IT’S a busy day at Jalan Pasar. The traffic has reduced to a crawl, with honks blaring out by irate drivers caught in the inevitable snarl. The blazing midday sun doesn’t help, I think as I gingerly weave through the cars to get to the other side. Colourful LED lights hang outside weather-beaten shop-lots bearing cluttered display windows advertising anything and everything electrical from cheap audio systems to radios. Loud music wafting from the shops competes with the incessant honking on the road while pedestrians mill around the walkways.
Literally meaning “Market Road” – an ode to the famous Pudu wet market located nearby – Jalan Pasar was constructed in 1905 as a link to Jalan Pudu and Jalan Tun Razak (then known as Circular Road). Back in the old days, sundry goods, textiles and food were traded along this street before the emergence of shopping malls. A converted cinema from the old days now trades in electrical appliances.
Searching for the past in Jalan Pasar is especially vexing as the neighbourhood has undergone such an extensive overhaul in the last few decades. For most parts, rediscovering the history behind places like Jalan Pasar is largely dependent on the reminiscences of ordinary people who’ve lived through the changes.
On the corner of Pasar Road, a nondescript stall has witnessed it all – the tides of time and shifting landscapes – over a tray of steaming hot curry puffs and sugary doughnuts. The simple handwritten zinc sheet signboard waves gently in the breeze. Welcome. Tuck Kee Curry Puffs and Doughnuts.
The proprietor smiles widely as I come along. It’s been a slow day, and he’s glad to have company. “You’re late,” he admonishes me good-naturedly. I was supposed to visit him in the morning, but it’s already midday when I finally make my way to this part of the town.
I’d promised the 67-year-old Lai Tuck that I’d be interviewing him. The affable “curry puff uncle” as he’s fondly known (having plied his trade at this same spot in Jalan Pasar for over 40 years) has been looking forward to it.
Google “Tuck Kee” and chances are you’d find rave reviews about his curry puffs and stories about him all over the Internet. The old man gleefully pulls up a faded newspaper-cutting and shows me. “I’ve been interviewed before,” he remarks proudly, grinning. You’re famous, I point out as he pulls a stool for me to sit on. He shrugs his shoulders. What’s the point of being famous? No one’s buying his curry puffs! For a while, we sit in companionable silence. People pass by his stall but the stall remains devoid of customers.
Sales haven’t been good today, he acknowledges stoically after a while, telling me in exasperation: “People are more willing to queue up and buy pastries at a shopping mall” He laughs while shrugging his shoulders, exclaiming: “My curry puffs and doughnuts are so much cheaper!” There’s no rancour in his tone. Just resignation. It is what it is, he says. Life goes on.
POWER OF THE PUFF
He gets up and walks slowly towards his makeshift stove by the side of the stall. Deftly removing a few golden-brown curry puffs from the wok, he arranges them carefully on the shelf. They aren’t your typical curry puffs. The neat edges you’d find in bakeries are not the sort Lai Tuck sells. The pastry shells aren’t “pretty” but according to reviews, they pack in a hefty amount of ingredients and deliver in taste.
What does he put in his recipe? He shakes his head and smiles. “That’s a secret,” he replies. He’s willing to divulge on his experience, but not the recipe. That comes with a price, he says with fierce pride.
His pride isn’t unfounded. His “secret recipe” is the result of years spent on refining and reinventing the age-old curry puff recipe he learnt as a young man. He was 13 and eager to cari makan as he puts it, when he first started working at a curry puff stall at Jalan Imbi. “Do you know See Kee Curry Puff?” he asks me eagerly. “Very famous!” he adds proudly. Did you learn how to make curry puffs there? I ask. Oh no not me, he admits, adding cheekily: “My brother did!”
He tells me he studied at La Salle school at Peel Road. The school still exists, albeit under a different name. Again, he asks: “Do you know Peel Road?” Yes, I do and he’s momentarily appeased after being a little miffed that I didn’t know of See Kee and their famous curry puffs. Why wouldn’t he be? He wears his credentials as a badge of honour. A “See Kee” alumni of sorts, carrying on the tradition of peddling curry puffs – albeit with his own unique twist to the age-old recipe.
His brother taught him the ropes of curry-puff making. “He worked there longer than I did,” shares Lai Tuck. Eyes twinkling, he divulges: “I didn’t know how to cook!” After landing that truth bomb, he throws his head back and laughs uproariously, his false teeth slipping off his gums. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he goes on to explain that his brother gave him the recipe and he learnt to make the curry puffs through “…trial and error”. “I experimented with ingredients and spices, and eventually came up with recipes that worked,” he recalls.
Opening a curry puff stall with no cooking experience may seem like a recipe for disaster, but Lai Tuck remains unperturbed about his quirky business sense. Life isn’t easy, he says. You roll with the punches and learn to adapt. Even if that means you have to learn how to make curry puffs for a living? I ask incredulously. He smiles and shrugs his shoulders again in response.
ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES
Thinking on his feet is something Lai Tuck has been acquainted with since he was a young boy. There were carefree days but they were few and far between, he recalls. His father, the late Lai Kow, ran the merry-go-round at BB Park – an old amusement park that was the entertainment mainstay in Kuala Lumpur dating back to the 1930s.
It was known as Lucky World before being sold to the Shaw brothers and renamed BB Park. The amusement centre closed down in the early 1970s, but Lai Tuck recalls going there as a young boy. “My father used to jaga mesin (take care of the machines) for rides like the Ferris Wheel and the merry-go-round,” he says fondly. His mother, he adds, would sell kuaci (sunflower seeds) and other snacks outside the cinema located at the same vicinity.
His father lost his job when the amusement park closed down. By then, he was too old to find work and money soon became tight. Fate dealt another cruel blow when Lai Kow passed away unexpectedly, leaving behind a widow and six children. His mother took on the role of breadwinner after his father’s retirement and subsequent death. She cleaned houses and cooked to make ends meet.
“Her gaji (pay) was very little. Certainly not enough to feed the whole family,” he recounts. He and his older brother had little choice but to drop out of school to help support the family. “What to do?” he exclaims. “I was only 13 and I didn’t even complete my LCE (Form 3 exams)!”
That’s when he found work at a curry puff stall at Jalan Imbi. It was 1965, he recalls with clarity. Two young brothers worked at the stall in exchange for food. “No one would employ children back then!” he says chuckling. “So we worked for nasi-lah! (rice)” But Lai Tuck wasn’t keen on working for food. “How to support my family like that?” he asks pointedly. He wanted to earn money.
The enterprising lad then sought work at blacksmith shops as an apprentice. “One day’s work was worth two ringgit only!” he reveals, shaking his head. Still, he took it on. “Money is still money lah!” he remarks drily. He worked hard at whatever menial jobs he could get at those places. “Back then, only the Chinese towkays (bosses) were willing to take on a boy my age.”
When he turned 18 however, Lai Tuck was formally employed by United Engineers as a welder – a job he held on to for around seven to eight years. However, the company downsized in the late 1970s, leaving Lai Tuck without a job. After facing little luck in finding reemployment, his brother suggested that he venture into business instead. “Nobody wanted to hire a welder anymore!” he laments without bitterness.
Listening to his brother’s advice, Lai Tuck took on another trade – he learnt how to make curry puffs. “I needed to survive-mah so I learned lah!” he explains bluntly. Armed with his brother’s curry puff recipe, he opened his stall at Jalan Pasar.
LIFE GOES ON
For more than four decades, Lai Tuck plied his trade at Jalan Pasar, and has been a first-hand witness of how the area has evolved over time. He regales me with stories about the bank located across the road, saying: “Signboards changed over the years – first Kwong Yik Bank in the 60s, then DCB Bank. Later, Maybank bought it over before the biggest bank merger in the country’s history formed RHB Bank!” he shares. The electronic outlet behind his stall, he adds, was once a coffee shop. “I’ve forgotten the name of the shop,” he says regretfully, adding with a sigh: “I’m getting old…”
He may be old, but the shrewd trader has managed to invest his earnings over the years. That’s how, he shares with a grin, he has managed to travel and see the world. “I’ve been to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia…” he names the countries gleefully before adding slyly: “I was a bachelor then!”
Lai Tuck only decided to get married when he was in his 50s. “I realised I needed someone to jaga me when I got older,” he says practically. So at the encouragement of his friends, Lai Tuck took a young Vietnamese bride called Nguyen Siew Wan in 2005.
Today, he’s a father of two – a girl and a boy – who are 12 and 10, respectively. Taking out his wallet, he shows me a picture of his wife. “She’s very pretty,” I tell him politely. He looks doubtfully at me, replying: “You can tell from just a photograph meh? You should meet her first lah!” I can’t help but laugh at his blunt honesty.
The genial old man isn’t too perturbed about having a “slow” day. Life isn’t easy, he says, but he plans to work for as long as he can. There’s no chance of passing the business over to his children. “They’re not interested,” he says dismissively, before musing dispassionately: “I suppose this trade will die off with me.” Silence ensues as he gazes at the tools of his trade – the rundown stall, his cooling wok over a now-unlit stove and his curry puffs and doughnuts piled on the shelf.
He stops brooding and smiles wistfully, saying: “I still have to go on. Got two young children. How to retire?” He slowly gets up from his stool when a passer-by approaches his stall. Finally someone is here to buy his curry puff.
How much uncle? He murmurs his price and a transaction takes place. It’s only a few ringgit. Very cheap, he says fretfully. I hastily say my goodbyes while Lai Tuck attends to yet another customer. He responds with a silent wave. Business is slowly picking up again after a relatively quiet afternoon.
As I look back, Lai Tuck cuts a forlorn figure behind his stall. But the stoic “curry puff uncle”, I suspect, will continue to be one of Jalan Pasar’s last remaining living relics amidst a sea of changes – at least for as long as he’s able to sell his remarkable curry puffs and doughnuts.