Aidilfitri Pt. II featuring Harry Belafonte
“This is your fault,” my mom hissed at my sister, spitting venom towards the 5’3” bright bank of ideas, sitting in the back of the car. My sister had her seatbelt safely strapped on but it wasn’t going to save her from our mother’s wrath – mommy dearest had previously eaten more than her usual intake of festive cookies and was on too much of a sugar high to calm down.
We were on our way back from visiting my father’s mother in Malacca, historical land of flourishing bougainvillea trees, houses painted in obscenely bright colors and unusually loud people. If you’re wondering why that one Malaccan you know is always yelling at you, wonder no more because they’re not. It’s just the way they talk. I think it was because a long, long time ago, Malacca was this really busy, bustling, over-populated trading centre and everyone had to talk louder than the other to be heard to get any chance at all at being heard. Quite possibly, what started out as a sort-of competition became a culture. KL’s not a noisy city – that’s just the conversations from Malacca being carried over.
Visiting my paternal grandmother itself proved to be a drama-free event. She sat in a wheelchair and spent a whole afternoon trying to remember my name. She’s not senile or anything; she just has 18 kids and close to a hundred grandchildren. I got a huge, sloppy kiss on the cheek from her anyway, a method of showing affection which stands in stark contrast to my maternal grandmother’s. My maternal grandmother doesn’t do hugs and kisses – she gives me money. I’m a big fan of the latter’s method. Fifty bucks gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, ooo… I feel love.
There were the usual asinine comments from my aunts and uncles. One uncle, my dad’s polygamous, wife-slapping bastard of a brother-in-law assumed that I don’t currently own a mirror and informed me that not only was I tall but I had also put on weight and positively looked the hideous giant. He told me that I should lose some weight and some height along with it. This, coming from a man whose protruding belly has prevented him from seeing his toes since 1990. He said something about how men don’t like tall and big women, that I should be more like my petite, 30 year old sister. Well, mister, I’ve got news for you: I DON’T LIKE YOU and I’m big enough to whoop your ass. One of my aunts mistook me for one of my sisters – the one living in Australia. When I told her otherwise, she looked surprised and gave some sort of backhanded compliment, “Didn’t you use to be ugly?” Now I’m apparently better looking, like my sister in OZ whom a cousin of mine once said shares an uncanny facial resemblance to the kid that plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies (sorry KJ, he said it, not me – I don’t agree – if I did I would look like Ron too, eh?). Yeah, what a looker. Another uncle asked me if I got his e-mail, the one with ‘XXX Naked’ in its subject line. I gave him a disgusted look and answered ‘no’. He told me not to worry: they were naked pictures but that of a chicken; a chicken without its feathers, geddit? Geddit, geddit? Neither did I.
None of these comments though resulted in tempers flaring (just lots of teeth gritting and fake smiling). The one that did was my sister’s. As we were leaving Malacca, late in the evening, she said, “Hey, I know this great alternative route back to KL. Why don’t we use that? It’s very scenic.” There was nothing particularly wrong with the usual route – the North-South Expressway, other than that it was really smooth and boring to drive on. My parents agreed to it; they thought it would be nice to take a slow, “relaxing”, scenic drive back home. I was doing the driving and should have known better than to say yes to my sister’s suggestion but as it turns out, I’m subconsciously, a sucker for pain.
I wonder if my sister’s definition of scenic was: Tons of stationary cars lined up, bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see. What would’ve been a quick, hour and a half drive back to KL already took two and a half and we were only halfway through. My legs were cramping and I read somewhere that smokers were at higher risk for Deep Vein Thrombosis or DVT. My mother, sitting in the front passenger seat, was suffering from a different kind of DVT – Diva Violent Tantrum. “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!!!!!!” she yelled at my sister, becoming more Malaccan by the day. “YOU AND YOUR STUPID IDEA!”
My sister looked like a deer caught in headlights with a screaming gun-toting hunter chasing after it. Except if the deer was caught in headlights in this kind of traffic; it wouldn’t have anything to worry about – traffic was so heavy that the cars were simply not moving. “B..b..but I didn’t know traffic was going to be like this! It’s normally smooth ………”my sister stammered.
Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild was playing on the car stereo… “Get your motors runnin, head out on the highway, lookin for adventure and whatever comes our way…yeah darlin’go make it happen, take the world in a love embrace, fire all of your guns at once ………”
“I AM GOING TO SHOOT ALL THESE MOTORISTS!” my mother proclaimed.
“Maryam, could we listen to something less noisy? My Harry Belafonte cd?” my dad’s voice piped in.
“Maryam’s driving. She needs to keep her hands on the wheel,” my mother answered for me.
“Ma, I haven’t driven 5 cm in half an hour.”
“This is your fault too, Maryam!”
“What did I do? I’m just the driver!”
“You agreed to this stupid idea. You wanted to take a slow, relaxing drive remember?”
“Ma, when I said ‘slow’ I didn’t think we would be stationary.”
“Maryam, please change the CD,” my dad’s voice piped in again. I reluctantly switched my CD compilation of road-trip worthy songs with his Harry Belafonte.
“I wish someone would invent a flying car already,” my mother huffed.
“They did,” my dad said, “Helicopters – they’re like flying cars.”
My mother whipped her head around to glare at my father. “You, be quiet! You’re to blame for this too! Go to sleep!” she told him and he duly obliged. The only sound that came out of my father for the next hour was a loud, odious snore. My mother huffed again, turned to my sister and said, “But YOU are chiefly responsible for getting us stuck in traffic.”
“Sorry Ma, I really had no idea traffic was going to be like this,” said my sister.
