pieces in the anthology hark back to the early 70's. That long ago. Hostel life those days began with rickety railwagons dropping us off at railway stations. Remember that dark and disturbing train scene from the Nazi flick "Schindler's List"? And the wardens? Hostel life today begins with overpaid GLC executives in overpriced Mercedes dropping off their overweight boys  toting iPhone X and debit cards. Get the book now.

I'm not going to tell you how much I'm paid for the stories. But I can confirm it's not one million ringgit and it's not important. I'm happy enough that my work will be jostling for shelf space with Coelho and Murakami at Kinokuniya.

So I'm a published author now, just like J K Rowling, who's also a published author, in case you didn't realize it. In fact Rowling and I have a lot more in common (well, you don't have to believe  all this).

Rowling writes in English. I also write in English. Admittedly not as good, but, technically, English. I mean English words and sentences and expletives. She studied in an English school, probably because there were no Chinese schools in England. I also went to an English school at Tiger Lane (very English name, you see) in Ipoh. Rowling and I both did Sixth Form and A Levels (mine called HSC), but different years, of course. We both failed to get into Oxford for our degree. She applied but was rejected, I didn't bother. What else? Yes, our works were first published when we were unemployed. She was on welfare benefits, I was bleeding my EPF, well, not really similar, but so close.

She's now a billionaire. That's where and how the similarity ends. She has so far sold 500 million copies, plus another 500 million in print, and another 500 million Chinese knock-offs in circulation. Her Harry Porter character gripped the literary world and created its very own genre. Thanks to Rowling's flights of fantasy, nobody read stressful and silly spy stuff "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" anymore (I hope I've got the sequence right).

I'm just starting up and I'm not sure how many copies of the Asrama Anthology will sell. Probably one or two thousand with a bit of marketing, like what I'm doing now. Malaysians generally don't read. The habit is declining, or maybe shifting, I don't know. With the new government people have stopped reading altogether. They're busy tracking the first 100 days.

The veteran journalist Datuk Kadir Jasin recently suggested that the longer you write, the less people will read you. What a pity. When I read Agatha Christie forty years ago I didn't want it to end. The days of lugging thick tomes at airports are certainly over. Reading is tough because you've to think, feel and, maybe, do something nice. It takes a bit of your precious time, not to mention your ego. Whats App and  Instagram are a lot easier.

So, at this rate, what lies ahead? Will I get to be a billionaire anytime soon? Hahaha. Not in this world. Jho Low is a billionaire and bloated, and I bet he wouldn't mind trading places with me now. I'd be happy just to continue rambling on like this, and occassionally get published and paid a penny.

The trick is to write short. Like this one.       

           

   

       

 

Najib Undone: Five More Memes To Blame.

Pru 14 is long over. BN and Bugis are battered and breaking bad. But political pundits and philosophers are still at it - enquiring and analysing why the 61-year old government lost so badly, or lost at all.

Official tally shows BN picking up a dismal 35% of the popular vote. Or is it 36%? No matter. You'd struggle to fathom the depth and scale of this defeat. It all felt so unreal and uncannily apocalyptic. I mean, things like this don't happen. The contest was one-sided from the outset, with all the government machinery and  media and mountains of money at BN's disposal. Had it been a fair fight, they would have scraped up only three seats. Hyperbolic, so you see my point.

Nobody gave PH a ghost of a chance. Nobody except Rafizi. And maybe Cilisos, a flippant and fun-loving online portal, who had the cheek to advance seven reasons why PH would triumph. Now that PH has won, people are circling back to pore over the seven reasons and still left unconvinced.

