DUIT RAYA DI PAGI SYAWAL

When kids their age were going from house to house to collect duit raya, my grandnieces and grandnephews prefer to stay home and watch the special shows on the television. They’ll go visiting with their parents.
When they were their children’s ages, my nieces and only nephew never go out their own or with their friends to collect duit raya.
My only nephew, whose wife is expecting their first-born at the end of the month, never had the experience too. He and his sisters follow their parents on their Raya rounds.Three of 20 grandnieces and grandnephews prefer watching television instead of going on their roundsMy brothers and I never had the opportunity to do it. While our parents welcome the neighbourhood kids into our home especially on the first few days of Syawal, we were never allowed to go out either on our own or with the other children. My late father would insist that they eat the Raya cookies and drink air sirap. They leave after they had eaten and given duit raya. Back then, 50 sen was a big deal. Kids these days frowned at being given RM1.
One year, we had children from as far as Kampung Melayu in our area. These kids were clever to target the Malay reserve areas for their Raya rounds.
One of my nieces’ spouses, Azmi, told his daughter Syiqin that he had done it before but the circumstances have changed so much.
“Before, we never hear of children gone missing. Now, there are so many cases,” he said. His wife, Ila, would holler out to their two daughters and two sons to ensure that they have not ventured out of the compound.
Lin, niece number 5, tells me that her son, 12 year old Aliff never asked if he could go out with his friends during Raya. “His friends come to the house to ask him out. He doesn’t even ask me first whether he can go out or not. He just didn’t want to follow them.
“Anuar (the husband) doesn’t like it too although he had done it himself when he was Aliff’s age.”
Kids these days have it easy compared to their parents, who back then had to probably work part-time during school holidays to collect enough money to buy their first pair of jeans or branded sports shoes.
Some of my grandnieces and grandnephews have more than a pair of Raya shoes and wear branded items and accessories. Most are using handphones their parents bought them. Either they use their parents’ supplementary lines or their parents will top up the credit for them. They can get anything they want. Well, almost.
I think the parents are depriving the children of the experience but if its money they want, then they needn’t go out of the house to collect duit raya. Us adults give them Raya packets every year. They collect 12 raya packets alone namely from TokNyang, TokNgah, TokChu, TokAyah, Mak Long, Mak Ngah, Mak Anjang, Mak Uda, Mak Teh, Mak Alang, Cik Ajai and Cu Ayip. Between RM5 and RM10 per packet, they can easily earn RM100 or more.
I hand out 20 Raya packets in the house alone. In the last few years, it was sufficient to change RM200 for 20 RM5 notes to cover the number of grandnieces and grandnephews I have. Next year, I’ll see an addition of four more, of which one is a pair of twins.
The teenage girls do go out to their friends’ but their parents will send them there. A pickup time will be ascertained as to when their parents are to fetch them.
Some parents probably thought it is safe for their small children to walk in big groups but up against not one but many adults, these children would still render themselves helpless. The children can also be reckless especially when crossing traffic. Sometimes, the elder children will already be across the road while the younger ones are left behind on the opposite side.
I remember that whenever we go visiting the elders in Majidee, we would see the neighbourhood children in their best Raya garb walking in big groups. They’ll pop up at the doorsteps when you least expect them.
Most often that not, they’ll be asked, “nak kuih ke duit raya?” They will settle for duit raya anytime. Sometimes, they’ll ask for something to drink to quench their thirst.
That RM1, 50 sen or 20 sen could contribute to whatever their hearts’ desires – maybe that first pair of brand new jeans, brand sports shoes or the cheapest handphone in the market.

RAMADAN BLESSINGS (5)