In the background, Harry Belafonte was crooning – Born to forgive……born to forget………born to forgive…… born to forget…
“YOU ARE SHIT,” was my mother’s reply.
We were on our way back from visiting my father’s mother in Malacca, historical land of flourishing bougainvillea trees, houses painted in obscenely bright colors and unusually loud people. If you’re wondering why that one Malaccan you know is always yelling at you, wonder no more because they’re not. It’s just the way they talk. I think it was because a long, long time ago, Malacca was this really busy, bustling, over-populated trading centre and everyone had to talk louder than the other to be heard to get any chance at all at being heard. Quite possibly, what started out as a sort-of competition became a culture. KL’s not a noisy city – that’s just the conversations from Malacca being carried over.
Visiting my paternal grandmother itself proved to be a drama-free event. She sat in a wheelchair and spent a whole afternoon trying to remember my name. She’s not senile or anything; she just has 18 kids and close to a hundred grandchildren. I got a huge, sloppy kiss on the cheek from her anyway, a method of showing affection which stands in stark contrast to my maternal grandmother’s. My maternal grandmother doesn’t do hugs and kisses – she gives me money. I’m a big fan of the latter’s method. Fifty bucks gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, ooo… I feel love.
There were the usual asinine comments from my aunts and uncles. One uncle, my dad’s polygamous, wife-slapping bastard of a brother-in-law assumed that I don’t currently own a mirror and informed me that not only was I tall but I had also put on weight and positively looked the hideous giant. He told me that I should lose some weight and some height along with it. This, coming from a man whose protruding belly has prevented him from seeing his toes since 1990. He said something about how men don’t like tall and big women, that I should be more like my petite, 30 year old sister. Well, mister, I’ve got news for you: I DON’T LIKE YOU and I’m big enough to whoop your ass. One of my aunts mistook me for one of my sisters – the one living in Australia. When I told her otherwise, she looked surprised and gave some sort of backhanded compliment, “Didn’t you use to be ugly?” Now I’m apparently better looking, like my sister in OZ whom a cousin of mine once said shares an uncanny facial resemblance to the kid that plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies (sorry KJ, he said it, not me – I don’t agree – if I did I would look like Ron too, eh?). Yeah, what a looker. Another uncle asked me if I got his e-mail, the one with ‘XXX Naked’ in its subject line. I gave him a disgusted look and answered ‘no’. He told me not to worry: they were naked pictures but that of a chicken; a chicken without its feathers, geddit? Geddit, geddit? Neither did I.
None of these comments though resulted in tempers flaring (just lots of teeth gritting and fake smiling). The one that did was my sister’s. As we were leaving Malacca, late in the evening, she said, “Hey, I know this great alternative route back to KL. Why don’t we use that? It’s very scenic.” There was nothing particularly wrong with the usual route – the North-South Expressway, other than that it was really smooth and boring to drive on. My parents agreed to it; they thought it would be nice to take a slow, “relaxing”, scenic drive back home. I was doing the driving and should have known better than to say yes to my sister’s suggestion but as it turns out, I’m subconsciously, a sucker for pain.
I wonder if my sister’s definition of scenic was: Tons of stationary cars lined up, bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see. What would’ve been a quick, hour and a half drive back to KL already took two and a half and we were only halfway through. My legs were cramping and I read somewhere that smokers were at higher risk for Deep Vein Thrombosis or DVT. My mother, sitting in the front passenger seat, was suffering from a different kind of DVT – Diva Violent Tantrum. “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!!!!!!” she yelled at my sister, becoming more Malaccan by the day. “YOU AND YOUR STUPID IDEA!”
My sister looked like a deer caught in headlights with a screaming gun-toting hunter chasing after it. Except if the deer was caught in headlights in this kind of traffic; it wouldn’t have anything to worry about – traffic was so heavy that the cars were simply not moving. “B..b..but I didn’t know traffic was going to be like this! It’s normally smooth ………”my sister stammered.
Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild was playing on the car stereo… “Get your motors runnin, head out on the highway, lookin for adventure and whatever comes our way…yeah darlin’go make it happen, take the world in a love embrace, fire all of your guns at once ………”
“I AM GOING TO SHOOT ALL THESE MOTORISTS!” my mother proclaimed.
“Maryam, could we listen to something less noisy? My Harry Belafonte cd?” my dad’s voice piped in.
“Maryam’s driving. She needs to keep her hands on the wheel,” my mother answered for me.
“Ma, I haven’t driven 5 cm in half an hour.”
“This is your fault too, Maryam!”
“What did I do? I’m just the driver!”
“You agreed to this stupid idea. You wanted to take a slow, relaxing drive remember?”
“Ma, when I said ‘slow’ I didn’t think we would be stationary.”
“Maryam, please change the CD,” my dad’s voice piped in again. I reluctantly switched my CD compilation of road-trip worthy songs with his Harry Belafonte.
“I wish someone would invent a flying car already,” my mother huffed.
“They did,” my dad said, “Helicopters – they’re like flying cars.”
My mother whipped her head around to glare at my father. “You, be quiet! You’re to blame for this too! Go to sleep!” she told him and he duly obliged. The only sound that came out of my father for the next hour was a loud, odious snore. My mother huffed again, turned to my sister and said, “But YOU are chiefly responsible for getting us stuck in traffic.”
“Sorry Ma, I really had no idea traffic was going to be like this,” said my sister.
In the background, Harry Belafonte was crooning – Born to forgive……born to forget………born to forgive…… born to forget…
“YOU ARE SHIT,” was my mother’s reply.