TV3 and Utusan predicted, and wanted, a BN win. Bereft of all money and ideas, these shameless and pliant purveyors of fake news had little choice. Merdeka Centre, a purportedly neutral pollster, tipped a comfortable BN win. All foreign media, including Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, WSJ and Myanmar Times, predicted a close contest and rallied around PH, but resigned to a likely BN win. The Economist came the closest (relatively) when it argued that Najib wouldn't win the election. He would steal it.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to see why PH won and what more BN should've done to prevent that. Rather than passing the anti-fake news law and crowding Damansara seat with one million Chinese voters, all BN government had to do was to pass a simple law that would make it illegal for a male doctor older than 91 years to contest or even campaign against BN. Hindsight is hindside, all fair and pretty.

How was it possible for the BN juggernaut to lose? The consensus points to none other than ex-PM Dato' Sri Najib. Even Najib himself couldn't disagree with that and found the last bit of moral courage to resign. For avoidance of doubt, Najib here means Najib and wife. I'm latching on lawyers' catch-all convention where singular is also plural and vice versa. Lawyers get away with a lot of things.

Styling himself on Donald Trump, Najib referred to himself as "my brand". Najib is a brand! A brand like  Munchy's and Mister Potato are brands. After the election debacle, he lamented that "....they would do anything as long as my brand was destroyed", alluding to hell-bent opposition.

He must have been scammed by his extortionate image maker. Like Nero and Napoleon, he was deep in a delusion of grandeur, stuck in a wild notion that Najib the brand was bigger than Najib the person. Instead of transforming into a winning brand like Hermes, Najib had morphed into 1MDB, the most hated brand on earth. Najib and his brand tanked bigtime. 

Say you were in Najib's shoes, whom would you blame for your downfall, apart from yourself? The first name that springs to mind would be Dr Mahathir. Unlike you, he walked and talked like a real person, not a fake brand. He might have slowed or  slurred a little, but it's all him, you get what you see. If there was indeed a brand for an idea, it had to be Dr Mahathir.

But you mustn't forget the clutch of characters like Shahrizat, Nazri, Isa, Arul, Apandi, plus lowlifes like Jamal and Jho Low, whose collective impact was complicit in BN's spectacular implosion. 

And who else? I can think of five more names to blame for BN's cataclysmic collapse, ranked from Serious to Not Serious, and somewhere in between.

1. Srikandi Malaya 

Even before Pru 13 the prevailing wisdom was that the election would be won or lost at the cyberfront. In the latest edition, the cyber war had evolved into a more organized and sophisticated affair, with an unprecedented measure of venom and vitriol. The last-gasp Anti-Fake News Law, aimed at stifling the intensity to BN's favour, had exactly the  opposite impact: more fake news.

As a redundant retiree, I'd all the time to follow both sides of the divide. Anybody could see that BN  side were more organised, better funded and fattened with government dedak, with nothing less than a full minister orchestrating the show. PH were strewn all over,  no general with a fat warchest. All they had was Rafizi and his slash-and-slander machine, crowdfunded by his cult followers.

Both sides had their cybertroopers, fiercely partisan and passionate FB posters of varying pedigrees: journalists, accountants, lawyers, lecturers and even a fugitive holing up in Manchester. Astonishingly a number of housewives had also jumped in and joined the fray. I'm not sure what was their motivation but most fought for PH, hitting hard with delightful noms de guerre like Ratu Naga, Srikandi Malaya and She Sal. Or garden-variety names like Mariam Mokhtar, one of my favourites. BN had one Salmah Kadir, who was actually a married man.

But better paid BN troops were soundly and roundly beaten.  Armed with faulty Samsungs sourced with Arab donation, they were no match for the more imaginative and determined PH combatants. This is all the more remarkable because PH warriors were digging in with the normal fears and risks of siding with the opposition. Ratu Naga was detained by police in the small hours for a defamatory post alleging Najib's wife and Sultan of Pahang were friends. Defamatory? I thought it was a compliment.

