What Will Be, Will Be ( IV)

THE capacious wooden structure on stilts, with its narrow anjung (verandah) and intricately carved window panels, was typical of a Trengganu kampung house. It had a large, open compound and an enclosed well. There was electricity but no piped water.

In May 1973, the weatherworn brown structure was home to ten out-of-town young women. Its location, about 300 metres off the main road and some four miles from the Sultan Sulaiman Secondary School (SSSS), approaching from Kuala Ibai side that is, was ideal for us.

Six formers all, I was the solo representative among them to be in SSSS; the rest were in a private college called Maktab Adabi. We commuted by bus daily to attend classes while friendly neighbours kept an eye on the house in our absence.

There was a wakaf (open-sided shelter) 50 metres away from our doorsteps and the presence of ten teenage kampung maidens in such close proximity to the public shelter naturally attracted the attention of young, hot-blooded Trengganu males.

Most evenings saw bicycles and motorcycles parked this way and that all around the wakaf, their riders idling in groups on the wooden platform, smoking and trading light banter, with one eye trained on the open windows of the house on stilts.

[By way of mention, so were much much older men, who would lounge about rolling their rokok daun and playing dam (Chinese checkers) while surreptitiously watching the movements within the house]

There was nothing in the house save for our clothing, books, a transistor radio or two, and some cooking utensils. All of us slept in rows, on mengkuang mats laid on wooden planks in the big room within, and took turns to cook and fill the enormous dragon-motif clay tempayan (water jars) with water drawn from the well.

With the exception of myself, all the girls were decent cooks. Cooking was done on both dapur minyak (gasoline cooker) which I could handle, and dapur arang (open fire) which I definitely couldn't. Although we took turns in the kitchen, a couple of girls did it more often than the rest because they wanted to.

My housemates knew how to turn out good fluffy nasi (rice) on dapur arang. I couldn't even do justice to rice on dapur minyak. In 1973, there was no electric rice cooker in our lives to begin with. Such extravagance was only the preserve of city folks. Our lauk-pauk were simple but nutritious; ikan singgang, fried vegetables, sambal belacan and ulam.

By contrast, my culinary contribution did not go beyond 'kari ikan sadin', an unappetising, unimaginative and only reluctantly appreciated hodge podge of curry powder and coconut milk, into which were unceremoniously dumped a couple of cans of tinned mackerel.

That signature dish of mine eventually became the butt of good-natured ribbing amongst us. Not that I minded because I knew I wasn't kitchen material.

I had contemplated entering Mara Institute of Technology (ITM) in Shah Alam after MCE, but had somehow missed the deadline of the first intake. My grandparents, however, would rather I enter Form Six like my uncle Ayah Cik Ali had done, and subsequently go to university.

To them, sixth form was the true and tested path to tertiary education. While I wasn't exactly sold on the idea, it did seem like a good one at the time, in the light of the missed ITM deadline.

By any yardstick, I was off to a good start in SSSS. At the close of the orientation week, I was crowned Freshie Queen 1973, my takings being a sash, a bouquet of flowers, some books, and a bashful peck from the Freshie King!

School life was boringly monotonous. Of the six formers in SSSS then, I could only remember one girl - Mahdiah her name was, I think - all because she was the only student who drove to school. My provincial mind couldn't comprehend a schoolgirl driving to school in her own car. But she was distant and aloof, so there was hardly any interaction between us.

Barely a month into Lower Six, my social life took on a life of its own. Z, a young English teacher from Sekolah Menengah Sultan Zainal Abidin started courting me in earnest. Z was an old school friend from my Dungun days.

Four years older, Z was completing Form Five in Dungun when I first joined DESS. We remained friends throughout the years, and he visited my house once in Dungun during my STF school holidays in 1971. I believe he went for a three-year stint in a teachers' college to acquire a teaching diploma after his MCE.

Truthfully, I was oblivious to the fact that Z was holding a candle for me over the years. Had he not admitted to as much, I would still be in the dark. I guess, like most patient young men, he bid his time, getting into the act only when the coast seemed clear.

Z had a Vespa. He would fetch me from home in the evenings, sometimes for tea at Mok Mek's famous 'kropok lekor' coffeeshop in Kampung China; other times to make up the crowd during the recordings of Radio Malaysia Kuala Terengganu programmes at the RTM auditorium.

But most times Z and I would motor to Pantai Batu Buruk where we would sit together and talk. Z was a quiet but intense young man with two primary missions in life - to teach English and to make me his wife. He had achieved one and was seriously pursuing the other.

Occasionally he would take me home to see his widowed mum - they lived in Losong - where I would end up helping her in the kitchen and having dinner together with the family. At 18, I was still dense enough not understand the significance of all these manoeuverings until much later.

I wasn't happy in Form Six. After all the trials and tribulations of STF and DESS, school had lost much of its shine. The restless spirit in me balked at being reined. The aspiring scribe in me chafed to write, to create.

I wanted freedom - from textbooks, teachers, lessons - maybe even from the the earnest but brooding young English teacher whose increasing ardour was beginning to alarm and unnerve me somewhat.

I was 18 years old; I didn't want marriage, not by a long shot. I wanted to hitch my wagon to the stars....