......long overdue!

This is long overdue. My sincere apologies……..
Yes…it has been a while since I posted anything…..excuses aplenty of course. For one, I have been tasked with neutralizing a situation in my plant where a group of disgruntled workers are in the process of establishing a union. It has befallen on me to use my influence to talk them out of it, an arduous task that I have undertaken as a project. Whether I succeed in my attempts or not, only time will tell. But from the looks of it, it appears they are not making much headway, not without the support from a vast majority of them….or so it seems.
And to add to this added workload, my key assistant has gone on his annual pilgrimage to India…..to Swammi Ayappan. So that means that since the birth of the new year, I have had to oversee everything here in office, something that this star player would usually take care of.
Then they have given me a new PC….which is good considering that I have been using the old one for such a long time……since 2001 when I joined, I think. But the trouble with this new PC is that there are so many new features in it. And the e-mail screen comes with so many other options in it that I don’t feel comfortable using it anymore. Or maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to it which surely I will…over time. But for now, I don’t feel comfortable…not yet. And that’s also one of the reasons that had kept me away from writing. …..honest! You see, I have been reluctantly pushed to live life in this age of I.T……something that I didn’t have to in the first 40 years of my life. But that’s the order of things these days, so what’s my alternative? It has become a matter of survival…..or becoming irrelevant and ‘obsolete’! What a choice really?
Anyway there have been a lot of things happening around me that I will have to write about. For one, I made contact with my old friend Praba from the hospital days who is now in Sabah and who will be down sometime early next month…….I have also made contact with some cousins of mine from India with whom I have started communicating in the hope that we can built a foundation first before we get to meet, that has been planned for mid-year. On the local front, this year is also the year when my remaining old classmates plan to have a reunion. It’s in the pipeline but we are sure it will materialize. To make the event all the more exciting, we want to meet up in Penang and pay a visit to our alma-mater in BM…..just for old time’s sake.
Thank you for joining me. I will be up and running in due course. Until then please bear with me especially Mr. Suresh Nair and Tok Jack.
Chao……

Cheng & I

It was the year 1973 and I was doing my Form 5. My Dad had arranged for me to take tuition for Mathematics as I was kind of weak in the subject. For a while, I was attending and all was ok. Then I got bored and on certain days, I played truant.

It was during one of those days when I had skipped tuition that I met Cheng at the Butterworth beach at about 7.30 in the evening. This was the beginning of my smoking days and I had gone by the beach area where it was dark and lonely with only courting couples in their cars for company. Cheng was there too. His father runs a sundry shop near my house and I had seen him quite often whenever I went over to buy something but we never got to strike a conversation as he was always busy in the shop. So when I met him tonight, he greeted me as I formally introduced myself. He was doing his Form 5 too but in Penang Island while I was on the mainland. I got to know him a fair bit more but what sealed the relationship was when I noticed that he smoked too. That made 2 of us. While I was just learning the ropes, so to speak, I noticed that he was seasoned. From then on, we met up often and went on to become close buddies. Every time he had some errands to run, he would always pick me up as my house was situated in his “drive path”. In fact during my sister’s wedding that year, he volunteered to drive and came with his family car and spent the entire time with us. The difference in ethnicity didn’t divide us. Far from it, in fact it was not a factor at all in the 70s. Together we joined the Bahai centre and used to attend prayer sessions. And those days, I would always claim that I was a Christian. I don’t know why but I never said that I was a Hindu. It was probably because I had so many Christian friends then…Raymond…. Andrew….. Victor ….. Ruban…..and many more. In fact, I had a Christian name too. I used to call myself John. That was until my sister pointed out one day that we had had a dog named ‘John’ in the house when I was a kid. Then I dropped it and changed my name to Steven for a while.

In this Bahai group, we would sometimes visit fellow Bahais in neighbouring towns. I remember those days when I mentioned that I was a Christian to anyone, their first reaction would be “ Ohhh…….so which church do you go to? And my standard answer had always been “There’s one near my school”. It was only much later that I learnt that the answer should have been either “Roman Catholic” or “Protestant” or one of those! Until today when I think of it, I feel stupid! Wonder what would have run through their minds!

Cheng featured prominently in my life then. He loved Hindi movies and Hindi songs. There had been many occasions when we went for movies together. In fact, I went for Bombay to Goa, my first Amitabh movie with him. His performance was impressive to say the least. Throughout the movie I was wondering who this new hero was as until then it had been Rajesh Khanna who was creating the waves. We now know how all that changed after Amitabh entered the movie scene.