The problem with BN side was that they were too obsessed with what they proudly called "facts". It's not they who decide whether something is a fact. It's the readers. So what came from their camp was a cacophony of endless, sanitized statistics, historical graphs, colourful pie charts, pontifiticating verbosities and more statistics. They tried hard to impress with school stuff like GDP, Debt to GDP ratio, Debt to Debt ratio, Ratio to Ratio ratio, Gini Coefficient, Pythagoras theorem, ad nauseam.

This is an election and 2018. Who wants to see graphs and charts? Nobody reads Yorkshire garbage and gibberish. People were busy putting food on the table and had little time for charts and numbers. What honest and hard-working voters want to see is snappy videos, caricatures, clever captions, photoshops, witty and punchy messages and, of course, plenty of "fake" news and fun facts, repeated many times over. The PH pollsters had scoured the market and sensed swaths of unmet demand for this. They not only filled these needs, they also did it with maximum impact and at minimal cost.

This is a fine example of what came out of the PH camp:

This is fun fact. Take a long and hard look. Do you feel shivers rushing down your spine? You won't vote Umno for the next 200 years.

2. BN's Pollster 

I don't know who. Maybe it's Ahmad Maslan, Umno's media champion. Or Apco's Paul Stadlen. Or the funky Unifi and talentime guy.  Or could it be Cambridge Analytica? Or Encylopaedia Britannica?

But what we now know, this guy was totally, thoroughly, terribly worthless. It's one hell of a crap and con job that he'd pulled off.  A disaster of comedic proportions.

In this age of analytics, micro trends and big data, a political pollster should be able to quite accurately sniff  out potential voters' mood and mind, and provide reasonable ballparks for action plans. At the height of his game, Rafizi and his mean polling machine Invoke, could update you with PH's predicted number of seats on daily basis.

I'm not sure which polling model BN buffoons used. Maybe the one that Winston Churchill pioneered after the World War II. It fatally failed to read voting sentiments. What it had predicted was an all-round BN victory, which was cheered on by a clueless BN leadership already operating with an air of impregnability (meaning they could never get pregnant haha). With all bungs and bribes promised right to the very last night of the campaign, BN camp was understandbly bullish, with a two-thirds majority increasingly assured. So all their election strategies were conceived based on this feelgood feedback.  When they finally discovered the blunder, Dr Mahathir had already been sworn in to become the oldest PM on the planet.

Had BN's pollster or strategist, or whatever you want to call him, done his job and push the panic button, I'd guess Najib would have gone for the Mugabe gambit. Dirty and despicable surely, but at least he'd still be presiding in Putrajaya today instead of scurrying around in Vellfire.
           
Why did BN's pollster fail so badly? Hard to tell. Maybe he was deceived or duped by potential voters on the ground. Or maybe he was playing to the gallery, telling Najib only what Najib wanted to hear, aware that one negative narrative would land him in the cold storage and out of foodchain. My theory is that the guy was simply lazy, incompetent or even mentally impaired. He was, most of the time, drunk or drugged, or both. See pic below to prove my point hahaha:

3.  Profesor Kangkung 

You guess how many professors are breathing in Malaysia now? About 3,000 at last count. How many of them make sense? A grand total of one. He's now in the Council of Eminent Persons (clue: not Robert Kuok).

We have in our midst now five Distinguished Professors (Profesor Ulung) on a salary scale of RM 23,800 - RM 31,800 a month, more than Najib's (RM 22,826.65). It's ok if you can't name any of them or don't know why they deserve so much.

There is, or there was,  this Majlis Profesor Negara (MPN) whose founding function was, in short, to help the government formulate country's development strategies and programs. They were  expected to provide ideas and feedback from the academia. What they actually did was to brownnose the government. They bought in government's corrupt programs and projects with ludicrous academic justification. Instead of speaking openly against 1MDB, Felda, NFC and ECRL scandals, they encouraged and applauded the government at every turn.

