Raya Thoughts

How time flies. In less than a week, Muslims the world over will be celebrating Eid Mubarak, or in local parlance, Hari Raya Aidil Fitri.

In most households, preparations are already underway to welcome this much-awaited religious festival that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

For starters there's the house, to be given a proper once-over. The curtains definitely need changing; after all, it's only done once a year. Perhaps the fence too needs a new coat of paint.

In our house, however, the curtains remain unchanged. This is because we don't have drapes. Instead, it's vertical blinds for every window; expensive to fix no doubt, but fuss-free and economical in the long run.

In days of old, the baking of biskut raya would have begun midway through Ramadan. But today, with the prolification of mass-produced raya cookies, not many households bake their own anymore.

In the early days of my marriage, I would attempt to bake at least one type of such cookies, usually my personal favourite of 'melting moments' (also known as biskut arab). These days it's beli (buy) from the word go.

Throughout my childhood, my Ramadan was always associated with baking and sewing. This is because my grandmother, at once a noted cook/baker/seamstress, would take in orders for both raya cookies and clothes.

And on these once-slender shoulders would fall the task of helping out with the baking and packing, as well as with sewing the hemline and the intricate, traditional tulang belut (herringbone) stitch on the neckline of baju kurung.

These things I would do evenings, usually once my school work was attended to. Opah would get started with the biskut raya first; sewing would come second whilst cake-baking would be last on the list.

There really was never a dull moment in the Ramadans of my childhood, packed as they were. Complain I never did, perhaps because I loved Opah so much that helping her became a pleasure and not a chore.

Memories of the countless times we spent in the kitchen together return each time Syawal comes around; me prattling whilst greasing the baking trays, she responding with hands deftly kneading cookie dough.

Also, it was my job to ensure an adequate supply of aluminium tins for cookies (this was during the pre-plastic container days), our favourites being the Milo or Ovaltine round tins and the 'Cream Crackers' rectangular tin.

Baju-wise, mine was always the last to be sewn (usually a couple of nights before Raya was announced), after Grandpa's shirt. And I got to do the hem myself, naturally.

Grandpa was not into baju melayu and would not be pressed into wearing one. A true-blue semutar-wearing Kelantanese, Tok Ayah was a short-sleeved kemeja (shirt) man through and through.

Opah is long gone. She died age 59, in 1979, of uterine cancer. Had she been alive today, she would be close to 90; not an impossibility since longevity is a prominent trait of the Megat women.

Grandpa too has gone to meet his Maker, some 15 years after the demise of his beloved wife. He never remarried; instead he returned to Kota Baru to live out his last days and died surrounded by his loved ones.

With Syawal on the horizon, my mind somehow wanders to these two elderly people who had showered me with so much love, and who had meant so much in the formative years of my life...