Penang

"Heng Ghin, lei kei tak Ah Mo ke sai mui mo? Lei sai ke si hei ho sek lei gah!..." (HK, do you recognise Ah Mo's little sister? She loved you a lot as a little boy!)

Penang. Pearl of the Orient. Penang always holds a special place in my heart because Dad was from there, and I was raised there for the first three years of my life by my uncle and his family.

It was my cousin's - Ah Pak's second son's - wedding that I was attending in Penang, and he was the last of the Ah Pak's children to tie the knot. Interestingly enough, their family mirrors ours - two boys and a youngest daughter. Which bodes badly for me in the marriage department. Again. Hahaha!

I was raised in this very house for the first three years of my life, although I have very little recollection of my time there - a dark memory of me singing Hokkien songs as a child perhaps, and maybe running along the tall lalang grass that grew wildly in the backyard. Otherwise, I have almost no recollection about my childhood in Penang at all.



Oh, indeed, there is photographic evidence of my time there - there is a sepia-ed photograph of my Ah Mo, holding my head against a mango tree to compare how big it was. And that all compromising nude-baby-lifted-from-a-plastic-bathtub-to-expose-his-wee-wee-for-photographic-evidence-of-his-gender-in-case-he-decides-on-a-sex-change-later photo is there as well. With pretty flowers at the side for good measure, because Ah Mo, till today, works as a florist for a living.

And then there is this picture of me celebrating my second or third birthday, with a plastic toy guitar in hand, in white overalls. There is a table behind me with all sorts of kuih and a birthday cake and the compulsory traditional pink hard-boiled eggs symbolising ...er... dangerous colouring that could seriously stunt a child's growth. (I don't know what they symbolise, do you??)

I looked happy in those pictures, so I must have been.

Every time that I go back, I would always be introduced by my relatives to the neighbours again, and everyone present. "This is Heng Ghin. Remember him?" In turn, the strangers would be introduced to me "This is so-and-so. Remember them?".

The light of recognition will flare up in their eyes, and they would recognise that big-headed, small wee-weed (I'm just humble.) boy who they used to adore and play with. They would look at me in anticipation, but be rewarded instead with a polite smile of someone who's meant to recognise them, but stares as blankly at them as if he were demented.

Add to the fact that I can no longer speak Hokkien, and the death of that little boy is complete. The polite smile is returned, and the aunties shepherd away their children, carrying the memories of that little boy now forever lost to them.