Nothing reflects MPN's misplaced wisdom better than this piece of opinion from a senior member of MPN, Prof Mohd Fuad Mat Jali of UKM. In the run-up to the election, he professed that: "Berdasarkan situasi semasa juga tidak mustahil pimpinan DS Najib mampu membawa kemenangan dua pertiga kepada BN........Hasil soal selidik mendapati...... pakatan pembangkang DAP, PKR, PPBM dan Amanah memperolehi 9.2% undi." Prof Ismail Sualman of UiTM went further,  mocking and calling PH leaders "Pemimpin Touch N Go".

I'm not sure whom did this profesor kangkong sample. Maybe those who turned up for Umno covention and pledged to defend Najib with their life. PH to get 9.2%? Why not 9.252, Prof? Any Japanese professor caught in this sham would've  contemplated a harakiri.

I know no voters listen to professors nowadays, but the government would. Instead of flagging (or  even flogging) the flailing government, they'd lulled BN into complacency and nonchalance. To be fair, there were dozens of dons across the more than 500 universities and half-universities in this great country with contrarian and ground-breaking ideas. But they were cowed by Umno thugs into playing along and suffering in silence. The sacred intellectual ethos of "publish or perish" is all but dead. It's  more like "government or gone" now. 

It took the PH government just one week to take the only option on the table: disband Majlis Profesor Negara.   

 Professor-At-Large Jho Low

4. Rajah Bomoh Malaysia 

Just where were they when BN most needed them?

That Umno politicians dabble in shamans, charlatans and all forms of witchcraft was pretty much part of the local political folklore. The Umno-Bomoh bond goes back to probably the 80's when Mona Fandey was still an aspiring artiste. It could be earlier.

Politics in Fakeland opens doors to Birkin bags. The stakes in Pru 14 were higher than ever. It was now or never for some politicians on the fringe. They'd take no prisoners in their pursuit and, if necessary, they'd bribe, beat and cheat to win. We could only theorize that they'd turn to magic and witchcraft with no qualms.

Did Umno seek paranormal help to win Pru 14? It's hard to believe, I mean, Najib is literate, talented and immaculate. But rumours hovering over his household, including that telltale piece by his stepdaughter, are unnerving. His chief of intelligence and clandestine operations, a lady Datuk, has been described by the US Embassy as a practitioner of withchcraft. It could be a case of mistaken identity, but a photo of her has gone viral (below), and you can see and decide for yourself. About a week before the election Utusan reported that about 30,0000 pengamal perubatan tradisional (aka bomoh) had endorsed Najib and BN. If you connect the dots, you'd reach the only logical conclusion.

So what's gone wrong? Bomohs failed to deliver? Or had they gone rogue? Raja Bomoh Malaysia Ibrahim Mat Zin had threatened to contest in the election against Dato' Seri Zahid Hamidy, who incidentally was not only the DPM at the time, but also a part-time bomoh. Bomoh vs bomoh? Had Umno people been sharper, they'd have sensed a crack in the Umno-Bomoh cartel, and steered clear of the black arts.

I think bomohs in general have lost their craft and edge. With YouTube and free apps available on the internet, anybody could be a bomoh in half a day. P Ramlee saw this coming 50 years ago. Watch Do Re Mi.

       

5. Jose Mourinho 

What?

It's a hypothesis or mere conjecture. Or maybe I've run out of ideas. But just ponder and think if, like me, you haven't been thinking all that much since retiring 10 years ago. Najib is a proud supporter of Manchester United (MU) where Jose Mourinho is the manager or coach.  MU came second, a record 19 points behind neighbours Manchester City in the English Premier League (EPL). In EPL, second is as meaningless as second in a three-cornered Pru. Despite spending RM 1 billion on players, Jose has failed to deliver even one trophy.

Angry MU supporters in Malaysia would be hard pressed to find somebody, or a proxy, to blame. What if they saw Jose in Jibby? Hahaha. Preposterous? Remember, the Economist used the price of Big Macs to approximate the true value of a country's currency.

