cakap cakap : Aduh Seroja and Life.

This are one of those songs that my heart sings from time to time...and when it does, I am once again transported back to those days when we had politicians like Tunku, Tan Chee Koon,  and those flamboyant brothers.....D R Seenivasagam and S P Seenivasagam (Ipoh mari). There was a theatre somewhere off Campbell Road where we went for Hindustan Films (not yet Bollywood then) and at times to Coliseum for same. There was a famous Chinese restaurant beside Odeon that served the best Mee and I remember my late Grandfather, Dr Latiff, taking us there once in a blue moon. My grandfather house was in Kampong Kassipilay and nothing brought us more joy then gathering at his house on Hari Raya mornings. I have over 40 first cousins and we had the time of our lives running around the compound of the house and running up and down the stairs of the house while my Tok Tan and Tok Tina (Grandfather and grandmother) looked on from the veranda of the house. 

Behind the house was a laundry and if my memory serves me well, the last time I went to have a look see at the house about ten years back, the laundry was still there. These memories rush back into my consciousness quite like how I am writing this piece...in a rush, all jumbled up and without any structured time frame....but all as clear as daylight...as if it was all something that has happened yesterday...or at most...a week ago. My heart aches for my parents who are long gone, for my brothers and sister with whom I have lost touch for decades and for the life that I have had when all was well with my wife, my two children, my cousins, relatives and friends....long gone but not forgotten....but never to be lived again... and yet if I have my druthers, my life today in Melbourne, is also good....and even if I could bring all my yesterdays back, I would have to think if I would trade all my yesterdays for what I have today....for apart from my life in Melbourne, in those days of Kampong Kassipilay and a life more sedate and graceful...I then did not have the two most precious things in my and my wife's life....our two children...Zack and Terrina and our grandchildren, Isabel and Sofia. Life is good.