Desperate Measures

by Maheswary Ponnusamy

(The author taught English in government schools in Malaysia for almost 30 years before taking early retirement. She has published fiction for children for the Malaysian market, and now resides in the Philippines.)

‘Apa tunggu lagi, nanti karat!’  This was exactly what that old decaying non-performing Cikgu Hashim said to me over lunch break at the school’s canteen. Newly joined members of the profession may not have understood. Mr Lim seemed amused. Miss Lau looked aghast. Cikgu Hashim’s comment could well be applied to her. She was like me, in her thirties and unmarried.

Later in the wash-room, Miss Lau probed. ‘You think he was talking about menopause? Could be. By now his wife would be dry. He speaks from experience.’ Then both of us giggled, our faces flushed and the midday heat caused beads of sweat on our foreheads. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. I've got a class with Form Five Alamanda.’ I hurried to the class while Miss Lau sauntered to the teachers’ room.

The comment bothered me. I was the head of the English department. I have a Master degree in applied linguistics. I helped the school to manage a department of twelve English teachers. I am the chief invigilator during the SPM examination every year. And yet to some, respect seems to stem only if one possesses a ‘Mrs’ degree.

Tea time at home was always something to look forward to. Today, Mother had prepared chapattis with spicy mashed potatoes. She noticed my lacklustre appreciation for her efforts as I sipped the hot milk tea thoughtfully. ‘Was there a lot of HOD work at school?’ she inquired. I just nodded. Mother knew that it was the HOD jobs that took up most of my free time. I too have realized lately that being the head of the English department kept me at school till late evenings. Saturdays were set aside for meeting up with other heads of department. Sundays were solely for attending to mother’s needs, such as driving her to the market. ‘By the way, I met that lady again at the temple this morning,’ Mother interrupted my thoughts. She told me once more about the temple in Kapar where a priest performed miracles. It seemed he was able to break obstacles that prevented marriages. ‘Shall we go to this temple tomorrow?’

Mother walked to the temple near our home in Subang Jaya every morning. I suspected a big part of her quiet monologue with God was to request for help in finding a suitable groom for me. Lately, mother had been bothered by remarks from relatives who had begun to inquire about my single status. She had even begun to avoid a few social functions just to keep away from ‘concerned’ relatives who had already got their daughters of ‘marriageable’ age married.

I agreed this time without creating the usual fuss. I had never been to Kapar and the drive would take my mind from the nasty ‘karat’ comment by my colleague. I wondered who was ‘rusty’. Lately, Cikgu Hashim has become really ‘karat’. Several teachers saw him nodding to sleep during the last weekly meeting. That was Monday, the beginning of the week, and I wondered how he had kept himself awake till today. On the other hand, I have always kept myself updated with the latest theories on second language teaching and learning.

Anyway, it was a Saturday free of meetings, and Mother and I could do with some outing after going to the market.

‘Do you know the way to this temple?’ I asked. ‘The lady at the temple told us to drive to Kapar town and ask for Periasamy kovil, which she said any adult will be able to give directions to. By the way, he is only free after 6pm. We are also required to bring a live chicken, a bottle of wine, some turmeric powder, jasmine flowers, three types of fruit and cigars.’ I was tempted to tell Mother that these purchases seemed like preparations for a sumptuous dinner rather than tools for removing the obstacles that blocked my prospects for a speedy marriage. 

We drove to Kapar town with our purchases around four in the evening. Mother made sure that the feet of the chicken were properly secured and the other offerings properly packed in a box.

It was not difficult to find the temple. Everyone in Kapar town seemed to know where the temple was. Some even inquired if we had bought the right offerings.  After driving through a dusty side road we came to a rubber plantation. There were some wooden houses just before the temple. The entrance to the wooden temple that had a zinc roof was guarded by the fearsome goddess Kali. When we reached the inner sanctum we were greeted by a young man who introduced himself as the assistant to the chief priest. The chief priest apparently was busy with a devotee in one of the consultation rooms. It became apparent that this assistant priest was to attend to my problem.

