The strains of AC/DC’s Shot Down In Flames, my ringtone, builds up steadily into a deafening crescendo. I glance at my handphone and it’s “Mom and Pop” on the screen.
“Hallo? Anak sapa ni?” says the voice on the other end in an easy, syncopathic sing-song with a thick northern drawl.
“Anak bapak la...”
Dad had a weird sense of humour. We go on for a few more minutes; the script hadn’t changed in a couple of years. It didn’t matter if he called me three days, three weeks or three hours later. He’d still start off with “Hallo? Anak sapa ni?”
At 85, Bapak had mellowed considerably. It was either that or I had finally grown a brain. As a child, I was a right little prat. From the minute I could sprint as fast as my stumpy legs could carry me, I kept his adrenal glands in overdrive.
One of his prized possessions back then was a behemoth of a machine called a radiogram. It was part radio, part record player that dominated the living room. Access to the radiogram was via an upward-hingeing door. To get to the record player, you’d lift the lid, like you would a top-loading washing machine.
Bapak would occasionally take out his vinyls, and with the pomp and pageantry of the changing of the guards at the Indo-Pakistani border, would kick back and listen to some red-haired, bejewelled Egyptian vixen belt out some soppy ballad about losing the love of her life in the Battle of Abu-Ageila in the Sinai during the 1967 Six-Day War.
One day, he came home from work, dropped his briefcase, showered, came back out with his kain pelikat and Pagoda T-shirt, unsheathed a vinyl, put it on the turntable and hit the rocker switch. Nothing happened.
He tried a couple of more times but the turntable just would not budge. While Bapak was kneeling and looking around for an unplugged socket, loose wires and faulty connections that would explain why his radiogram was refusing to fire up, I was busy “docking” my pretend spaceships using a couple of vacuum tubes I had somehow, miraculously found.
Right in the middle of transposition and docking my two moon-bound, makeshift spaceships, I realised Bapak was staring at me. I caught his gaze, cocked my head to one side as if to ask, “Yes…?”.
“Hang main dengan apa tu?”, he quietly asked. I must have been about 6 and was slightly behind the curve in my speech skills.
“Wokket,” I responded.
Bapak looked at my “rockets” and glanced back at his radiogram. I remember the exact moment when I knew he had somehow managed to connect the dots. I may have been 6, but my self-preservation instincts were fully developed by then. Unfortunately, my legs were not.
Long before syariah-compliance was even a buzzword, we had a clothesline in the backyard that resembled two white crosses. Once Bapak confirmed his worst fears and figured that his only son had somehow managed to gut his prized radiogram for rocket parts, he hauled me by my shorts, grabbed a roll of raffia string from the kitchen and tied me to the clothesline. He did such a good job that the only parts I could move were my hands and wrists. He even tied my forehead to the pole, for good measure. I must have looked like the grand party piece at a Ku Klux Klan rally, or a hapless peasant who was about to experience swift Roman justice in old Jerusalem.
That evening, as the dying sun dipped below the horizon and as I stood there, held in place by copious amounts of raffia, I reflected on the events of the day. In the fading light, and as my maid fed me what I thought was my last meal of rice, vegetables and fried ikan kembung, I contemplated my actions.
Bapak untied me soon after Maghrib and sat me down for a man-to-man talk. He was calm, but, I knew he was seething inside.
“I am not a rich man. That radiogram cost us a lot of money. Why did you do it?” There was something in the tone of his voice that was imploring for me not to say something stupid.
“Nak pi moon,” I replied. Bapak knew of my fascination with the lunar missions that had just been concluded a year earlier with Apollo 17. Bapak took a long, deep breath, nodded and sighed.
“Don’t mess around with the television,” he warned. That was the only other major electrical appliance we had left that was still working. That and the stand fan.
“Satgi kena karan, mati hang.”
