..the return..

..it is the beginning of those time again..when children from the cities make a beeline for their kampongs...you can feel the anticipation in the air..as Bachok braced itself for the influx of cars and people, PaRam operators take stock of the situation, knowing that in the final stretch of Ramadan, sales will, inevitalbly doubled, maybe trebled...and parents, like pakmat, await their return anxiously, praying for their safety...whilst looking forward to breaking of the fast together..

...but not all the children returned to the awaiting arms of their mothers, or fathers..for some it is a return to a memory and an empty house, having lost both parents earlier...but they returned, nonetheless, to where their roots are...and for the next few days, they and their children add laughter and cacophony to a house once bare and lonely...a house that was once a  home..and amid the joy and laughter, they are once more the children of before..treading gingerly through their memory..

..this is such a house...its owner, Mok Zah, or Mek to her children died a year ago of kidney failure..widowed more than a decade earlier, she would sit alone in front of the kitchen, awaiting any of her 8 children's return...bereft of children, a house is not a home...as this year, this house sits alone...awaiting her children to 'balik kampong'...when once more it will come alive...