...my late mother, abit on father..and brethrens..

...I never get to know my late father...there never was any images or pictures of him that I can relate to...he must have died in 1944, during the Japanese occupation....those 'makan ubi kayu cicah dengan budu' days...I remember my late mother telling that she was carrying me for two months or thereabout when he died....and she was at the height of her morning sickness, puking everywhere with endless bouts of dizziness... a few years short of  thirty, her other two sons would be about 4 and 2 years old...

...she must have suffered as any young mother would...widowed with three children with one an infant, she must thought that life had given her a bad deal....I have no idea how I was born, or exactly where...but it was agreed that it was in Lemal, Pasir Mas, Kelantan...my late father must have a house there, being a Ranger with the Forest Department that he was...

.. when the Japanese left in August, 1945, she must have picked up whatever pieces of her life that was left, her children scattered, and with herself suited she tried a round of marriages....which failed a couple of times until she met the late Ismail, a tailor, who gave her a daughter and some stability into her life until he died sometimes in the mid-sixties...

..by then, she had handed me over to her younger brother, the late Zakaria, a government officer who served most of his years as an Assistant District Officer in various districts of Perak...and so it was that I grew up in Kuala Kangsar, Parit and Ipoh....away from my mother and my two brothers and halfsister...

..the house that I came back to in late 1969 is now in ruins...the soul of the house is no longer there...like my brother, Johan, it is wobbly at the knees, standing uncertainly upon the earth that awaits to reclaim it...even though the laughters and tears of the past still ring in my ears, it is receding...

..today, I found myself again at Jalan Gajah Mati..as I often did upon paying visits to my destitute brother...but something made me took that extra steps to the house...and for a brief moment as I stood there, I could almost hear my mother calling out to me...exhorting me not to be out late...

..in Your Hand is the kingdom, Lord... and Your Power is over all things..You who created life and death that You may try us...unto you I seek forgiveness...forgive them all, Lord...