From a Malay School boy to a Cliffordian, part 1

Raja Chulan Raja Ahmad Tajuddin returns with more tales from his early years as a Kuala Kangsor boy. Today’s post is a first parter describing his early days at the Clifford School Special Malay Class following his early education at the  Sekolah Rendah Melayu Pusat. Being at an English-medium school did not deter our intrepid co-editor from enjoying simple kampung fun with his school friends!

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On a recent one-day sojourn to Pangkor Laut Resort, I was a guest of Executive Chef Zaffar, a long lost friend whose elder brother Abdullah was a schoolmate in my early primary school days at Central Malay School and, later, Clifford Primary School. Even during his early schooling days, Dollah, as we fondly called him, always helped his father, Pak Samad, who was a reputable cook in Bukit Chandan. Dollah now continues the family catering business as a caterer in Kuala Kangsar. However, he has not been of good health lately and, as a close school friend, I pray to Allah for his speedy recovery.

Like Dollah, I moved on to an English-medium school from my three year-stint at Central Malay School. My mother, who took pride in being one of the earliest Malay ladies to be English-educated (The author’s mother, Raja Datin Nor Zaharah Raja Badiozaman, is an alumnus of Lady Treacher’s, Taiping –Ed.), persuaded me to take the Special Malay Class examination which would enable me to be enrolled at Clifford Primary School. This exam was meant for pupils in the standard four and I was only in standard three. I guess that must have been my first real challenge in education. I managed to make the grade and jumped class. I then became a Cliffordian at the Special Malay Class, a mere walking distance from Hill Road.

However, changing schools never did change my undying thirst to explore new territories of truancy. My new friends at the Clifford SMC came from various districts of Kuala Kangsar – namely Manong, Padang Rengas, Kati, Enggor and Sayong to name a few. These places were not as they are now and in those days these places were considered remote and not easily accessible to kids like us to venture on our own, especially without permission from our parents.

Kota Lama Kiri was one such place and I had an unforgettable incident while foraging for pineapples and bananas grown by the village folks at the jungle fringes. Kids, including myself, innocently thought that these fruit plants/trees had grown naturally! But it was not just our craving for fruit that brought us here. Classmates from the locality of Kota Lama Kiri kindled my interest to catching catfish (ikan keli) with my bare hands. It was a challenge that was too good to miss. Catching catfish in the padi fields of Kota Lama Kiri was seasonal – after the padi harvesting season when the water in the fields have been drained out.

From the small single-lane road leading to Kampung Jemuan and the Iskandar Bridge, we detoured at Sungai Chempias, a small tributary of Sungai Perak, wading upstream against the river’s fast current. This led us to the irrigation drains and the padi fields. Excitement mounted as I saw some budak-budak kampung already sloshing around in the muddy padi fields, some shouting excitedly with ikan keli and haruan in their hands. The padi fields were not entirely dried up for some parts were still covered with ankle-deep water and locating the fish was not that easy, as I found out. Holding a live fish is normally quite difficult but catching one ith bare hands in muddy waters? Not wanting to be belittled by my kampung friends I became bolder and ventured to a corner of the padi field where none of the kampung boys went.

How not to catch ikan keli.

As I sloshed through the mud, the water level raised to my knee rather quickly. I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper, groping around but not finding anything to cling on to. It was after some desperate flailing of hands and legs that I finally felt myself floating up, gasping for air. I was helped up and was told that I had slipped into a telaga buta (an unused well) hidden beneath the shallow muddy water! It was an unforgettable incident that never reached the ears of my parents, alhamdulillah. My disappointment of not catching a single ikan keli nor haruan was soon forgotten during lunch. With the peaceful kampung surroundings, we ate hot steaming rice with freshly grilled ikan keli and haruan. And the freshly plucked pucuk paku in santan (coconut milk) cooked over firewood was simply delicious.

[To be continued]

Kuala’s Hill Road – Central Malay Primary School

Raja Chulan Raja Ahmad Tajuddin returns with more tales from his early years as a boy living on Hill Road, the ‘third hill’ of Kuala. Today’s musings are of his days at the Sekolah Rendah Melayu Pusat, as well as the unforgettable characters that were his teachers and school friends!