If you ask her, she will have no qualms about telling you this little mishap I had when I was a toddler. I didn’t mind Mak’s story telling before when I was little but not now. It can be a little embarrassing. You see, I can’t drop my pants to show proof that it happened.
I had this little accident with sparklers when I was about three or four years old. Mak said I was throwing the metal holder of the sparkler but it somehow bounced back and the still-hot portion of the sparkler “lekat” at my stomach.
You think I would be once bitten, twice shy? Not at all.
When I was older, I graduated to fireworks. Once, the bottle I had used to hold up the fireworks had toppled and the fireworks pointed towards me. The sparkles from the fireworks made holes in the light blue shirt I was wearing. It was my favourite.
Three times serik? Hah! A few years ago, I brought home fireworks that would lit the sky like those during the Merdeka and New Year celebrations albeit on a much, much smaller scale.
The problem with lighting these fireworks was that the wick is long. Most often than not, it would fizzle out before it reached the explosive. Or so I thought. It blew up as I got closed to it to check if it needed to be relit. It didn’t fry my brain but I was very nearly close to being deaf in one ear.
We even lit firecrackers, the ones the Chinese burn to halau hantu kononnya, on one particular eve of Syawal.
Mak said we were the hantu that night. I remembered her scolding us twice; the first time was because lit it close to midnight and that the racket had disturbed our neighbours and also the morning after when she saw the front lawn blanketed by a sea of red paper. We had to sweep the lawn clean before she allowed us to sit at the dining table for breakfast on the first day of Raya.
But I must tell you that we’re good kids. We still have our fingers intact. There is little or no MacGyver in us. We never attempted to make our own bamboo or pipe cannons. In fact, we had never seen one on our life. We would stick to the original thing, with no intentions of modifying it. We somewhat envied Mak because she had seen and played one back when she was growing up with her cousins in Batu Pahat. She would regale us with her stories of listening to the carbide and water hissing in the bamboo and then, KABOOOOOOM!
Ahhh, those were the days, kan?
Now, Mak will say “Budak-budak ni bakar duit” when she sees us bringing home sparklers and fireworks for Raya. Yes, while some of us may be adults with our own children, she’ll still call us “budak-budak”.
Two years ago, I brought home RM600 worth of sparklers and fireworks. Mak didn’t ask me where I got it from and I didn’t tell her.
That was the year we beat the other houses in the area in an unofficial fireworks competition. It starts close to midnight on the eve of Syawal and it is based on who can shoot the highest or the loudest.
That year, we kept our “secret weapon” for last. We let our neighbours have all the fun, teasing and taunting us with their fireworks.
At the stroke of midnight, our fireworks lit the sky. We gave our neighbours, and a passing patrol car, some two minutes of spectacular fireworks display.
No, we didn’t get into trouble with the authorities. They didn’t even alight from their car. They know the fireworks were lit under supervision i.e adults were doing it, not the kids.
We didn’t think they were going to drag all of us to the police station that night. Hey, it was already passed midnight and it was already Syawal morning!
I’m already home for the Raya holidays and the little ones want to lit up their sparklers. I’m using this opportunity to bond with them.
They call me TokNgah but I’m their “jeans and T-shirt” grand aunt who are not too old like their TokMak and TokNyang to play with them.
So, please excuse me while I lit the candle for them. Yes, candle because lighting of the pelita is still not my thing.

SELAMAT HARI RAYA MAAF ZAHIR BATIN
Semoga Syawal ini membawa keberkatan dan kebahagiaan untuk kita.

JOHOR BUZZ: Glory days of road races in Johor’s GP

I AM planning to cross the Causeway for the F1 night race in Singapore this weekend.
My mother tells me that Johor was the first in Malaysia to host a grand prix. And she was not even born then!
She, however, remembers watching the Johore Grand Prix from the balcony of the government quarters in Jalan Ayer Molek where she lived after she married my father in 1960. The government quarters have since been demolished to make way for the federal building, Wisma Persekutuan.
Ironically, I found information on the Johore Grand Prix at the National Library in Singapore’s pages on the Internet.
The Johore Grand Prix was first held in 1940, the year my mother was born. The second one took place eight years later. Due to the confrontation and the state of emergency in the country, the state government had prohibited the event from 1963 to 1966, and again in 1969.
The event has not been held since.

ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, GO: Fumio Ito (No 21) and Y.sunako (No 20) lead off at the start of the race while their 28 rivals are still pushing to get their machines started for the 70-lap Johore Grand Prix for motorcycles in 1963. - NST pix

