The Best of Tunku Halim-44 Cemetery Road

I love Tunku Halim’s stories - eventhough it is fiction but many aspects of his tales can say to be taken from situations around us. Some we hear but never really seen with our own eyes. He makes it so real and frightening that I would not want to dabble in, even if I am very much tempted. There are so many good ones but here it is, my 3 favorites:

44 Cemetery Road

It’s so common to hear the young people say, ‘It still don’t know what to do” or “I’m undecided”. They are at the prime of their life, death seem so distant. But when we crossed the 50s, 60s or 70s time is precious. Sleep elude us, sometimes comes unexpected and you find us nodding off at odd hours of the day. If only I could be young again, if only I could live forever, never growing old. If someone offers you the magical potion for the exilir of life, would you take it? Tunku Halim offers you that if you follow him up that hilly road……..

Four numbers(5328) for Eric Kwok

I don’t know about the Indians and the Malays, but I can vouch for the Chinese people. They can be obsessed with NUMBERS. When it comes with buying a car, the number plate is very important. Why? My boss drives a BMW, his wife drives a Peugeot. “If someone is tailing me”, he says, “the first thing he will read is “my number plate”. So imagine if your number plate has numbers “444” that rhymes like “death” or “9” that could mean “dog’s life”? Sooner or later, bad luck sure come lah. When it comes to the date and year of one’s birth, your house number, date for one’s wedding, the Chinese tends to take this seriously. It could make or break your success in life. But when it comes to buyng empat ekor all races are the same. Their purpose is “to get rich”. Find out whether Eric’s number came out in the draw…..

Night of the pontianak

 

Tunku Halim’s book “44 Cemetery Road” brings back so many tales I heard and watched when I was growing up. Among the toyos and orang minyak, one of them was the Pontianak show I watched over at my friend’s place. The black and white T.V screen makes it scarier. When the show is over, usually around midnight, I run home for my life. That is what Azman did. Got into his car and drove like a lunatic to get away from ………Pontianak is coming, pontianak is coming. And don’t think the cross or amulets you wear or the Quran you hold can ward of Tunku’s Pontainak.

 

 

Dragonfly-messenger of the dead

The story continues…..

Thus Trudie began  journey to Singapore but was sadly told upon arrival by her husband’s manager Rhys that he had died two days ago in some remote place out of Malacca.. So, stubborn like a mule and refusing to turn back, she hop on to his cart and made that “rockety” journey to the plantation. Anyone travelling through an estate road in a truck will know what the journey is like. But imagine during the 1800s? My backbone will probably rattle; those who are pregnant probably will have a miscarriage. It was here she befriended Wu Chao, a woman from mainland South China. Later she was to find out how closely  “related” they both were through her marriage to Jeremy.To cut the story short, with Wu Chao’s help and her acute business sense, she became a successful woman, dealing in Oriental artefacts, buying and selling these decorative ornamentals from Malacca to London. The author introduced us to the Nyonyas and the Babas with their pigtails, sam foos’ and cheong sams’ . Of course some very interesting phrases like “eat her out of her house’, “a toss in the hay”(that’s for you to find the meaning).  After the death of Wu Chao, she adopted the child……When she paid a visit to the cemetery at the mainland, a dragonfly flutter and landed at her feet. She believed it a message from her dear departed Wu Chao that she’s happy wherever she is.  And with that she turned and walk towards the man waiting for her.., .THE END!

A Messenger of death

The edges of the pages had turned brownish and the book looks like it has seen better days. This is the condition of Elizabeth de Guise’s book on “The Flight of the Dragonfly”, first published in 1990 by the Grafton Books when I lay my hands on it at my friend’s place.

Set in London in 1857, Trudie cannot stand her Reverend father’s holier- than-thou attitude and a mum who has been reduced to a jelly state taking her marriage vows literally “Wives submit to your husbands”.  So when Jeremy Maddock, her brother’s friend came by one day with talks of his exciting plan to open an Emporium in Regent street , she fell headlong for him and his grand ideas. Marriage is her ultimate solution out of an unhappy home environment. Anything is better than under the strict and rigid ways of her father, Jonathan Grant.

The author,Elizabeth brings us a story not only of romance, but about a young innocent girl whose courage to cross the unknown borders to seek her own destiny makes the book so special. The story takes us from her dull life in London to the East in a plantation somewhere in Malacca where workers are mostly immigrants, cholera is rampant and where European women are considered “foreign devil” or yang kwei. She made that long and arduous journey alone to his plantation in Malacca and to be left destitute upon arrival due to his sudden death with cholera. It is here she learnt the ugly truth about her mysterious husband she married in haste back home. But like every novel, there is a Prince charming coming to the rescue. This is in the form of a Welsh miner, whom she mistaken for her husband’s koolie (worker), where she refused to let him brow-beat her into admitting defeat. The story is about her courage to seek a better life despite the odds and the determination to make a success of it. But it is not the romance that captured my interests. I am sure you all are dying to know the ending……next chaptere

p/s. My year end 2006 sunday school musical has been defered due to poor uploading.

For one more day

Mitch Albom’s book “For one more day” is so ordinary (hardcover only available at RM69 but my son bought it, so must be good) that anyone who read it cannot be blamed for thinking “I could write that book”. STOP! dont think further. He has a way with his words, like “The dead sits at our table long before they are gone”. Now that sounds like a ghost story. Reminded me of my grandpa before he passed away. He saw “ho hier ti” meaning those departed  soul of his relatives, ministring to him by his bedsite a few nights before he passed on.

This book begins with  :This is a story about a family…..

Every family has a ghost story…

The young boy, Chuck or Chick was asked to make a choice from young “Are you a mama’s boy or papa’s boy? Quess what he chose? He made a bad choice. For all his guilt, wrong doings and weaknesses he decided to take his own life. Between his touch and go he got one more day to connect with his departed mama…..And that straigtens him up.

The couple over her in Malaysia who decided to end their life and their 3 sons should have read this book. Their 3 sons are dead but they survived and I hope they realise how big a folly they have committed.