Business Matters

Mother makes karipap segera to finance my education. Note that I used "makes". That is perfect present tense. None of her parents were in business field. Grandfather once worked at Kuala Trengganu Town Board as an officer (until he, dressed in his full regalia, received a medal of honor from the erstwhile Sultan of Trengganu for a reason I do not know) and Grandmother was a good cook, just like Mother.

However her elder brother and three younger sisters share the same interest, where they had established businesses ranging from a small scale tailoring business favourited by the Toh Puans of Trengganu's royal families to a big scale tile suppliers for mega-construction planners. Sadly, this business trait will never get a place in my chromosome or being passed down to the forthcoming generations of mine. It will stuck there in Mother's, and will be faded by time like colours on a piece of kain batik left under the burning Trengganu sun for two weeks straight.

Back in the old days, Mother made popiah's (Chinese spring roll) skin layers for our dear late Mok Cik Gemok to be used for wrapping her chunks of chestnut, kangkung, bean sprouts, carrot, mashed eggs, and other mysterious ingredients until they turn into sticks form, each a size of an adult's toe before serving them raw or deep-fried for her customers. Mother made them by dripping her whitish concoction of flour, water, a pinch of salt, and Sanisah Huri's Aidilfitri song onto a preheated frying pan that was bigger than a truck's steering wheel. She organized them into stacks to be taken away to Mok Cik Gemok's popiahs' lair. After that, everybody in the neighbourhood of Taman Sura Gate teleported into the fantasy built Mexican air after having their bits of Mother-made delicious local tortillas, minus sombrero hat and flamencos.

That was apparently a good sign for Mother. She made more popiah's skin layers for the upcoming days until Mok Cik Gemok smiled from ear to ear. As a result, Mok Cik Gemok brought a huge bunch of black grapes for us that made me treasured such exquisite fruit of the faraway land by plucking one or two or three but fourth no more and kept the other remaining grapes for the morrows. But Mother told me off for that. She said they will get all wilted to the seeds and disappeared from their hiding place in the refrigerator if I did not eat them within two days.

The popiah feast went on for eleven months in a year and stopped when an old man dressed in Baju Melayu with the brim of his songkok stood close to his eyebrows declared the first moon sight of Ramadhan as projected on the bulgy screen of our Panasonic television. The nationwide declaration caused children happily scatter around our Taman and shouted "esok pose!!!" in the sweetness of night air that has been laden with magical sparkles of China-made fireworks and boomers of firecrackers to tell the slumbering chickens in their coop that tomorrow they will start fasting strictly from sunrise until sunset, even though they were the same old faces of the previous Ramadhans who were spotted licking icecreams in the afternoon heat at Surau Haji Bideng, near Kedda Bodo.

Still remember the night air's sweetness those children had been burning firecrackers in? Although fasting month declared the temporary halt of Mother's popiah skin business, Mother had a new plan to keep things going. She accepted offers to bake cakes and cookies for Raya, thus, the nights' air of Ramadhan were joyfully immersed with the sweetness scents of custards and doughs.

Mother made them into either crescent-shaped or rectangular with black forest topping or as crumby as a biskut mayat can be. But, in the matter of nomenclature, they were all made no difference for me. It may either be called "sekkuk bulang sabek" for its shape resembled a Ramadhan's crescent, or "sekkuk perahu" because it looked like a canoe. For others which defied description, I called them "sekkuk raya" instead. Meant, "Raya cookies", and no more questioning afterward when mouth is full at 2.00PM.

While poking the tip of my tongue through holes on the molars, attempted to dig out cakes of grind "sekkuk raya", I saw Mother sat on a black leather-bound secondhand office chair which was given by Pok Cik Rozak from the nearest videotapes' rental shop. It creaked most times whenever she swiveled the seat to pick up her scissors and a ruler which resembled the shape of a Samurai sword, hiding its blade under a heap of colouful cottons and silks on the table of her west. Northward, there was a machine with a word "Singer" engraved on it. That was the time I thought it was the actual spelling for "singa", which means, "lion". But how did a lion contribute to tailoring?

She might had munched a lot of her hand-made Raya cookies while sewing countless fabrics between the jaw of the lion and sometimes halted for tediously attaching labuci glitters onto silks while watching emotionally boring Malay dramas on television. Curiously, I learnt to lick the tip of a sewing thread for it acts as an aglet to be poked into the hole of a needle. And I learnt to fix my lose button all by myself, just like Mother who learned to fix our life all by herself. As time moved swiftly, she had to say a good-bye to munching and making Raya cookies when tailoring had contributed a rough income about one thousand ringgit per month. In a particular year, she even made it two thousands. Big money means big effort to carry on. Big effort subsequently means a pain in the back after sitting for too long on the constantly creaking leather-bound chair given by Pok Cik Rozak.

Nowadays, Mother realized poking a drenched tip of a thread into a needle's hole is as hard as catapulting a flying bird. I might be able to teach her to hold her breath for a moment to avoid trembling her hand while doing it but "cataract" is a term Mother has been deeply understood and she can rattle it off as good as a professor can be.

I do not know that I will be able to show you women (especially the pretty ones) that I'm gonna be all teary down to the core when it comes to writing about her sacrifice for our better living so that you (the pretty ones) can give me a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. But I'm sure I can't help but blotting my watery eyes after she texted me about her new karipap business that it needs no explanation to tell me that she does that for me to ensure my well-doing in this faraway land called Sarawak where I just need to spend a few more months before graduating as a tiny man with a small brain but with a big degree in Biotechnology.