The Weight of a Foot

Memories, once vivid, have faded like the colours of kain batik left too long under the sun. I can barely summon Father’s face -- his scent of Benson & Hedges, the subtle shift of weight when he walked until one side of his slippers’ sole was pressed thinner than the other -- I cannot recall which foot.

Mother is getting older. My sister has a husband whose demeanour eerily copies 98.32% of my late Father. The workplace is getting toxic. Adulthood is like an uphill battle. I feel like I am losing my step and letting myself roll down the hill into wherever my unfortunate life avalanche brings me.

Aimless Wanderer

An aimless wanderer since young, swayed anywhere by the winds of fate. Contemplating his whereabouts like a stranded seafarer beaten by harsh sea. Gazing at a faraway land beyond the horizon where the mother gave birth to him. And the waves remind him that the beach will never look the same again.

He grows old. His mother gets older today.

Early Morning Drizzle

3:00 o’clock in the morning, a light drizzle showers the warm tarmac. It lasts a bit longer than a man’s urinating. A cool breeze momentarily lifts the window curtain where I sit facing the computer. I think about many things in life—reminiscing about younger days, imagining the uncertain future. A tense feeling lingers in my chest, pregnant with words left unsaid, like a cloud heavy with rain that never falls.

Good night.

Missing Him

November 2010 was cold when Father left us. Dinner was quiet. We couldn’t care less what was blaring from the television. We wandered through the faculty of memory, mentally playing Father’s demeanour like movie snippets, in random fragments of a timeline. I sometimes projected imaginary holograms of him standing, sitting, pacing the house, speaking near me with the sharp Benson & Hedges scent in his breath during my everyday activities. His apparition lingered around us for months after he departed this mortal world. November 2018 is perhaps warmer — literally and figuratively — compared to that same month in 2010.

Father’s younger brother died last night. He was laid to rest this morning, in the cold ground of Teluk Pasu, after the cousins siphoned milky tea water out of the dug grave. Perhaps the morning rain will never feel as right again for his widow and the children he left behind.

Suddenly, I miss Father.

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Original post was published on my Facebook wall at 14th November 2018. Father died this day eight years ago. How time flies.

Life of My Own

Father left us some money in his life insurance policy. I remember one morning when a man with a thick peppered moustache, another younger man probably in his early thirties without a moustache, and two quiet ladies much younger sat in our living room. Just tea, no cakes, and a cheque laid flat on the coffee table. I don’t remember what the two insurance men were talking about, but I remember feeling embarrassed when I stood up and pinched one corner of the cheque while the moustached man, who did most of the talking, held the other end. Mother stood beside me, smiling, before the second man without the moustache showered the living room with flashes of light from his camera. It wasn’t the posing that embarrassed me, but the presence of the two ladies—because I had forgotten to wear underwear beneath my track trousers.

Before that, we had cattle cheeks, tongues, tendons, and some real beef stuffed in the kitchen freezer from the previous Eid-ul-Adha celebration. Father had given me two decapitated cattle heads and forced me to extract as much meat as possible from the carcasses with a knife so dull it couldn’t even slice a cake, just days before he left us. That struck me deeply, almost spiritual—an odd thought that God had planned all this beautifully, and amin to that. That was the first time I tasted the best beef cheeks, tendons, and tongues in my life. It would have tasted better if Father had been there at the quiet dining table. Still, it was alright, because cattle cheek meat, truth be told, tastes like ordinary beef.

Long before that, someone I knew from the blogosphere generously deposited RM500 into my bank account to help us survive after Father’s demise, before I found a decent job. I am still thankful to her today. We never met in real life, yet it was so kind of her to show such generosity to a stranger. She eventually stopped blogging for reasons I don’t know. She just disappeared—perhaps now sitting on some apartment balcony in Hong Kong, eating egg tarts with a pot of green tea by her side. I remember her kindness well, and I know she wanted me to do the same for others. I try to, though I must admit, I get annoyed by people knocking on my car window during traffic jams asking for a ringgit or two.

All these memories came back after I read the news of a man misappropriating public donations channelled into his bank account—funds he initially claimed were for the well-being of his two orphaned nieces, whose parents died in a car collision. Blindfolded by greed, he siphoned off a large portion elsewhere, and that betrayal sparked public outrage.