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Moving to the rumah batu (the government quarters we lived in as my mother puts it) meant changing schools. I entered the Central Malay School Kuala Kangsar (Sekolah Rendah Melayu Pusat)[1] in Standard 3, as I had already spent two years at the Bukit Chandan Malay Primary School. The Central Malay School was located adjacent to The Malay College, and from the barrack we stayed, the school was about two kilometres away. To reach my new school, I would trespass the Hill Road church, enjoying the shades of the big ara and chenderai trees I remembered well. I am fond of the chenderai in particular because it provided the brats of Hill Road the ‘ammunition’ in the form of chenderai seeds for their senapang buluh, proving yet the ingenuity of kids of yesteryear. The body for the senapang buluh would of course come from the bamboo hedge fencing of the Hill Road church! The season of senapang buluh high noon duels was the most irked of by our mothers. The hits from the chenderai seeds would leave our shirts polka-dotted green! And it took our dear mothers some scrubbing to rid our shirts of these!

I never liked walking on the road so my next short cut would be cutting across the Clifford school field which then was quite bare. This would take me to the only stretch of road I cannot avoid walking on – the road separating the Malay College ‘Big School’ and its prep school. I always had to stop at the pedestrian crossing by the College, allowing the smug-looking whitely-clad Malay Collegians to cross. From here it was just about a hundred metre walk to the front gate of the Central Malay Primary School, the road leading to the school’s only building was then lined with small trees and was barely enough for two cars to manoeuvre.

The Central Malay School is now known as Sekolah Kebangsaan Sultan Idris II. (Photo: Raja Chulan Raja Dato Ahmad Tajuddin)

I made a visit to the Central Malay School last year and saw the changes it had undergone. The school now has an additional building next to the main block and a new staff quarters with the district education office occupying a spot which was once a low lying flood-prone area whenever it rained heavily. What I felt missing mostly was the big rumbia tree not far from the main block, which bore fruits almost incessantly enough for my gang of brats. Rather unfortunate though for the school because we littered the area with firewood taken from the school canteen in our arduous effort to bring down the buah rumbia!

Etched in my memory during my short schooling stint at the Central Malay School were a few personalities. There was the stern-looking headmaster who was rather short of hearing and had to use a hearing aid. We took advantage of his impaired hearing, as we never needed to throw caution to the wind when we noisily assailed the rumbia tree for its fruits (as kids normally do!) but we have to keep our eyes open for he stayed at the Headmaster’s house within the school compound, a walking distance away from Istana Gahara, an immediate neighbour to the school.

The school’s bespectacled ustaz always wore a songkok and took great pains to educate us brats with the basic tenets of Islam. Learning the recitations of verses in the obligatory prayers would be followed by practising it in class. We were made to bring handkerchiefs to be used as prayer mats when we prayed on the cemented classroom floor. I now realised how much I owed him for his patience to make sure we can write and read the jawi scriptures. And he made sure of this with whips of ‘persuasion’ from the long, slim rattan cane he always carried! Alhamdulillah, I can now read and write jawi, thus, being able to read both the Quran and hadith in Arabic, which was immensely useful during my travels to the Middle East later in my life. Regrettably though I cannot recall his name but may Allah bless and reward him for being such a good teacher.

Our English teacher, Mr. Melvin, was my favourite. He was rather fair-skinned and good looking chap, being a Eurasian. Rather taciturn and soft spoken, he was good in teaching us the basics of the English language, both spoken and written. The morning recess time was ten o’clock and I would help peel his oranges before scooting off to the school canteen, a wooden building at the back of the school. The canteen food then was rather cheap and my daily pocket money of 30 sen was enough for a glass of drink, mee or bihun, and some Malay cookies. Sagun was everyone’s favourite at the canteen, which was a mixture of sweetened finely grounded coconut and rice flour, wrapped in old newspaper folded in a cone. One has to bite the tapered end of the cone to eat the sagun.

One must be careful when eating sagun because the finely powdered delicacy could smear half your face white and you would not want to enter class with a tepung goma-covered face like Aziz Sattar in Seniman Bujang Lapok!