The first Johore Grand Prix was organised by the late Sultan Sir Ismail ibni Almarhum Sultan Sir Ibrahim, when he was still Tunku Mahkota of Johor. The race was in aid of the War Fund.
Four races were held in the two-day event. The 2.414km circuit consisted of a portion of a newly-built road in the city and some connecting roads.
Participation was by invitation only. A total of 15 invitations were sent out for competitors representing the states of Johor (including Singapore), Perak, Selangor, Penang and Malacca.
The second Johore Grand Prix took place eight years later in 1948 with the newly established Singapore Motor Club (formed by a group of racing enthusiasts) taking up its organisation. It continued to receive support from the Tunku Mahkota who was himself a car enthusiast.
The 1948 Johore Grand Prix was a one-day event with four races, two for motorcycles and two for cars.
The two events for motorcycles were 350cc and under (five laps) and 351cc and over (five laps). The two events for cars were 1,500cc and under (five laps) and the Johore Grand Prix for Formula One cars of 1,500cc supercharged and 4,500cc supercharged (10 laps). The motorcycle event for 351cc and over was reported to be a crowd pleaser.
Over the years, the Johore Grand Prix for Formula One cars had its distance increased (it was 35 laps in 1952), to align it with international standards. The number of events also increased from five in 1950 to seven in 1952.
The Grand Prix, too, was extremely well received with entries and spectatorship growing over the years. In the early 1950s, an entrance ticket was priced at five Straits dollars and available in Singapore and Johor Baru.
The number of participants at the race increased annually, with 88 entries in 1951 and 101 in 1952. And in 1952, there were about 35,000 spectators at the event.
With a lap distance of 3.7 km, the circuit was a section of a real road that went through parts of the town. It was a unique circuit that consisted of fast straights and slow corners. Racers began near the Johor Baru Post Office with a gentle curving straight by the seafront along Jalan Tai Heng (named after Seah Tai Heng, who was appointed as Johor’s third Kapitan in the 1870s. The road has since been renamed Jalan Sultan Ibrahim.
The drivers would then head towards the zoo, go up the hill along Jalan Gertak Merah and come down towards the Prisons. Then, they would turn right towards Jalan Ayer Molek and down the straight towards the start/finishing line.
By 1952, four grandstands were built along the circuit to give spectators the best view possible, one each at Jail Corner and Zoo Corner, and two others at the start/finishing line.
A hotchpotch of different cars owned by wealthy Singaporeans and Malayans were raced. Freddy Pope (then president of the Singapore Motor Club) was the winner of the 1953 Johore Grand Prix in a Jaguar XK120S.
A tragic accident that took place on the circuit in 1963 led to the death of a popular Malayan racer, Yong Kee Nam (affectionately known as Fatso Yong). Driving a Jaguar D-type at 200kph, Yong’s car hit a pole and broke into two.

GREAT LOSS: Popular Malayan racer Yong Kee Nam in a Jaguar D-type. - NST pix

Now Johor is the only state other than Selangor that has a racetrack of international standards.
Built in 1986, the Johor circuit initially catered to the growing local enthusiasts but soon gained recognition, not only regionally, but also internationally.
Its challenging 3.86km configuration soon attained respect and admiration among the racing fraternity.
In 1990, just four years after it was built, the circuit was upgraded to the strict FIM World GP homologation requirements. In 1998, it hosted the World Motorcycle Grand Prix Championship.
Ever since then, it has been hosting regular local and regional events.

RAMADAN BLESSINGS (4)

Some say it is in the last 10 days. Others however say it is the final seven, thus the name Malam Tujuh Likur.
The Sunnis generally considers Malam Lailatul Qadr to fall on either the 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th or 29th of Ramadan while the Shias consider it to be either the 19th, 21st or 23rd of the month.
However, due to the uncertainty of the exact date, we are recommended to observe all the nights.
As kids, Malam Tujuh Likur means the lighting of the kerosene lamps around the house. That is an indication that Raya is near. By this time, the adventurous would be experimenting with their meriam buloh. We were mere listeners, not spectators, as we could only hear the boom from the bamboo cannon.
Back then, lighting the kerosene lamp would be the last thing I would want to do after the break of fast and Maghrib prayers. After a hearty meal, I wouldn’t want to go out of the house in the dark to light the lampu pelita. I would rather “berlingkar jadi ular”, my mother’s favourite phrase on her kids, in front of the TV.
“Go and light the pelita,” my late father would tell us before he leaves the house for terawih. After all, he had already filled up the pelita with kerosene and clean up the wick.
I never liked doing it because I would end up having to shower again as I would smell of smoke and kerosene.
And it can be quite scary if you’re on your own lighting the kerosene lamps. The compound of our house isn’t exactly small. A slight breeze or a ruffle of the tree can send a shiver up the spine.
Atok’s tales of Malam Lailatul Qadr doesn’t help too. It would be a pleasant night, she said, neither hot nor cold. The night will be slightly foggy. Trees and even buildings, she added, would bow to the ground as if in prayers during the great night.
I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I had come across this.
She told us of someone she knew who had hugged the Benggali jual roti, who was wearing white, thinking that he was an angel doing his rounds on Malam Lailatul Qadr.
Atok didn’t give us any names for the obvious reason of not wanting the person to be humiliated all his life.
Now that we are older and, insya’Allah wise, and thanks to the advent of electricity and “lampu lip lap”, we needn’t be afraid anymore and we no longer need to light the kerosene lamps.
Oh, there are still lampu pelita to be lit back home in JB but we got our younger grandnephews and grandnieces to do it now. To them, the lighting of the lampu pelita is the green light to playing with sparklers and fireworks (even for us adults!).
And we’re no longer afraid of Malam Lailatul Qadr, one of the holiest and most blessed nights where the reward of worship on this night is better than the worship of a thousand months or equivalent to a person’s lifetime.
We go to mosques searching for it. But it is sad to find some people turning up to mosques in the last 10 days of the Ramadan to "find" that special night. What happened to the first 20 days? And there are those who go for the sunat (terawih), without even being bothered to undertake the wajib (five daily prayers).
If you ask me, I believe we shouldn’t have to go searching for Lailatul Qadr.
With our iman as its guidance, it will come to us.