According to MU's syok-sendiri statistics, their global fanbase was about  4 billion, or about half of world's population. In the previous election (Pru 13), about 48% of voters voted Najib. Assuming the same voting pattern and using profesor kangkung's extrapolation, half of these voters (24%) should be MU supporters, and they vented their anger on Jose by voting out Najib in Pru 14, leaving Najib with the remaining 24%. As it turned out, Najib got 35%. I'm off by 11 percentage points.

Majlis Profesor Negara predicted a minimum two-thirds or 66% vote for BN. What BN actually got was 35%.  A massive and embarassing 31% point difference. Compare that with only 11% margin using my simplistic Jose Mourinho theory. Don't you think I should be a Distinguished Professor?
   

Jibby And Jose

       

     

Puisi Padang

Sekali lagi saya berlibur ke Indonesia, kali ini Padang dan Bukit Tinggi, Sumatera Barat. Sekali lagi? Ya,  sekali lagi sebab saya baru saja melawat Jogjakarta,  pada akhir tahun lepas. Belum pun sampai enam bulan.

Saya suka melihat Indonesia. Negerinya besar dan berbagai. Kos kembara sangat berpatutan, makanannya "mind-blowing", bahasa pun hampir sama, dan tukaran Ringgit yang lumayan membolehkan kita berlagak jutawan, walaupun hanya untuk seketika.

Bila berbicara dengan orang Indonesia, kita akan terpegun dengan nada dan lenggok bahasanya yang sangat licin dan kemas. Setiap orang Indonesia boleh menjadi ahli politik atau pengacara TV.  Saya pernah ke rumah sahabat karib yang mempunyai seorang pembantu rumah dari Surabaya. Saya dapati bibik ini jauh lebih sopan dan bagus kawalan bahasanya berbanding dengan sahabat saya (orang Butterworth). 

Sebenarnya ini kali pertama saya menulis blog dalam bahasa ibunda. Mungkin bukan bahasa ibunda pun. Bahasa ibunda saya ialah bahasa Kelantan, bahasa yang paling romantis di dunia. Bahasa Melayu adalah bahasa kedua saya. Mungkin tuan-tuan sudah terasa kejanggalan cara saya menulis, kerana salah atau kurang tepat di segi diction, nahu dan sebagainya. Namun selagi tuan-tuan boleh memahami apa yang saya ingin sampaikan, saya rasa saya sudah berjaya menulis dengan baik dan berkesan.

Saya selalu menulis dalam English. Ini bukan bermakna English saya sangat bagus dan tentunya bukan saya mahu mendewa-dewakan bahasa asing. Cuma English lebih kaya perbendaharaan katanya. Terdapat 170,000 perkataan English dalam Oxford English Dictionary. Untuk mencarut sahaja terdapat berbagai perkataan, rangkaikata dan peribahasa yang boleh saya pilih dengan impaknya yang berlainan juga.

Mengikut seorang guru bahasa Melayu saya dulu, perkataan Melayu yang asal cuma tiga: besi, padi, dan babi. Ada pula guru lain, yang mungkin lebih pandai, kata bukan tiga, tetapi empat: besi, padi, babi, ubi. Apapun, bagaimana mungkin saya menulis dengan tiga atau empat perkataan? Hahaha. 

Bila saya mula menulis tadi pun saya termangu buat seketika. Apa harus saya panggil atau bahasakan diri saya? Saya, aku, ana? "Saya" agak formal dan terasa seperti di bangku sekolah. "Aku" pula lebih personal dan mungkin agak puitis, mungkin kasar juga. "Ana" bahasa Arab, nanti saya dikecam sebagai peminat wahabbi.  Kalau English lebih mudah, "I" saja sudah memadai. Untuk lebih selamat, saya guna "saya". Lagipun saya sudah lebih 35 tahun menggunakan "saya" bila berhubung dengan isteri, di waktu siang dan juga malam.   

