THE old 15-kilometre rural state road from Semenyih in Selangor to Lenggeng in Negri Sembilan is all but gone now.

For the past two years, it had been torn asunder by men and machines and replaced by a modern new road.

A four-lane highway from Semenyih is nearing completion and appears to be heading for Broga, a pekan which stands exactly on the boundary between the two states.

From there to Lenggeng is another seven kilometres of two-lane road, on the same alignment as of the old, but this time, much wider and constructed anew.

It had been painful for me to drive between Semenyih and Lenggeng during these two years when parts of the old road began to gradually disappear from sight.
At times anger joined my sadness for I had imagined of some cruel conspiracy being played out to deny me the traditional road back to my kampung and erase all the memories I had been travelling on it throughout all of my life.

But I had to bear it all as mother still lives near Lenggeng and I had wanted to feel the road's every small undisturbed part before it all finally disappears.

The road had been around for at least 100 years if not more.

Mother, who will turn 83 soon, still remembers the jalan batu to Semenyih across the front lawn of the house when she turned 5 and before she was sent to Sumatra for her education.

Grandfather Musa, one of the few kampung folks who owned a quaint English jalopy in the 1920s, had been reported to be driving on it for years before she was even born.

It had also certainly served the many rubber estates such as the Semenyih, Baloh, Ulu Beranang and Lenggeng estates that used to sprawl astride and along its length.

It could have been that the road itself may have originated from the many tracks that then existed to connect all of these estates.

That explains why the road meanders quite gracefully following the contours of the ground, rising and dipping only where necessary, and, with absolutely the minimum of cutting or filling occurring anywhere along its route in order to maintain the natural irrigation system of the land it passed through.

As a young boy, I remember hearing one of our educated elders jokingly say to his less endowed kampung kin that the snaking and twisting of the road reflects the mind and thinking of the orang putih, and especially their road engineers during the earlier days.

I had almost believed him only to realise later how far from the truth that could be.

It clearly does not take much to want to cut through and build on a straight line, but it is only pure genius to be able to design and build those wonderful meandering contour-following roads which blended well with the natural terrain that many of them were to leave behind in this country.

I will feel despondent over the existing situation for a long time to come. It is just against my sense of justice to know that something can be so easily dumped after it had served its users so well for over a century.

Furthermore, it had always been my wonderful route to return to the kampung to reconnect with the elders and to look for obtaining of some peace and quiet.

The road was therefore part of our frequent journeys of homage on our elders and to a place of sanctuary to run to.

Not surprisingly, in its undeveloped state, it had defended the sanctuary from much outside encroachment.

This unfortunately has now been breached going by the large number of housing, commercial and agricultural projects which have sprouted along the road of late and the number of expensive cars and SUVs from outside that have been seen zipping along the new road these days.

I fear for the well-being and security of the many kampungs and its inhabitants in the face of all these advances.

I cannot now show my grandchildren the road that my grandfather and mother used to get me at 2 years old and my second brother as an infant in 1948 to join father at the Police Depot in Kuala Lumpur when he had enlisted as a policeman.

Nor will I be able to show them the spots where military checkpoints once stood around Broga and Ulu Beranang during the emergency manned by orang putih, gurkhas and our own soldiers, police and special constables (SCs) as these have now been covered up by the new road developments.

I will also not be able to explain to them how exciting and at times worrying it was for me as a boy to ride the speedy Foh Hup bus as it negotiated the bends, corners, depressions and rises of the road and through its many parts that were shady when the branches and leaves of rubber trees on its sides shielded these parts from the burning afternoon sun.

But most importantly, I think I have lost something that can actually equate closely to anyone's march in life itself.

There is always the history behind it all. It is not too short nor is it too long. One attempts, but it can never be an absolute straight and level journey, mostly meandering and turning, and at times to experience the inevitable severe jolts of ups and downs.

Sometimes one breezes through its parts but more often it is just necessary to be careful, to slow down or even to stop and be prepared to meet and to overcome the unexpected.

But if one were to remain unperturbed and to strive on unflinchingly, the destination shall always be reached sooner or later.

Lt-Gen (R) Datuk Seri Zaini Mohd Said is a former army field commander. He can be contacted at panglima_sauk70@hotmail.com