RAMADAN BLESSINGS (3)

Norehan is an orphan. She has been living at an orphanage in Setapak since she was six years old. She is now in Standard Four.
When I saw her last Thursday night at a buka puasa do, she was lining up with the other orphans to receive “duit raya” from the host of the event. I didn’t ask how much she got in the money packet but I suspect it must be either RM10, RM50 or RM100.
Besides orphans, the host of the buka puasa also feasted the single mothers, who take care of the orphans.
“Kakak ambil gambar ke?” Norehan asked me when she saw me fiddling with my N95.
We couldn’t talk long because she had to leave for the orphanage after the break of fast..
She lived with 39 other orphans in a small house in Setapak, which had been converted into an orphanage.
Don’t ask me how big the small house is but I cannot imagine how a typical terrace or even a double-storey house in Kuala Lumpur can accommodate that many people.
She looked down to the floor when I asked her how long she had stayed at the orphanage. She was cradling a two-year old in her arms. I don’t know whether the little girl is her sister or a daughter to one of the single mothers.
“Dari Darjah Satu lagi,” she said. The cheerfulness in her voice was gone.
I wanted to know her story but I wasn’t about to push for it. I didn’t pursue with any other questions. I didn’t want her to cry. I didn’t want to end up crying with her too.
She turned away before I could capture her on the camera.
I cannot imagine how it must feel like being an orphan at that age. I lost my father when I was 25 years old and already working. I don’t know if Norehan still remembers her parents or how she ended at the orphanage.
There were 40 of them boys and girls at Thursday’s buka puasa of, among others, mutton and chicken briyani, vegetable dishes, noodles and fried chicken. Desserts were local kuih, ais batu kacang and mini-Cornettos, which the Bangladeshi and Nepalese waiters tossed on the table instead of putting it on a plate.
The boys were wearing light purple Baju Melayu while the girls in Baju Kurung of the same colour.
The boys were seated together and they made quite a racket after eating a hearty meal for buka puasa. The girls were no different. The mini-Cornettos were snapped up as soon as it was served.
They wandered around the golf clubhouse until they were called to collect the “duit raya.”
I wonder how often do they get to eat as much as they want at places they could before only dream of? The ais batu kacang seemed to be hit among them. So were the mini-Cornettos.
I wonder if they get invited to other buka puasa events hosted by other companies.
This Ramadan and like other Ramadan before this, orphans, single mothers and the poor are much sought after. Individuals and companies host them to buka puasa at posh restaurants, hotels, convention centres and golf clubs.
Some companies also take these orphans out for shopping of their Raya clothes and shoes in line with the spirit of giving during the fasting month.
I know of a group of young professionals that do this on their own, treating the orphans to a buka puasa treat and giving them “duit raya” from their own pockets.
Some companies treat this as their corporate social responsibility but what benefit would this be to the children if it is nothing more than superficial window-dressing, which looked good in text and words for their annual reports.
What about the rest of the year? Ramadan comes once a year but when giving charity, one needs no calendar.

Read Bergen’s take on the matter here.