Berbalik kepada Indonesia. Saya ke Padang dan Bukit Tinggi selama empat hari pada bulan lepas (April). Saya bukan berseorangan, tetapi bersama enambelas ahli keluarga - isteri, anak, adik-adik ipar, dan anak-anak saudara. Agak letih juga saya kerana empat orang adik ipar perempuan dewasa yang ikut sama boleh tiba-tiba saja hilang entah kemana. Kemudian mereka akan muncul kembali sebaik saja supir menaiki bas. Mungkin mereka ni ada sixth sense (deria keenam?) atau ilmu ghaib yang boleh membaca pergerakan pak supir tu.

Lawatan ini merupakan pengalaman yang penuh aksi atau action-packed dan tidak  mudah saya lupakan. Namun kali in saya tidak akan menulis dan menceritakan perihal tempat-tempat yang kami lawati di Padang dan Bukit Tinggi. Tuan-tuan boleh baca blog-blog lain atau Wikipedia atau mendengar terus dari kawan-kawan yang telah ke sana atau tuan-tuan boleh saja menonton sinetron.

Saya cuma ingin meluahkan apa yang saya rasa dan fikirkan semasa berada di sana, dalam bentuk catatan atau coretan  yang dipelbagaikan dengan sebuah puisi mudah. Saya tekankan "puisi mudah" untuk membezakannya dengan "sajak kabur" yang, bagi saya, sangat "stressful". Jika tuan-tuan tidak meminati sastera sebab sewaktu di kolej dulu tuan-tuan hanya belajar Kalkulus dan Kimia Organik, tuan-tuan bolehlah memilih untuk tidak terus membaca blog ini. Tak apa-apa. Saya tenang saja.

Nama Padang sangat bermakna dan penuh nostalgia buat saya kerana ia lantas mengembalikan masa lampau saya. Masa saya bersekolah di darjah lima dan enam (tahun-tahun 60an) saya sangat meminati buku-buku Indonesia, terutamanya novel-novel yang ditulis oleh penulis-penulis agung Indonesia, antaranya ialah Hamka, Marah Rusli, Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, Abdul Moeis dan Mochtar Lubis. Mungkin nama-nama ini asing bagi tuan-tuan, seperti asingnya nama menteri-menteri kabinet Pakatan Harapan yang dilantik baru-baru ini.

Yang paling menyentuh perasaan ialah novel Tenggelamnya Kapal van der Wijck oleh Hamka dan Siti Nurbaya oleh Marah Rusli. Saya baca novel-novel epik ini berkali-kali. Buya Hamka dilahirkan di Bukit Tinggi dan Marah Rusli di Padang. Tidak hairanlah novel-novel ini bertemakan cinta dan pergeseran  di antara adat atau  tradisi Minangkabau dengan pemikiran moderen dan progresif Belanda di daerah Padang dan Bukit Tinggi. Watak-watak utama seperti Siti Nurbaya, Datuk Maringgih, Hayati dan Zainuddin masih saya kenang sampai hari ini. Jalan ceritanya mungkin mudah dan klise, tetapi olahan, plot dan bahasanya boleh mengasyikkan.

Bagi anak-anak perempuan saya yang sudahpun tercandu dengan drama dan pop Korea yang kencang dan panas, cerita Indonesia sebegini tentunya hambar, perlahan dan membosankan. Bila saya mendengar lagu lagu-lagu Ahmad Jais dan Uji Rashid, mereka sengaja ikut menyanyi secara "out of tune" sambil ketawa. Mereka ni memang tidak  mengikuti novel-novel  dan lagu-lagu klasik Melayu. Mereka lebih menggemari Instagram.

