Reminiscing life at a mamak in Taiping
22 February 2016(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 22 February 2016 issue)
Dear Kam,
Why is everything so KLcentric? What about the rest of the country?
Smalltown Boy
I’m in Taiping, Perak, to attend a Buddhist funeral, but right now I’m in a mamak restaurant in the bustling downtown. A truck carrying lion dancers has just gonged past. I’m eavesdropping on a conversation being spoken in an effortless mixture of Tamil, Malay and English. The few words I know do not help me to understand: “A friend of mine, something, something, jalan lama, something, something, are you a vegetarian?” What could they possibly be talking about? But it’s their conversation, not mine. I’m not supposed to understand.
I’m facing the old British clock tower that still tells the time with absolute accuracy twice a day. The clock has stopped permanently at 5.05. Was that the exact time when the Union Jack was lowered and the Malaysian flag was raised in 1957?
Taiping is the rainiest town in Peninsular Malaysia and locals, I am told, take bets on what time it will rain. I think I can see mysterious Maxwell Hill, which I’ve never visited but where I imagine once-popular villas are now progressively dissolving in the humidity. Even if somebody wanted to save them, they cannot be. Wood rots, and soon, they will be gone and forgotten, as if they were never there at all.
Just down the road, beyond the new McDonald’s, is the Lake Gardens where rain trees imported from South America in the 19th century now bend gracefully over roads to dip into the lakes that were once tin-mining ponds.
Taiping exists because of tin mining and it was, for over 100 years, the epicentre of an immensely lucrative industry supplying the metal for the tin cans that made it possible to feed the massive armies in the US Civil War and explorers who travelled to the most inaccessible parts of the world. In Antarctica right now stands an abandoned hut, which was the launch point of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. Everything remains in that hut just as it was in 1911, including tin cans made from Malayan tin, but you probably shouldn’t eat the food in those cans, just as I probably shouldn’t have eaten that dhall. Tin made it possible to wage wars on an industrial scale, helped feed growing cities and helped people travel farther than ever before possible and put details on maps that had previously been blank.
Taiping bears the same name as the war that engulfed southern China in the mid-1800s. The Taiping Rebellion claimed 25 million lives and gave us the game of mahjong, which was played by guards to while away the hours. The war, famine and lawlessness forced thousands of Chinese (especially Hakkas) to leave China for all points around the Pacific, where a handful would make their fortunes but most would toil as virtual slaves. These refugees supplied the labour and simple-but-effective technology for the back-breaking work of mining tin.
The funeral was surprisingly well attended (I had mistakenly imagined that the deceased had been a Buddhist Eleanor Rigby) and with chanting in the background, Keats was quoted to me to describe that she had died a poet’s death; peaceful and fulfilled. It was the first time I had attended a Buddhist funeral and although I didn’t understand what was happening, I somehow did know it (if you know what I mean, I’m sure you do). It was not me but it was not alien to me. Tears were shed. This quiet woman seemed to have touched many lives.
How many supposedly unrelated historical threads are converging in this town, or any spot in Malaysia, at this very moment, mingling to make a truly unique alloy of different elements that are now instinctively known to each other, if not entirely understood. Forgotten threads from as far afield as Britain, India or China.
And then there’s me. I am whatever it is that I am but a short drive down the road is Kuala Kangsar, my father’s hometown and where he lies buried. I feel him now as I always do. My grandfather was a Perak civil servant and (if memory serves) he was once an ADO [assistant district officer] in Taiping. If he was, then I’d like to believe that he would have ensured that the old clock worked properly. How hard is it to ensure a clock is working? Remarkably, this very rudimentary mamak restaurant (restaurant is altogether too grand a title) has WiFi. Everywhere I go in Taiping, there is WiFi. What’s the password, boss? He speaks very good English: “Double time until six and then one seven.” I don’t understand what he means, but I think I know.
Reprinted with the kind permission of