Mother explained in detail that several match-made marriage ‘proposals’ for me had not worked out. It was I who had turned down some good marriage proposals. The assistant priest gave me a questioning look. After mother’s narration, we were asked to step out of the temple. The assistant priest told me and Mother to sit on a mat. Mother inquired if the purchases should be brought out for the obstacle removing ritual. The reply was only one word: later.

After murmuring a few prayers, the young priest sat beside me. He closed his eyes and chanted very loud prayers and shouted the word ‘waa’ several times. It sounded like a command to come at once in Tamil. Finally he opened his eyes, and they looked rather red and tired after his strained squinting and shouting. He had even begun to froth at his mouth. To our surprise, he reached for a short hand-held hoe and dug up a pot. It looked old and muddy. He opened it and presented from it a piece of red coloured cloth. He instructed us to examine it. While we had no idea what it was, he told us that the cloth had been stolen from our clothes line from our backyard and used by our enemies to cast a spell on me. Now that it had been retrieved, I should be married off in no time.

Mother and I burst out laughing, much to the dismay of the young priest. I explained to him that we lived on the fifteenth floor in a condominium and that our clothes are sent to the laundry. Mother supported me by saying that the red colour was simply awful and that we would never have owned such a piece of cloth. The desperate young man found it hard to find a rebuttal. Mother and I got up to walk to our car. The young man insisted on his fee. Mother gave him the bottle of wine and the cigars. It was thoughtful of her as he was much in need of smoke and drink to cope with our reaction.    
     
The chicken was set free after we had driven far away from the temple. The fruit and flowers, we took home for us. I was amused, but at the same time acknowledged that I had allowed myself to get into such a desperate situation. Perhaps, it is time to go on more social dates, instead of burying myself in books on language theories.    

From Shih-Li Kow's new novel

The Millers Go Fishing
(This is an extract from the next book -- a novel -- by Shih-Li Kow which will be released soon.)

At nine in the morning, the Millers bustled about making their presence felt. They shouted their good mornings and complimented Beevi on the greasy noodle breakfast. The quality of Beevi’s cooking was capricious; I suspected it echoed her mood, bland when she was bored, over-flavoured when stressed, and near inedible when she was in a sulk. The cooking of a Beevi at rest, in equilibrium, was a mystery.

The Millers told her that they were off to see the three lakes. I had arranged for them to pay Ismet to take them out, and Mr Miller wanted to fish. Mrs Miller said with an exaggerated sigh, “I will be so bored, but he does like to fish.” I was the fourth person in this fishing party. Too many weeks had gone by since I was last out on the water and I looked forward to the trip. I was accustomed to Ismet’s company, but I had to endure the other two.

We drove out to the jetty in the Millers’ rented Myvi.  Mr Miller wanted to drive and hunched into the driver’s seat with the car fitting around him like an armoured matchbox. A large man like him should have picked a bigger car. I imagined Peggy Miller at the rent-a-car counter in the airport, standing beside her trolley bags, saying, “Aw, honey. We gotta rent ourselves a little May-lay-sian car. We gotta see for ourselves how bad it drives.”  To be fair, I hardly knew Mrs Miller, and certainly not well enough to be foisting these assumptions on her. She was probably a perfectly nice woman, but, well, I just did not like her face. As long as I did not tell her that, we could keep up pretences of hospitality.

The further away from town we drove, the narrower the roads became, until there was no curb and the scrub grew right up to the verge of the tarmac. “Turn left there, after the signboard,” Ismet said and pointed at a faded sign put up by the Ministry of Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Tourism, exhorting eco-tourism. “Fourth Wife Lake. Discover the Natural Wonders of Malaysia,” it said. Someone had sprayed a black line of paint over ‘Wonders’ and written ‘Wankers’ over it. I found it mildly funny. It was not a common word spoken in Lubok Sayong, let alone seen in writing.

We got off the road onto a path rutted by motorcycles that ran the half kilometre to the lakes. This was edged by a wall of weed on both sides, so tall that some feathered tips bent over to dust the top of our car. Some had been flattened, perhaps by a car before us that had to make way for another, and long broken blades lay injured on the ground. We churned up old mud, and heard the occasional clod of laterite thud against our undercarriage. Mrs Miller, seated with me in the back, was uncomplaining and took the heat and bumps in good spirit.

