Ever wondered what has become of your childhood home?

Our childhood home at Residential Area, Kuala Pilah

Ever wondered what has become of your childhood home?

Star2

April 15, 2016

By Wan Chwee Seng

I used to reminisce and dream about it. On festive occasions whenever my siblings and I gathered at our ancestral house, our conversation would invariably gravitate towards it.

“One day we must take a trip to see our childhood home in Kuala Pilah,” we would say, wishfully.

Busy with our lives, the years slipped by unnoticed. The trip remained an unfulfilled dream. Then early one morning, the phone rang and my elder brother’s voice at the other end of the line inquired, “Would you like to make a day trip to Kuala Pilah tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said without hesitation.

And so one fine day, my brother, youngest sister and I, accompanied by my wife and niece, Joon, made the much-awaited trip. After more than 60 years, we wondered if the old house was still standing.

After leaving Tampin town in Negri Sembilan, we soon found ourselves on a winding road flanked by verdant hills, interspersed with oil palm and rubber plantations. At intervals we passed through small towns with just a single row of old shophouses. As the car hummed its way towards our destination, my brother was soon sharing memories of his childhood days in Kuala Pilah, while I chimed in at appropriate intervals. My youngest sister, a toddler then, had hazy recollections of her stay in Kuala Pilah, so she and the others just sat back and listened to the conversation.

“Tuanku Muhammad School!”

Tuanku Muhammad School, Kuala Pilah

The sudden shout that rose from the rear seat put an abrupt end to our conversation.

We decided to make a brief stopover at the school where my brother and I had our early education, and take a walk down memory lane. As our steps took us past vacant classrooms, they rekindled nostalgic memories of our school days. After a quick tour of the school, we were all ready and eager to find our childhood home.

The car made its slow descent down a narrow bitumen road leading to the residential area where our old home was located. As my brother began calling attention to once familiar landmarks, I felt a sense of mounting excitement.

“That’s the area behind our old house,” my brother said, pointing excitedly to a spot on our left. 

The sight that met our eyes was greeted with a look of disappointment, accompanied by a sigh of resignation. The whole area appeared as if it had been flattened by an earthquake. Mangled metals, jagged concrete and splintered wood lay scattered in unsightly heaps.

“Take the next turning to the left,” my brother instructed Joon.

An abandoned house stood at the corner of the road. I recognised it as the place where the bachelor teachers used to stay. The bamboo hedge, entwined with floral creepers, where we sourced for our “hockey sticks” and hunted for fighting spiders was sadly missing. Two more abandoned buildings came into view.

Abandoned houses at Residential Area

Then we noticed three houses with curtained windows. Our hopes soared. We cruised the narrow road, but there was still no sign of the house.

Joon made a U-turn. We had almost given up hope when something jogged my memory.

“Look for 246 B,” I said excitedly.

Tired eyes scanned the small number plates posted on the doors of the three houses.

“There!” someone shouted.

246 B, Residential Area

We were thrilled to find our childhood home, as it was one of the only three houses which were still occupied. But as we took in the sight, we were overcome with mixed emotions. It brought back pleasant memories, but we felt a tinge of sadness when we saw its dilapidated condition.

The concrete stilts on which the wooden house stood appeared to be shorter or perhaps we had outgrown them. I wondered how we managed to crawl under the house and play masak-masak and hide-and-seek within the claustrophobic confines. As Joon brought the car to a halt, a sudden movement behind the curtains caught my attention and I snapped out of my reverie.

I approached the house and an old lady peered anxiously from behind a hastily drawn curtain.

"I approached the house.."

“Auntie, we used to stay in this house, a long time ago. May we take some photos?”

“Sure, my daughter has just gone to the temple across the field.”

The playing field in front of the house

A young woman and her daughter hurried across the field to where we waited. After the initial introduction and pleasantries, we told her about the purpose of our visit.