While netizens hit their keyboards in anger, I stood under the shower long enough that reflection became inevitable. As I said, Father left us some money. We talked about it as a family, and I compromised—I agreed to let Mother handle it all. I could find a job, build my own wealth, and never have to worry about her with that eighty thousand ringgit in her hands. Later, Mother insisted I should buy a new car, which led to two weeks of silence between us because I preferred to keep the old 1991 Perodua Kancil. Eventually, I compromised again; I bought a new car, which put a smile on her face. Mother then persuaded Sister to do the same, and she, too, bought one. Mother gave us enough money for the down payments, all deducted from the inheritance.

Years have passed, and things are not turning out the way I wanted. I hate it whenever somebody—related or not—interferes with my financial planning. The son wants to save, but the mother says, “spend.” The grandfather insists the house should be demolished and rebuilt in concrete. The uncle taps the wooden wall and reminds me it will collapse one day if I don’t act. The aunts ask, “have you found your soulmate yet?” All of this aggravates me, and it boils down to my parsimonious nature—a trait inherited from nobody in the family. I’ve grown a little rebellious lately, showing more disagreement than approval, avoiding certain people, and even turning down a family vacation plan to Indonesia. Mother now understands that her son is carving out a life of his own.

Remnant of Yesterdays

Parts of the Dungun coastline are slowly being pushed inland by the ferocious sea as the days go by. The waves take pieces away, leaving only fragments behind. Spinifex grass is hardly seen nowadays—the thorny vegetation that looks like a sea urchin, which once detached, would roll along the sandy dunes for children to chase. Their laughter used to alarm nearby crabs, who scurried sideways into their holes, waiting until the footsteps faded behind the rough roar of waves surging towards sodden footprints.

In December, the sea draws its full power from the moon and grows short-tempered, always charging against the land in full force, destroying everything within reach. The severely damaged seaside road along Teluk Lipat beach once stood as shameful evidence of the land’s—and humanity’s—defeat in the worst war of nature in modern Dungun history. Children could no longer chase spinifex grass or disturb the crabs’ daily business.

The local authority has since placed concrete structures, supposedly to mend the destruction. But the sea has a mind of its own; its future cannot be foretold. After many Decembers, it has only grown better at adapting, while the concrete breakers merely shoo the waves to other places. What remains are the remnants of yesterday: the shortened beaches of Sura Tengah and its neighbour, Sura Hujung, the latter standing as the doorway to the realm of elves and the jungle spirit of eerie Bukit Bauk.

Recently, on a July afternoon, I stopped by Sura Tengah beach. I looked at the calm sea and spoke with it in silence, wondering how long this beauty would last—how long before I could one day bring along my missus, in her sheer cotton t-shirt and kain batik jawa, to share the view.

Less Strings Attached

One more year and I’ll be thirty, yet I still ditch people from my life every now and then. Popular wisdom says that at this age one should deal with confrontation by being docile, calm, and gentle. I embrace the idea and put it into practice, all right—let the bear with the sore head growl. Unbeknownst to them, as I walk away, I have already ended all connections with them. From that moment, they no longer exist. They are unimportant, insignificant, like specks of dust scattered across the universe.

On social media, it takes only a single click to remove their account from my friend list. Pathetic as it may sound, I cut ties in the real world just as easily. It has crossed my mind that my puny body, once on the deathbed, may not be accompanied by many people because of that.

Malaysia has a population of approximately thirty million. That’s thirty million antics to deal with. Sorting them into groups with whom I feel comfortable—taking into account differences in skin colour, culture, faith, sexual orientation, age, profession, political views, hobbies, and more—would leave me with only a handful. A fragile handful.

A handful of people, forming a network as weak as cotton strings criss-crossed between pins pricked into a softboard like the ones seen in movies. One pin holds a photo of one man, the string connects him to another, the lines sketching the possibilities of interaction: a passing glance, a silent judgment, a small talk, a casual conversation, a pretentious laugh, an argument. The string stretches, snaps, and just like that—they become strangers once again.

I am the grey pin over there, positioned at the far corner, separated from others by wide gaps on all sides, silently observing in solitude and peace. That tangled ball of cotton strings in the middle no longer matters to me.