Mr Miller laughed and said, “Here we go. Parting the green sea.” He slowed for Mrs Miller to take a picture.

We saw the hill first. The cliff rose up ahead, a monolithic, chalky limestone mass with dense dark trees. Then the lakes came into sight, blackish green and unreflective despite the stillness of the water. Where you would have expected a mirror, reflecting a dilute blue sky with cobweb clouds floating on its surface, there was none. Fourth Wife Lake swallowed all reflections and offered no such prettiness. There was a slight murmur of rain, but the sun took over and the rain clouds held back their incontinence, obedient before the daylight and the patron saint of anglers. If there was any threat of rain, I sensed it in the fullness of the lake rather than the sky.

When we reached the jetty, we saw a few motorcycles parked haphazardly on the grass like grazing animals. Our hired craft, a tourist boat that took visitors on a loop of the lake, was waiting. For ten ringgit, one put on a grimy life-vest, sat on one of the eight plastic seats that collected water to wet unsuspecting bottoms, and got up close below the limestone crags to see the dark, yawning maws of the caves. An outcrop with a lone bush jutting out from the cliff wall had become something to point at, and say, “There’s where the princess jumped,” a nice highlight to the story.

With few tourists, the boat was hardly used. Mrs Miller seemed to know what she had to do. She took a towel out of her bag and dried her seat. Then, she applied mosquito repellent on her arms. Husband and wife both slipped on the life-vests hanging next to their seats.

Ismet gunned the engine and took the boat on a big showy curve. A crescent wave fanned out behind us. The men fishing on the banks waved and forgave the noise we were making. Mrs Miller waved back, smiling. We made a sweep near the limestone for the Millers to take photographs. I was in no mood to do the tour-guide babble, so I kept my mouth shut, and pretended to inspect my rods and buckets. I did not point at the outcrop, and I ignored Ismet when he looked at me. His English was not good enough to narrate the whole story of the princess and the cad, but I was not talking that day. If I talked, those tourists would talk back, and I wanted to fish, not make polite noises and play the simpering native.

I had a plastic tub of crickets and worms for bait. I also had some chicken skin seasoned with fish food that I wanted to try out. It was an idea I borrowed from Swamp People, those alligator hunters I watched on Astro. We had a spare fishing rod for Mr Miller. Ismet took the boat out to the middle of the lake, into the shade the cliffs cast upon the water, and cut the engine. Mrs Miller pulled out a book from her bag.

Mr Miller took up his position at the prow and shed his life-vest that was making him sweat. I saw that his shirt was thoroughly wet, the damp circles that started at his armpits becoming indistinguishable from the rest of his shirt. I sat at the back with a bucket and my bait. With a reverent anticipation of pleasure, I switched off my mobile phone.  In recent years, telecommunications signals had improved so much that we could receive calls out in the middle of the lake. Instead of air and sky overhead and the purity of space beyond, we lived beneath a new sheltering sky of invisible waves carrying conversations, packets of data transfer and millions of pornographic downloads. It was an unpleasant thought that reminded me of dying cells and cancers.

I waved my phone at Ismet. He said, “Already put my phone on silent, bro.”

“Okay.”

I strung an earthworm with a tag of chicken skin and cast it, my heartbeat slowing as I settled into the wait. I loved fishing for the meditative stupor that came with the wait. There were not many things for which I professed enduring love. Fishing was one of the few, and it had become better now with time no longer a luxury. Much like, or maybe even more life affirming, than a leisurely act of copulation when there was no clock ticking.

The silence was bone deep and rich with solitary pleasure. There was an occasional hoot of howler monkeys, a flutter of a bird in the trees, a call that echoed off the cliff and the vibration of insects, tremulous and unseen. The water was grey green, clear and clean, but I could not see through the depths. It was like trying to peer through tinted glass and seeing only shadows and reflections.

The boat bobbed gently and I lost sense of time. I sank into the familiar motion and forgot Ismet, the woman flipping the pages of her book, and the man in the front turning red in the sun.