She asked if we wanted to see the interior of the house, but not wanting to intrude on their privacy, we politely declined her kind offer. While my brother was busy explaining to her the changes in the physical environment, I quietly stole away to take in the surroundings.

Chatting with the occupant of the house

The open verandah where we used to sit and enjoy the cool night breeze and watch the flickering glow of fireflies, was now covered with welded wire mesh. No wonder we had failed to locate the house on our first attempt.

Across the field, the low brick buildings of the labourers’ quarters had been demolished. Gone, too, were the houses on the slope behind the old hospital. The Ulu Muar Club where my father used to spend many a happy evening with his friends, playing billiard and enjoying their setengah (a mixed drink of half measure of whiskey and soda water, served over ice), was now just a pile of rubble choked with a tangled mass of vegetation.

The dilapidated condition of the Ulu Muar Club
Photo courtesy of Mr Deva

The remains of the Ulu Muar Club
Photo courtesy of Mr Deva

The clump of tembusu trees that stood tall and stately in front of the club had also disappeared. I remember at dusk the quietude would be broken by an endless cacophony, as a multitude of twittering swallows sought refuge among the thick foliage.

As I gazed dejectedly at the remains of the Ulu Muar Club, I suddenly realised the morning air was strangely quiet and still. No birds sang; no leaves stirred. Time seemed to pause for a moment. However, something stirred within me, something heard a long time ago.

It was the sound of Father’s loud and infectious laughter that emanated from the club and drifted across the field to our shared bedroom. Knowing Father seldom came back empty-handed, we would struggle hard to remain awake and strain our ears for the sound of his soft footfall on flimsy floor boards.

There was usually something for our late night supper: fried bee hoon, char kway teow and our favourite sar hor fun (rice noodles). That morning, as we stood on the front lawn, my nostril tingled as I remember the distinct aroma of the delectable sar hor fun wrapped in upeh (arecanut leaf sheath) and secured with dry reed.

The front lawn which was well-manicured in those days was now covered with ankle-high grass. I remember how we used to sit on the concrete steps and watch our part-time gardener mow the grass with a wide sweep of a long, sharp scythe.

I strolled to the side lane where we used to play tops, marbles and a traditional outdoor game called kaunda kaundi. It was now overgrown with trees and shrubs.

The lane at the side of the house

Everywhere there were signs of neglect and disrepair. As I looked at the disconsolate scene, voices from the past floated eerily across the still morning air. I heard once again the incessant chant of “kaunda-kaundi, kaunda-kaundi” as a boy raced breathlessly towards the home base. I heard the boisterous laughter of childhood friends as they chased a tennis ball with home-made hockey sticks.

“Seen enough?” Joon’s voice from under a mango tree inquired.

Without realising it, we had been standing for hours on the sun-drenched lawn, soaking in the sunlight and the memories of our childhood home.

In nature's embrace

An illustration of the writer's ancestral home in Batu Berendam, Melaka

In Nature’s embrace

Star 2

February 26, 2016

By Wan Chwee Seng

They paused to listen, ears straining. From somewhere in the distance came the unsettling sound – the ominous and relentless drone of approaching planes.

Two black specks that suddenly appeared above a line of tree tops sparked a flurry of excitement and frenzied activity. The bigger children were hurriedly rounded up, the little ones scooped into adults’ arms and the babies snatched from their cradles.

Like startled rats, they scurried towards the air-raid shelter, a long rectangular trench, sited at the right side of the house and obscured from view by a clump of banana trees.

Moments later, loud explosions were heard and they learned that the nearby railway godown and the Batu Berendam airport had been bombed by B-52 bombers.

I cannot remember much about the whole incident which was related by Mother, but I recall seeing the planes, perhaps my earliest childhood recollection of the war when we stayed at our grandpa’s kampung house in Batu Berendam, Malacca.

Before the outbreak of World War II, Father was working as a clerk in Kuala Pilah, but when news of the impending Japanese invasion filtered down to him, we were all hurriedly despatched to our grandpa’s house.