An unforgettable character among my peers at school was a friend, Tahir. Stoutly built, he was the school bully. He always wanted to have his way in whatever we brats did, especially in games. I had my share of troubles from him when we played football. He displayed his tantrum when he was on the losing end of the game. Imagine playing football from noon till sundown! And I had to face the music from my mother when I reached home very late. God bless my mother for she then told thebully off, right at the door step of his home. I never had trouble with Tahir again, ever.

On my way home from the Central Malay School every day, I would take further detours. The detour I’d take was via the Iskandar Polo Club located quite near the Masjid Jamek Kuala Kangsar facing the town’s municipal football field. At the club, I enjoyed watching the elders play billiards and mahjong although I never really knew anything about both. The club room was, of course, out of bounds to minors but I was never shooed off as I have close and distant uncles who frequented the club. It was only later that I had the perfect excuse to always be at the club. After school, I would send kuih made by my mother for sale at the Club’s canteen. A famous landmark of the club was the Polo Club pavilion, a spiralled multi-storey building, which I think was the observation tower for polo games. I had fun scouring up and down the pavilion stairs, sliding down the lower end of the banister.

The pavilion of the old Iskandar Polo Club. (Photo: Raja Chulan Raja Dato Ahmad Tajuddin)

The pavilion is what is left of the Iskandar Polo Club today.

Footnote:
[1]Central Malay Primary School was founded in 1880, making it the oldest school in Kuala Kangsar. The original building was at the Bukit Kerajaan courthouse. The school then moved to what is now known as Jalan Daeng Selili in 1885 and again to Hogan Road (Jalan Iskandar) in 1887. It then moved to its current site and was named Central Malay School in 1950. It was renamed Sekolah Kebangsaan Sultan Idris II in 1964.

Victoria Bridge, Kuala Kangsar

Victoria Bridge, Kuala Kangsar.

The Victoria Bridge is a single railway bridge that crosses the Sungai Perak at Karai and is one of the oldest railway bridges in Malaysia. It is located about 4 km from the Iskandar Bridge.

Official opening plaque. (Source: http://www.malaysiasite.nl)

It was opened on 21 March 1900 by Almarhum Sultan Idris Murshidul Azzam Shah at a ceremony which was also attended by Sir Frank Swettenham, the Resident-General for the FMS, and Sir John Pickersgill Rodger, the acting British Resident for Perak. The ceremonial opening of the bridge comprised unlocking of a bar traversing the portal with a silver key.

The bridge was constructed between December 1897 and March 1900 by the Perak State Railway and comprised iron lattice girders over a thousand feet long, resting on six brick piers, with the roadway 40 feet above the ordinary level of the river. Seen from the bank, the mighty Victoria Bridge bridge is a handsome structure which spans the wide Sungai Perak. The bridge has been erected at a cost of over $300,000. The construction of the bridge was under the supervision of Mr. Happlestone while C.R. Hanson was the chief engineer. Sir Frank Swettenham in his speech during the opening of the bridge regarded Victoria Bridge is the largest bridge in the East outside India.

Queen Victoria. (Source: Google images)

The bridge was named after Queen Victoria[1] on two considerations. Firstly, when the construction began in 1897, it was the year of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Secondly, the bridge was completed at moment when her authority was being triumphantly vindicated in South Africa.

The bridge at her peak was an important structure during the boom of the tin mining industry as well as linking the western Malay states with each other and the port of Penang. The bridge is said to be similar to the “bridge on the river Kwai” and Guillemard Bridge in Kelantan.

(Source: Google Images)

The Victoria Bridge is now no longer in use since 2002, as a new concrete bridge has been built some 15 metres away and parallel to her to take over the role of handling rail traffic. While Victoria Bridge is closed to rail traffic, its adjoining footbridge is still publicly open to motorcycles and pedestrians.

Footnote:
[1] Queen Victoria was the Queen regnant of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. She was dubbed as the “grandmother of Europe” where her 9 children and 42 grandchildren were married into royal families across the continent, tying them together.

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Reference:
1. Asiaexplorer.com. Victoria Bridge.
2. Malaysiasite.nl. Forgotten Bridge.
3. Wikipedia. Victoria Bridge.
4. The Straits Times. 1900 March 26. p3.