No one spoke to me. I did not know if Ismet or Mr Miller caught anything. I simply drifted. Occasionally I drew the line in, changed the bait and cast it out again, gently, ever so gently with a short swing of arm and a flick of wrist. There was a bank of lotuses in bloom by the far side of the lake. The flowers were wide open, pink, tall and extravagantly beautiful. No one was harvesting lotus roots; they were unmolested.

I caught a toman and a small ikan hantu that I unhooked and threw back into the water. I glanced over at Ismet. He squatted on a seat, with his sleeves pulled up over his shoulders, typing text messages on his mobile phone with two thumbs. His fishing rod was wedged between the seats. Mrs Miller had her book face down, splayed on her lap. Her wide-brimmed straw hat shielded her eyes as she dozed peacefully.

“Holy shit,” Mr Miller said suddenly. His line went taut. He fought and loosened, reeling in a fish. I watched him brace, shifting his weight back, rocking the boat a little. His movements were smooth and practiced.

The lake had yielded some big ones before, the biggest I had seen being the toman hooked by Cikgu Teh in a fishing competition a few years ago. He still carried a picture of it in his wallet. Mr Miller reeled in one revolution and lifted the curving rod. The fish fought under water, straining against the pull, but we could not see it yet.

Mr Miller said, “It’s a monster, guys. Real big.”

Ismet stopped to watch. Mrs Miller took out her camera and started taking photographs.  Mr Miller put a foot up on the step at the prow and leaned back.

“Honey …” Mrs Miller started. Before she could finish, he was in the water with a shout. Ismet rushed forward, ready to dive in. We saw Mr Miller surface, bobbing in the water, waving and grinning. His glasses were still on his face. Ismet threw out the lifesaver and we all started laughing, even Mrs Miller.

Mr Miller shouted from the water, “Sorry guys, I lost the line and the fish. Isn’t this something to tell the folks back home?”

We laughed until we saw a moving ripple in the water, travelling towards Mr Miller.

“Get out,” Ismet shouted.

Fear gripped me, hollowing my gut. Ismet leaned over and stretched an arm out. “Quick, quick,” he shouted. Mr Miller swam with his head above water. He was two strokes from the boat, a silly smile splitting his face. I could not see what was below the ripple, but it was fast, heading straight for the man like a homing missile. I looked around for something, anything, to throw at the thing that was coming. There was nothing at hand except Mrs Miller’s book and shoes that she had slipped off her feet.

“Quick,” Ismet yelled. The fish reared, exposing a long snout on an impossibly long body. “Get out! Hurry!”

Mrs Miller screamed, her finger still on the camera shutter-release button. Mr Miller waved at her with one arm, still grinning. A blank look on his face replaced his toothy smile when he was lifted out of the water, elevated by the snout between his legs. I flung the book at the fish, but I could not tell if I hit it at all. I threw the shoe and it bounced off its body. Mr Miller’s arms windmilled and he fell backwards. The water roiled, the long body of the fish snaked a curve that churned the water into froth and he went under.

The water closed over him, and he never surfaced again.

Peggy Miller screamed again, this time an awful, many-layered sound that stayed with me for years. We watched the water from our rocking boat, but there was nothing except a growing stillness as the water calmed itself. The red lifesaver floated, marking the spot he went under like a tombstone. I heard my heart pounding in my ears and later, its slowing brought a sense of shame. I had been afraid, but the fear had been selfish, a fear for me, of the boat being overturned and my body joining Mr Miller’s, and my fate tied to his with the creature in the water. I had reacted out of self-preservation; I had no recollection of any intention to save Mr Miller. I wanted only to stop the monster from getting close to me. My relief at being in the boat, unharmed, was tainted by the discomfort of guilt. I could have jumped in to save him from the fish, but I did not.

Something like rain fell. Rain that seemed to rise from the lake to water the sky.

Mrs Miller remained sedated for two days. My condolences and offer for assistance fell on drugged ears. She asked to move out of the Big House. The old furniture, she said, held death in them. She moved into one of the rooms above Hemingway’s and her daughter flew in to take her home.