A couple of days later, he called me into my room which I shared with my sisters, Hana and Hani. I had the bottom bunk of the double decker bed. Bapak was already sitting on the bed. He had laid out sheets of cardboard with the outlines of gauges, indicators, strip meters, the “8 ball”, dials, buttons, annunciator lights and rotary switches, and had secured them to the walls and frame of the bed. The piece that was taped to the “ceiling” of the bed had the outline of the triangular rendezvous windows of the Apollo Command Module, complete with nautical lines and a docking reticle. My “headboard” was a piece of cardboard with the outline of a hatch, complete with a small round window.
For the next couple of weeks, I flew my imaginary Apollo CSM to the moon and back from the relative safety of my room, away from the living room. And, the TV set worked fine for some time after that.
I will always marvel at Bapak’s innate ability to come up with the most imaginative of punishments. The time I pulled out a box of matches (again, I must have been about 5 or 6) and set his prized coconut tree on fire and reduced it to a charred, crisp stump, had to be the high point.
Bapak again, hauled me by my shorts, stripped me down, grabbed a roll of raffia string from the kitchen and tied me face down to the side table that came with castor wheels.
He then pushed me and the side table from inside the living room, out to the garage, past the still smoking, freshly torched coconut tree, and the other, still untouched, coconut tree on the opposite side of the main gate, and out onto the main road.
By this time, the whole neighbourhood had gathered, no doubt initially alerted by the sounds of Bapak’s shrieks of “Pokok aku!” as it went up in smoke.
Now, they watched as Bapak held on to the side table, with me as the hood ornament, at the top of the incline. Bets were being placed as to whether or not he would let go and send me hurtling down main street, naked, kicking and screaming.
He didn’t. Instead, after questioning me for half an hour, he wheeled me back into the house. After untying me, he made me help him chop down what was left of the blackened stump. We chopped down the other tree, too. Just so I wouldn’t get any ideas.
Come to think of it, Bapak felled trees with a frequency that would put a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest of the United States to shame. I guess I had a hand in that.
I’d climb his favourite pokok jambu batu and run on the rafters of our home in Petaling Jaya. From my perch, I’d spend the next couple of hours watching as Mak and Bapak frantically looked for me. They only found out where I was when a neighbour pointed to the roof and said, “Hussain, Aminah... anak hangpa ka ataih bumbung tu?” Bapak cut down that tree the next day.
Then, there was the time when I tried to hurl off a makeshift airplane cobbled together from discarded pieces of wood from his prized durian tree. He cut that tree down, too. But, not before tying me to his rambutan tree that was infested with red ants. By the time I was 10, I had an aversion to raffia string that bordered on the barmy. But, I knew Bapak loved me.
He was a man of very few words. I remember our tea sessions at our favourite mamak stall. We would sit for hours and exchange maybe a grand total of six words and it would feel like we had just engaged in a lifetime’s worth of conversation.
He dished out compliments sparingly and was never too generous with public displays of affection. Even with Mak. He was the Archie to Mak’s Edith. With Bapak, actions meant more than words.
When Mak was diagnosed with renal failure and had to undergo dialysis three times a week, Bapak was the one who sorted things out for her, helped to pack her meals, made sure her blanket was within easy reach, stuffed some fresh fruits in case she was famished and was with her every step of the way. He was constantly by her side and never missed an appointment.
After one particularly gruelling session, Mak watched as Bapak got everything squared away, fussed over her and made sure she was comfortable.
Out of earshot, she said to me, “Bapak hang tu...” She let her voice trail and never finished her sentence. She didn’t have to. I knew what she meant.
They were together for more than 50 years. When Mak finally succumbed in 2014, I fought the tears as I watched my father kiss her one last time. I watched as he closed his eyes, hunched over her and gently pressed his lips against the forehead of the woman he had loved and adored for over half a century. He didn’t shed a tear, but his heart broke that day.
On March 30, Bapak left us to be with Mak. I held him, before he passed on, and told him to go be with her, and to take care of her.
As I kissed him one last time, I did not shed a tear. I knew this was what he wanted. But, what I would give to hear his voice again, saying “Hallo? Anak sapa ni?”
Al-Fatihah.
This Kajai award winner’s passion is fast jets and flying. When he’s not doing slow speed, high-alpha passes and four-point rolls, NST’s associate editor of production enjoys zooming around in mountain passes and hitting the twisties with the top down