Kami menyewa bas 25-bangku yang sangat selesa untuk sepanjang tempoh kembara kami. Perjalanan dari Padang ke Bukit Tinggi agak mencabar kerana jalannya yang sempit, sesak, mendaki dan berliku. Tetapi pemandangannya sungguh memukau. Pemandu pelancung kami (namanya Pak Unchu) tidak henti-henti menghiburkan kami dengan rentetan lawak jenaka. Kalau dia tidak berjenaka dia akan memainkan lagu Minang sepanjang zaman "Ayam Den Lapeh" berkali-kali.

Dengan nada yang serius dia menyatakan ayam dalam lagu tu sebenarnya bukan ayam, tetapi simbolik atau metafora. Ayam tu mungkin cewek, cowok, suami, isteri atau apa saja yang boleh terlepas dari genggaman kita. Saya sudah lebih 40 tahun dengar lagu ni, bagi saya ayam tetap ayam, bukan isteri.

Apa pun, saya rasa Pak Unchu mesti kemaskinikan sedikit lawak jenaka dengan bahan-bahan yang baru dan "contemporary" sebab banyak  lawaknya yang agak usang. Ada yang saya sudah dengar semasa saya masih bujang dulu. Kini saya telahpun mempunyai tiga orang cucu. Jangan marah Pak ya. Tenang saja.

Kami tempuhi bukit, lurah, tasik, sungai, air terjun, kebun jeruk, dan puncak gunung. Seorang adik ipar saya yang sangat mencintai alam dan pokok-pokok kayu terus jatuh cinta  dengan daerah ini. Di sepanjang jalan terdapat sangat banyak masjid, surau, musolla dan sekolah ugama, sesuai sekali dengan daerah yang dibangun dengan pegangan ugama yang sangat kuat.

Saya dapat bayangkan Hayati dan Zainudin, watak utama dalam Tenggelamnya kapal van der Wijck,  juga pernah melalui jalan ini, walaupun mereka cuma hasil imaginasi Buya Hamka.

Saya sangat terpikat dengan nama-nama bandar dan perkampunagn di sini: Padang Panjang, Pagar Ruyung, Batu Sangkar, Tanah Datar, Puncak Lawang, Lembah Anai, Paya Kumbuh dan banyak lagi. Kami makan di rumah makan Lamun Ombak.

Nama-nama gandingan dan bersajak begini lebih sejuk dan lunak berbanding dengan nama-nama tempat di Malaysia yang kering dan kaku, seperti Gombak, Gebeng, USJ, dan restoran Kak Wok.  Ternyata orang di daerah Minagkabau ini memang seniman semulajadi yang kreatif dan sukakan nilai-nilai estetika.(Betul ke bahasa Melayu saya ni? Bunyinya mirip iklan ubat pemutih muka).

Seperti yang dijanjikan saya tidak akan bercerita tentang tempat-tempat yang kami lawati, kecuali dua tempat, iaitu Rumah Gadang Istana Basa Pagar Ruyung dan Tasik Meninjau.

Istana Pagar Ruyung yang terletak di bandar kecil Batu Sangkar ini wajib dilawati jika ke Bukit Tinggi. Inilah istana peninggalan kerajaan Minangkabau Pagar Ruyung yang telah lama terhapus di Sumatera Barat. Mengikut sejarah, kerajaan Negeri Sembilan hari ini juga berasal dari Pagar Ruyung, termasuklah adat dan loghatnya. Maaf, itu saja yang saya tahu. Kalau tuan-tuan ingin tahu lebih lanjut, boleh hubungi Pak Unchu. Tuan-tuan boleh minta koleksi lawak jenakanya sekali. Hahaha.

Saya rasa siapa saja arkitek dan penggemar senibina yang melihat Istana Pagar Ruyung ini pasti akan tertawan dengan keindahan, kegagahan dan keaslian seninya. Keanggunannya bukan terletak pada rekabentuk luarannya sahaja, tetapi juga pada makna yang tersirat di setiap bahagian atau elemen istana ini: tingkap, kamar, bumbung, tirai dan sebagainya. Sebenarnya istana yang saya lihat itu bukanlah istana ysng asal, tetapi istana yang dibina semula dengan rekabentuk asal pada tahun 2008. Istana yang asal telah punah dipanah petir dan terbakar hangus kesemuanya.