ASP Sevaraja, who had a well-trained nose for gossip, as a sommelier’s for wine, told us that Mr Miller had had three wives before Peggy. The legend of Fourth Wife Lake gained a new life. Any man who had married four times and who dared brave the water would test the hatred of the lady of the lake; that, after Mr Miller, she had developed an appetite for male flesh. The Chinese princess had become a dragon fish.

“But no worries for you, Auyong. Not yet one-time married, eh?” ASP Sevaraja kidded.

“Everyone’s going to stop fishing for a few months. There is human flesh in the ecosystem. Are the navy divers going in?” I didn’t tell him that I doubted I could ever go back on the lake.

“No one is going in. We’ll try to dredge the bottom, but it might be too deep.” He showed me the pictures from Peggy Miller’s camera. Tim Miller had a look of astonishment on his face, as if some prankster had poured ice water on him. The serpentine fish was a silvery grey.

ASP Sevaraja said, “We sent the pictures to the wildlife department to identify the species. They think it’s an imported fish.”

“Are you going to try to catch it?” I asked.

“What for? Let it become famous like the Loch Ness Monster. We always like to be famous for stupid things, what? Anyway,” said ASP Sevaraja, “I have enough to do, catching two-legged monsters.”

I didn’t tell him the fish had a face I knew. It knew me, too. I saw it looking at me when I threw the book at it. It was the fish that Beevi had released during the floods two years ago. I didn’t tell Beevi, either. Somehow, an insensible balance told me that, to shield her from guilt, was to atone for mine. I assumed she would feel guilt, and my redemption was based on that assumption, but the balance worked. All I needed was to keep it hanging on that fulcrum for a year or two, maybe three, and it would fade from memory. It always did.

My mother's milk ... part 3

by Fernando Rosa

I had watched a performance of Portuguese dance and music in Melaka. Almost all of the songs and the dances were from Portugal. Minha Rosinha was one of them, Casa Portuguesa Com Certeza was another (the titles mean respectively 'My Little Rose' and 'Surely a Portuguese Home'). They are both well-known songs. I am familiar with them from watching Portuguese folk dances on television as a child. I remember I usually changed channels after a minute or two, for I found the singing and dancing terribly tacky, and very un-Brazilian.

The most famous Portuguese singer in Brazil back then was Roberto Leal ('Loyal Robert' - it turns out it is a stage name). He usually donned a folk costume while he sang and danced. The costumes were also thoroughly Portuguese. (Interestingly, although he was Portuguese-born, he moved to Brazil as a child and had lived there. He was our own indigenised Portuguese folk dancer and singer. He was also the most famous Portuguese in Brazil. Nobody seems to care that he was also very much Brazilian).

This is what many anthropologists and historians call a clear case of invention of tradition: namely, none of it was around before the 1950s. The youngsters doing the dancing in Melaka seemed to do it correctly. One of the girls was very striking: she was tall, had bright green eyes and a beautiful smile. (I learned she died in a road accident, last year.) I was invited with several guests to take part in one of the dances. The green-eyed beauty came to me but I was reluctant to show off my astonishing lack of skill in Portuguese folk dancing. All the same, an Italian colleague urged me to get up and dance. I was a Brazilian after all, and fancy a Brazilian not being able to dance. Almost as weird as an Italian not gesticulating!

Several of the students - they were Malaysian Portuguese language students - also danced. The group was in fact performing not to the community but to a large group of students and staff from the University of Malaya. The venue was Papa Joe's restaurant that advertised Portuguese and Nyonya cuisine, as well as Chinese seafood (Papa Joe himself was one of the singers). I find the combination of Portuguese, Nyonya and Chinese seafood revealing: I have found local cuisine to be often related no matter what ethnic origins or labels that were attached to it. Rather than being in opposition, the three were part of the same culinary continuum.

During one intermission, I noticed the young men and women who were dancing, speaking to one another in Malay. Noel (my Portuguese-teacher friend) regrets deeply that it is not the government nor local non-Portuguese society who is undermining the community heritage; it is the community itself. Traditional feasts are not 'properly' carried out any more; traditions are discontinued, and the language is slowly but surely falling into disuse.