Once he showed me a book titled ‘Hindi in 30 days’ that he was reading. I’m not sure if he made any gains by reading it but later in life after I had started working in KL, he went to Rajasthan in India to pursue a course in Agriculture.

I last met him in 1985 when he returned to Butterworth for a short break. He was working as a Planter in some plantation in Sabah then. We spent quite some time together to the extent that once when I went to visit him, I heard his mum telling him in Hokkien not to follow me out if I asked him to, while in the next breath, greeting me in Malay. I marveled at the level of hypocrisy that some people have but in retrospect, it was perhaps the family had wanted to spend more time with him and I happen to be depriving them of it. It was during this time that technology gradually advanced many fold……unnoticed (to me at least)! I realized one day a few months ago that the world has actually shrunk and distance was not a barrier anymore in communication. With that in mind, my wife and I made a trip to the old sundry shop in Butterworth where Cheng’s parents lived with the hope that I can revive the channels of communications with him. I was pleasantly surprised when his brother, mum and his dad could still recognize me as they welcomed me by my home name (Ravi). They were extremely delighted to see me. After a short tete-a-tete, I got Cheng’s phone number in Sabah and left, assuring them that I will drop in again.

I spoke to Cheng last night and he was indeed surprised to hear my voice. We spoke a lot of our present as well as our old times. I realize that a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since we last met but it is never too late to revive the relationship. He had been a part of my life at a certain point in time and it had been impactful. I could very nearly “smell” his love and sincerity when he started enquiring of my family. He has promised to visit his parents during the next Chinese New Year. I am looking forward to catching up with this dear friend of mine whom I have not seen for 24 years!

(FYI, in spite of playing truant, it may interest you to note that I still managed a strong credit in my Maths).

Happy New Year!

Singh is King (continued)

(Click on image for enlarged view).
This is the picture taken with Murali during the trip to PD. Managed to retrieve it from an old album of mine. I’m seated in back row, third from left (or third from right, whichever you prefer). Murali is the one seated in front of me in blue T shirt wearing watch on right hand. The others in the picture are all his friends but I have no clue if he kept in touch with them.

I recently recalled an incident that took place in the 70s. My classmate Jalil was a Police Inspector whom Murali had also met before. One day Jalil had gone to Brickfields to do some chores when from a distance, Murali had seen him parking his car. He approached Jalil and had struck up a conversation in full view of his friends, not so much as to build on the relationship with Jalil but more to impress his friends that he had police connections since Jalil was on duty and in full uniform on that day. However the plot backfired! Jalil saw through his intentions when he noticed his friends watching him and without warning, quickly handcuffed him to the steering wheel and left him there while he went about his chores returning only after a good half an hour or so. It was a real embarrassment for Murali that he had least expected. Later that weekend when Jalil dropped by at Happy Mansions and related the incident to us, we all had a good laugh.

Happy Birthday Praveena

No…this is not my grand-daughter Kalavitha although she looks very much like her. This is a picture of my daughter as a child. I am reproducing it here because today happens to be Ms. Big Eyes’ 27th birthday and as much as I love my grand-daughter, I love my daughter too.

Happy Birthday Praveena!

Publicity & Fame

(Picture shows Mr. Bhagwan Das (left) handing me the track-suits).

It is always nice to be ‘featured’ in a local daily or to appear on TV….for the right reasons of course You get a sense of pride especially when you are young and just about coming into the real world. It creates a false sense of achievement and you tend to believe that the whole world would have seen it…..and it kind of makes you feel all the more so important……..at least that’s what it did to me. I had often been full of admiration and envy when I used to see my friend Imbaraj being featured ever so often in the papers but then he was a Penang State badminton player and back in the early 70s, he was the player to watch, so said a leading English daily. He earned those accolades and rightly deserved to be featured. But I wasn’t much of a sports person so I couldn’t even imagine being focused on for such reasons, or for any other reason whatsoever for that matter.

So in 1982, when my photograph appeared for the very first time in the Malay Mail, pictured receiving some goodies on behalf of my employers, from the proprietor of Ashrock Sportswear for the Malay Mail Big Walk, I was ecstatic. I remember getting hold of about 5 or 6 copies of the newspapers that day just so that I can cut out the article and post it to my nephews and niece back north and to show my family and friends, just in case they missed it. I couldn’t afford to allow them to miss it as it was not often that your picture gets to appear in the newspapers. The joy lasted a long time.