Tempat kedua ialah Tasik Meninjau. Kami singgah di sini dalam perjalanan pulang dari Bukit Tinggi ke Padang. Panorama tasik ini dari Puncak Lawang sangat menakjubkan. Di daerah inilah juga tempat kelahiran Alamarhum Hamka, dan saya terasa seolah-olah beliau ada bersama-sama kami hari itu. Sebak juga saya menahan perasaan.

Udaranya sejuk, persekitarannya amat tenang dan bersih, jauh dari keributan kota dan manusia. Fahamlah saya kenapa Buya sangat versatile, kreatif dan expressive. Beliau dibesarkan dalam persekitarannya yang amat subur dan merangsangkan. Beliau adalah pelajar, pengajar, penulis, ulama, pendakwah dan pemimpin agung tersohor dan disanjung bukan saja di Indonesia tetapi juga di Malaysia. Buku--buku ugama yang ditulis oleh Hamka, seperti Tafsir al Azhar, masih menjadi bahan rujukan ramai sehingga ke hari ini.

Perjalanan dari Tasik Meninjau ke Padang mengambil masa hampir empat jam merentasi Banjaran Bukit Barisan dengan pemandangan yang "breath-taking". Fikiran saya masih di awang-awangan, berlegar di sekitar manusia berjiwa besar, Buya Hamka.

Entah kenapa, saya rasa terpanggil, bahkan tercabar, untuk turut menulis dan menjadi kreatif seperti beliau. Semasa saya di sekolah menengah saya pernah juga menulis puisi, kebanyakannya berbentuk lantang, sosialis dan marah-marah. Mungkin sekarang masanya untuk menghidupkan kembali api yang terpadam sejak hampir 50 tahun yang lalu.

Saya bergegas membuka Samsung Note saya dan mula melakar puisi tentang perjalanan dan pengalaman singkat saya di Bukit Tinggi. Ahli keluarga yang lain leka menonton DVD filem "Tenggelamnya Kapal van der Wijck", diselangi oleh Pak Unchu dengan cerita dan jenaka yang disambut dengan hilai ketawa adik-adik ipar saya. Tetapi saya sebenarnya tidak mendengar apa-apa kerana dihanyutkan oleh cita-cita, impian dan semangat baru yang meluap-luap untuk menulis dan berkarya.

Hampir tiga jam saya memikir, mencari dan memilih ilham. Saya menulis, memadam dan menulis lagi untuk dijadikan satu rangkaian puisi yang saya yakin tidak akan mengecewakan Buya Hamka jika beliau membacanya. Inilah hasilnya, puisi saya tulis di daerah kelahiran Almarhum:                                      

  

   

Puisi Padang I

Apakah yang kucari
di antara batu dan bukit ini
lurah pecah dan liku seribu
kebun subur dan air dingin
tasik luas dan sungai deras.

Kususuri daerah lama ini
mengimbau lipatan sejarah
menyingkap pustaka silam
merungkai hasrat yang tersimpan
bukit tinggi padang panjang
pagar ruyung batu sangkar
seri menanti datuk tampin
kuala pilah kampung pandan.

Melewati rumah gadang
dan istana gagah
terhenti di tengah langkah
terdetik di puncak hati.
bagaimana akan aku maknakan
beratus isyarat dan aturan ini
bumbung tirus dan anjung lurus
tiang tegap tapi miring
tingkap lebar menyambut angin
tirai tujuh dan ruang sembilan
kamar sempit mengurung perawan.

Rapuh hidup ini
kuat dan kuasa hanya
singkat dan sementara
akhirnya kalah, rebah dan sepi
dilanda arus waktu
dan rencana alam.


Saya rasa saya tidak mengecewakan Hamka.