I muse that perhaps everything is changing, and very fast. Noel is very religious, like all the community elders I have spoken to so far. He easily goes off into a long tirade about morals and religion. I wonder how appealing that is for the younger generation. Also, the Portuguese community has always been an open group: the descendants of the Dutch in Melaka, for instance, also speak Portuguese and are often counted as members of the community. (I don't believe anybody speaks Dutch in Melaka any more). Noel still inveighs against the designation 'Eurasian' every now and then: his point is that it does not root people in any specific country, but is vague and general. It was a British colonial designation used by the community before it refashioned itself as Portuguese in the late colonial era. Noel must have been a teenager when the identity shift took place. I am not aware of anyone in Melaka who styles himself or herself as Eurasian. The point Noel hammers home again and again is that the community is Portuguese and as well as Lusophone (i.e. Portuguese-speaking).

My Mother's milk ... part 2

I muse that perhaps everything is changing and very fast. Noel is very religious like all the community elders I have spoken to so far. He easily goes off into a long tirade about morals and religion. I wonder how appealing that is for the younger generation. Also, the Portuguese community has always been an open group: the descendants of the Dutch in Melaka, for instance, also speak Portuguese and are often counted as members of the community (in fact, I don't believe anybody speaks Dutch in Melaka any more).

Noel still inveighs against the designation 'Eurasian' every now and then: his point is that it does not root people in any specific country but is vague and general. In fact, it is a British colonial designation used by the community before it refashioned itself as Portuguese in the late colonial era. Noel must have been a teenager when the identity shift took place. I am unaware of anyone in Melaka who styles himself or herself as Eurasian, and there is certainly no visible community that claims that identity now. The point Noel hammers home again and again is that the community is Portuguese and as well as Lusophone (i.e. Portuguese-speaking).

His point is important as far as the name of the language is concerned. He ridicules the appellation 'Pápia Kristang' often used for the language. To him 'kristang' is a religious identity, not a language. He says that the designation started in the Dutch times. To me it makes sense, as the Dutch East Indies Company did have an all-encompassing category of 'Christenen'. It was a complex category as it had a legal as well as a religious nature. It also included people who were not ethnically European or not only European.

Also, calling oneself and one's language 'Portuguese' during the Dutch era must have been slightly tricky as the Portuguese remained enemies of the Dutch - the Catholic church was officially suppressed in Dutch settlements - for quite a long time (the Dutch conquered Melaka in 1641; the Portuguese community's Church of São Pedro was only built in 1710).

Joti - a man from Penang, who long ago married a woman from Kampung Portugis and is fluent in the local language, told me that the language became Creolised (he says, meaning 'full of short forms') during the Dutch period, as locals tried to avoid the impression that they were speaking an enemy language. Hence, also the name of the language. There was also more to it: religious identity -- Catholicism -- that was obviously enormously important. In fact, the community moved to its current location due to the efforts of at least two priests - one French, the other Portuguese - to get the colonial government to give them land. The efforts eventually succeeded in the 1930s and the community then moved from its various previous locations - mainly in Tengkera -- to Kampung Portugis. Joti tells me that the land is still often called 'chang di padri' - the priest's land ('chão de padre' in my Portuguese).

My impression is that religion has therefore been a very important binding element in the community. For it is not only a Christian community in a Muslim-majority country and in a city where (non-Christian) Chinese are dominant; it is also a minority Christian community within the varied and multi-denominational group of Melaka Christians itself. Besides, most Catholics in town don't count themselves as members of the community. (The other church in town, Saint Francis Xavier, was built in 1849 by French missionaries from Siam and south France, and is mainly a Chinese church today. Donations from as far away as Peru and the erstwhile Brazilian Empire went into its construction.)

It strikes me that one other thing that may have kept the community together is their comparative poverty (that used to be worse in earlier times). Incidentally, this is also something they have had in common with local Indians, a group with which they have obviously been closely associated, also through marriage. Some of the houses in the settlement in fact still look very modest. Part of the settlement is also made up of ugly blocks of public housing that probably can be found in every Malaysian city. Jorge, one of the elders, as well as Kátia - a social worker from Portugal who has just left the community to go back home - have told me that there are quite a few families in need, or who live very modestly.