The other occasion was when I appeared together with Datuk Mahalingam (now Tan Sri) on National TV and that too, on primetime news. And it was big news back in Kulim where I lived then. As a Deputy Minister, Datuk Mahalingam was visiting the factory that I worked in and I was tasked with showing him around the plant. The next evening, the snippet appeared in the news segment. For the next couple of days, I remember being inundated with calls to the house as well as to the office, from friends and relatives alike asking if it was indeed me with the Minister as if it was the greatest thing that could happen to a person. But this was way back in 1993…..in a God forsaken laid back town up-country in a suburban part of under developed Kedah that I used to call home but from where I have since vacated and have no regrets for having done so, except for some fond memories of my childhood since ironically it was here, amidst the remoteness that I was born!

So you cannot really blame me for craving for such publicity, can you?

Singh is King!

This photograph of Murali and I was taken on 27th November 2009 during Rashna’s wedding. Attired in full Punjabi 'regalia', I was just flattering him that he looked very much like a typical Punjabi when another fellow Punjabi couple walked in and greeted him, enquiring in Punjabi on the whereabouts of the wedding ceremony. Murali had to apologize that he was not one of them but that he was from the groom’s side. Taken aback and probably feeling slightly embarrassed, they then spoke in English and we guided them in to the adjoining hall where the ceremony was taking place.

Murali and I go back a long way. I have known him since I was about 18. Being Imbaraj’s cousin, it was easier to break the ice. When I was working in KL in the
70’s, he was still studying at FIT and used to call himself Don Raj, the “Don” adopted perhaps from the Globe Silk Store’s house brand as he was fond of wearing their clothes. It was one of the more stylish brands those days that didn’t leave a hole in your pocket. Word has it that on one occasion his father had gone to his college looking for him but when he asked around, no one seemed to know him until some college-mates advised his father to ask for “Don Raj” to make any headway! Boy…….! Was he furious!

Sometimes on weekends he’d drop by at Happy Mansions in Section 17 where I stayed with Sargu. And when he does, we used to chat for hours on end. I can still remember one particular Saturday afternoon when I had just returned from work and I noticed that he appeared troubled. He explained that he had been tasked with chartering a bus for a trip to PD that weekend with his school friends but in spite of trying everywhere, he had been unsuccessful. He appeared totally lost not knowing what to do next. I immediately swung into action and together, we approached a school bus driver from the nearby flats who was willing to oblige, albeit not before some tedious and tactical negotiations. What a relieve it was for him. So the next morning I joined in the trip together with the rest of his college-mates. And we had some good fun.

Later in life, in 1988 when I took up appointment in Alor Setar, he was kind enough to offer me board and lodging at no cost at all, allowing me the exclusive use of an air-conditioned room with attached bathroom. Truly speaking, it was luxury living then, so to speak. An incident I cannot forget was when on one occasion, he had forgotten to take his house keys when he went out and I had slept off by 10 that night. When he returned close to midnight, he approached the window to my room and called out my name. Unable to recognize his voice in my half dazed state, I asked him who it was and he answered “Thief! Thief! I opened the door for him and we had a good laugh.

There was another instance when I was forced to drive back all the way from Gurun to Alor Setar with a flat tyre. I had had a puncture on my right rear tyre when I passed the toll in Gurun. No sooner had I replaced with my spare tyre to continue my journey when to my utter disbelief, the spare went flat too. My choice was either to wait for a tow-truck or to continue driving with a flat tyre. I decided on the latter. By the time I reached my Taman in Alor Setar where I stayed, the rubber from the tyre had all been shredded and had fallen off and I was driving on just the rim; the grinding noise was so loud that the neighbours' children actually came out of their houses curious to find the source. But before I woke up the next morning, Murali had already replaced the tyre. That's how efficient he is when it comes to obliging friends.

Passage of Time

These are pictures taken with my brother Ashok who lives in Butterworth. One was taken in November 1976 while the other was in October 2009, 33 years later. I wouldn't refer to the changes in our features as transformation....more so they are the damages caused to the human body due to the realities of life as we traversed through the passage of time! (Notice the bell-bottoms. It was the fashion of the day then. You could even attach stilts to your shoes to appear taller and no one would have noticed).

As we pass through this life
At an early stage we often wonder
If the world will be what
We perceive it to be

As we grow older
We change those perceptions
But the world stays
As true as it ought to be