The house was a wooden structure with palm-thatched roof and a floor of hard-beaten earth that gleamed like polished cement. A dirt track flanked by towering coconut trees, fruit trees and lallang ran from the house to the main road. To the left of the track, just before the main road, was a pond: the remains of an old abandoned tin mine.

The village where we stayed was a Peranakan enclave and most of the families were closely related.

When the war ended, we moved back to Kuala Pilah and it was only during the long school holidays that we returned for brief visits. In the mid-fifties, Father passed away suddenly, and we had to move back to Malacca. While waiting to move into our own house which was still under construction, we stayed at our grandpa’s house. After the relatively easy life in Kuala Pilah where we had electricity and tap water, adjusting to kampung life was quite an experience for us.

We had to learn to draw water from the well and carry it to the house. My siblings and I found out that with the aid of a long pole, it required two of us to carry a single water-filled kerosene tin and a fair amount of water would spill out long before we even reached the house. The lush grass that grew along the path bore testimony to our generous contribution.

Meanwhile, we watched enviously as our more experienced country cousins single-handedly carried, effortlessly, two huge pails attached to each end of a pole without spilling much water. We eventually learned from them that to prevent spillage, all we had to do was to place a yam leaf on the surface of the water.

In spite of the little inconveniences and shortcomings, we found that life in the kampung was carefree, full of fun and there were lots of things waiting to be discovered.

I remember following my cousin, Eng Kim, to the woodlots behind Grandpa’s house where we searched for edible berries such as buah pelanduk and buah kemunting. Once we stumbled upon some eggs under a wild rhododendron bush (senduduk) and my savvy country cousin said they were the eggs of the nightjars. The find became a jealously guarded secret for the two of us.

A gentle flapping of wings and the faint rustle of leaves caught our attention and I watched in awe as a flock of birds alighted on the branch of a tree.

“Those are green pigeons. To snare the birds, the hunters would apply glue on the branches where the pigeons roost,” Eng Kim explained.

As we picked our way through the dense vegetation, we found ourselves at the edge of a pond and Eng Kim pointed out to me the nesting holes of the kingfishers among the grassy bank.

The pond was the place where my cousins, Alan, Fook and Swee learned to swim. A guava tree with drooping, springy branch at the edge of the pond, provided them with a natural diving board. I was told Swee nearly drowned while learning to swim in the deceptively placid water.

I used to follow my cousins when they went fishing for carps and catfish at the nearby pond. I learned from them how to dig for earthworms and how to thread the earthworm to the hook. At night when there was a downpour, the kampung would resonate with the confused chorus of belching croaks. However, for my cousins, the raucous sound was music to their ears. At the first light of dawn, they would head to the pond and hunt for the frogs among the tall grass, which they used as live baits to fish for the snakehead (ikan haruan).

Without electricity, night descended fast over the kampung; only the pale glow of flickering oil lamps from within wooden houses punctuated the deep gloom. However, when there was a full moon, the countryside would be bathed in its reflected light and drawn by its magical spell, Grandpa would sit at the front porch and regaled us with tales of his strange encounters during his travel as an ox-cart driver.

From a nearby heap of smouldering embers and hot ash, the fragrance of roasted tapioca wafted across the night air and our mouths drooled at the thought of the tapioca that would be dipped in sambal.

I remember one moonlit night, we even played rounders under the pallid light of the moon. Our bat was a branch of a tree; the ball an unripe pomelo. Only the staccato calls of the nightjars broke the stillness and tranquility of the night, but their churring were soon drowned and silenced by our boisterous shouts and spontaneous laughter.

Today, years on, as I drive along the road of a housing estate leading to our ancestral home, it brings back fond memories of my childhood days in the kampung, as the road was once the playground of my youth. I pause at the road shoulder to relive the magic moments of those simple and carefree days.

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