balik kampung
v. to go back to one's home
n. a mass exodus to one's hometown for cultural celebrations

 

Pink velcro sandals traversed the road by the open drain, as pink speed dealers adorned my face that had been graced with pink mosquito bites. A blunt fringe and bob armed my head, much like the caps with neck flaps permissible to the teachers enforcing the no hat no play rules at kindergarten.

My mother gripped my wrist tightly, palms tacky from the humidity. She yelled, 'Yoi! Don't let go ah!' 
Crossing five lanes of traffic without an intersection would be a death wish at home, but nobody has the time to waste here. The journey seemed as formidable as parting the Red Sea, but a mother's will was all that was needed to halt the flow of traffic. 

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On the other side, we were met by smokers chatting. Busy bankers flipped open their Motorolas, rushing to their next appointment. Bahasa Melayu was so familiar yet so foreign. It was spoken to me as I was swaddled, yet abandoned some years later in fear that I - fresh out of the Asian bubble - would fall behind my classmates' English grades. 

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Words flew over my head as I marveled at the sky-scraping shopping centres and the intoxicating scent of banana-leaf restaurants just opposite Achor's house. Visiting the 87 year old's residence had always terrified me. Not because of the people - their Chinese conversations were even more white noise than Malay. It was the mosquitoes that lurked in the shadows, threatening to bite me should I show an inch of skin.

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I mumbled, 'Mami, I got mozzie bite!'
'We'll go home soon lah,' she would reply.

 

[Time skip]

 

The air conditioner blew a meek gust of cool air around the taxi van that my family and I hailed at the airport. The vast branches of my grandpa's family tree were returning en masse for his mother's 100th birthday in June. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, her parents had sailed from Fujian to Setiawan and given birth to Achor just after the First World War. A formidable woman, she raised seven children and a rambutan plantation before retiring and moving to the city with her adult children.

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At her house, I launched upon a slow barrage of questions: her favourite food was 'anything can'. I Googled her favourite singer, but he didn’t exist on the internet. The mosquitoes showed reservation, yet I still couldn’t seem to find my words. They slipped away from my mouth even with the aid of my grandpa's translation.

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The following day, she parked her walker at the entrance of the banquet hall, bestowing red packet after red packet to three generations. The 10 courses concluded with a large pink peach shaped bao covering tiny pink counterparts filled with fruit paste. Not knowing anyone besides my three Australian cousins and their parents, I went to Achor's table. She was surrounded by her children. They proclaimed, 'Ahchin's kids got into good school!' Others said 'I got good job now! Can come more often'.

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My jaw clenched, watching them save face by overcompensating in conversation for letting her live alone. We wanted her to live with us in Perth, but no one on her side of the ocean took action. Now it’s too late, so they put her in a home where she is only given five bites of mee hoon for lunch. My face was pink when I got into the car, eyes refused to shut off their tear ducts. Everyone berrated me for ruining Achor's mood. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled and waved goodbye on her walker.

 

[Time skip]

 

Returning to Malaysia was like therapy for becoming a studious hermit during school. Winding through lush green hills and motorcycles flying past, in December we took a road trip to the hometown of our grandparents' and parents' generations, and generations before them. My grandmother's family started many centuries ago, when the Portuguese traders fancied the local women and decided to take a town or two. Brown-skinned Eurasians still dance in dresses with contrast embroidery flashing alive as they turn, like a zoetrope. 

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So that summer was spent in my grandmother's sister's tiny old house shared amongst 12 people. When someone came home with a translucent pink bag of compiang, onion biscuits, it was finished in two seconds. We filled our stomachs with fish curry, four-angled-beans and rice in preparation to go to Christmas Eve mass, where each reading was given in Malay, English and Tamil back to back. We thanked the Lord for blessing us so generously that our privileged Aussie stomachs needed Travelan every time we ate out. The next day about half the town showed up for dinner, a cacophony of chatter rivalling a vacuum cleaner's decibels. 
 
Towards the end of our trip, we went to Lumut, the nearby town on the mouth of the river. As the pink sun drifted into slumber, entering the night park was an endearing yet sentimental experience. Snow in the form of a fine soap spray hovered in the air like a spell. Shrieking when my cousins spun me around a jumbo doughnut swing, this place in the middle of nowhere felt like the home I couldn't find in Perth. The black-stained walls from aircon units on the terraced house walls, the lizards in the open drains sneaking into the back doors, and the hypnotising fragrance from banana leaf restaurants were infinitely more comforting than the most isolated city on Earth.