Growing Up and Growing Old with Awang Goneng

SELAMAT HARI RAYA
MAAF ZAHIR & BATIN
DARIPADA KAK TEH SEKELUARGA

An update:
A special Hari Raya indeed! We have all received our presents. They came through the post from the publishers. Six copies of Growing Up in Trengganu!!!
All the sayang mamas got one each and are reading about their grandma, whom they had never met , about their grandfather they met very briefly and most important of course about the experiences and the environment that had helped shaped their father. What a wonderful present!


Congratulations my Awang Goneng from Mrs Awang Goneng.

I will never forget the morning I woke up as Mrs Awang Goneng. I was checking my emails when I read one that addressed me as Mrs Awang Goneng as opposed to the usual Mrs Wan, telling me to forward the email to Mr Awang Goneng as the sender had not been able to reach him.

The sender was indeed someone from the publisher of the book, Growing Up in Trengganu and since the AG in question was busy typing on his PC behind me, I just forwarded the email to him. Life during the last few months had been like that – we sat back to back, each facing our own PC, forwarding and replying each other’s mails.

When AG (as he is now known among blogger friends) said GUIT was very much a top secret project, I can assure you that he was telling the truth. I was literally in the dark until only quite recently. I’d wake up to find him sitting in semi darkness typing away. Writing comes to him quite effortlessly whereas for me, I’d toss and turn a few times before I could produce an intro.

GUIT has indeed given me a peek into the world that my husband lived in, a world I never knew existed before this. There is a good reason for this. Two weeks after getting hitched to this Awang from Trengganu, we left for this foreign shores. That was almost 28 years ago and by then I had only visited Trengganu twice; once as a cadet in Kesatria (those good old ITM days) and the second one as a young bride being introduced to hordes of relative-in-laws who spoke a strange kind of language to me, calling me names such as Mek Jarroh!

In fact, the week in Trengganu was almost like a crash course in Trengganuspeak that didn’t quite work. Before becoming his Mrs, I had never once heard him speak in his Trengganu dialect. In fact I had never heard him speak Malay! Our courtship was conducted in English entirely and it was such a cultural shock to the system when the morning of the night before, sitting at the breakfast table with my new in laws, I heard strange words coming out of this man who had become my husband.

I learned and remember a few such as bekeng, songo and se’eh. And now with the guide to Trengganu speak in GUIT, I hope to understand him more.

It was under the tree right in front of the big newspaper office in Jalan Riong that the question was asked.The question that was to change and map our life for this past 28 years. We were sitting in his old battered VW when he said, Do you want to go to London or stay here? I didn't think twice and for selfish reasons, I said London. I wanted to smell the fresh spring flowers and experience the first drop of snow and various things that he talked about in his lovely long letters to me when he was the London correspondent. I wanted him to take me by the hand, like the words he sang to me from the song by Ralph MacTell, and lead me through the streets of London that I had become familiar with from days spent playing Monopoly. Yes, I wanted to come to London.

And London did something to him and to me. He yearned and talked about his Trengganu a lot. It takes being away for so long for someone to remember clearly how things were in those days.

For me, the words he paints of Trengganu make me want to go back and see it again, the stories that he tells of his Cik (mother) make me wish I had known her and had tasted the delicious food she used to prepare for him when he was small. She could have taught me a thing or two. I had seen her photographs, but I never knew her. It makes me wonder whether she would be proud to have me as a daughter in law. I guess I would never know.

Anyway, before I get too sentimental, I believe the book will hit the bookshops in Malaysia and Singapore soon. I think the publisher has also taken it to the Frankfurt Book Fair. So, to quote
AG in his entry here, “ go out and buy a copy or three, and recommend it to your teh tarik man, workmates, mother-in-law and the man/woman you exchange glances with at the traffic light. It will, if anything, keep an impoverished author in work.”

And if I may add, that will indeed help to buy an extra can of cat food for his loyal friends who kept him company when he was doing the book.

Please look at the write up by blooker central here.

Researcher at work

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Praying together for GUIT to be a bestseller