A painting incomplete

Like an unfinished painting, my life lacks the details and finishing touches that make it complete. During the last few months, I have met people who have helped to paint in the details, people who were there during certain important and historic moments; moments when I was too young to remember or moments when I have been away. And I have been away for a long time.

So they came into my life and added a dash of colour here, a stroke of detail there and now a picture is emerging. Not quite complete, but there’s something there.

“You know dear, “ said the voice at the other end of the line yesterday, “ I stood on the verandah, overlooking the padang and watched the union flag come down while the Malayan flag go up,” she said, recalling that historic moment 50 years ago. Even at 82, she could remember every glorious moment of that handover.

She was very much the socialite rubbing shoulders along the corridors of power in those days and was very active in the Malaya she grew to love and still remembers with affection. In her small room down south, she surrounds herself with documents, some very, very important and old pictures of the young emerging Malaya, tasting her first few years of independence.

“But my memories are all kelam kabut,” said this very English lady punctuating her very English English with her very Malay Malay. “Sometimes”, she added, “it comes out like bangsawan,” and we both roared out with laughter down the line, this Malay Mak Cik and this very fine English lady.

She said she didn't think her recollection would interest me, not realising that I was frantically jotting down everything she narrated; about her first meeting with Tunku at the railway station, about David Marshall accompanying the Tunku to meet Chin Peng in Baling, about Ong Yoke Lin’s order for serai to make satay for the Merdeka celebration at the UN. If she’d have me as her tenant for a week, I’d pack right now and leave my loved ones to fend for themselves.

Indeed, there were many, many people, British ex-servicemen especially, whom I met over the last few months, who said they could recall their tour of duty in Malaya, during the days before the Independence, during the emergency and the konfrantasi, as if it was yesterday.

“I remember the day it was announced and because we were away from the capital, we decided to play football against the officers, and we gave them quite a beating,” said one, adding hesitantly that they had one too many stengah's that day.

“Oh I was there and I was wearing the songkok and I stood to attention, feeling very proud indeed,” chipped in another.

“How can I forget Malaya for that was where I met my wife. She was the daughter of a planter,” said one officer who went on to write a novel about the romance between a young officer and a local beauty.

And indeed, one introduced me to his daughter, a product of the romance with a Chinese local beauty.

And yet another said he helped build a school for the Orang Asli and taught them English. He also spoke of the unfriendly forest and the even more unfriendly and hostile communists, especially the ones he came face to face with when he and his men stormed a house.

The last group of ex-servicemen I met was in Ipswich last week and some came with old photographs of their life in the jungle, one had a photograph of the baby he helped to deliver. They all came to the town hall, some with walking sticks, some in wheelchairs. For some, their widows and children came holding up pictures tracking down people who were in the same regiments or units as their husbands or fathers. But all of them came with memories of Malaya. Even the dog handler.

The dog handler started his journey from here to Germany to fetch what was known as wardogs...all 14 of them and with another handler, spent 5 weeks on the ship bound for Malaya. Needless to say, by the end of the voyage, they became very close to the dogs which were trained to sniff and kill.

At a conference I attended some months ago, a scholar showed me the scribblings of a survivor of the death railway, his jottings as the Japanese prisoner of war and many more. At a reunion of Japanese POW’s at the Imperial War Museum some years ago, I jotted down some interesting stories too and shared with them their harrowing moments.

Over the last few weeks too, I had been spending time with a very special lady. She left for Malaysia in 1958 and has been there ever since. We talked and talked from morning till night, and once continued our conversation as we walked linking arms along King Street, she in her red beret and I in my pink tudung. A strange pair to the onlookers of SW London as we walked and talked, had our coffee at Starbuck and talked some more but we had so much in common that everything else was oblivious to the pair of us

To a certain extent her life is a mirror reflection of mine. She chatted about the year she arrived soon after independence, about the sixties and seventies and about the years that I missed while being away. And I talked about Britain under Margaret Thatcher and the day she left number 10 in tears, about being at the gates of Buckingham palace when the tragic story of Diana broke, about being at those places which were bombed by the extremists, about being there to celebrate London as Olympic city and many more moments that she had missed.

Anyway, she and the rest and many more have contributed so much to fill in the blanks and added their personal touches. And I will continue in my quest to meet many more people who will add more dashes of colour to this painting of mine.

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