An open journal with snippets of random encounters from Malaysia’s Heritage City, Malacca. Street art, abstractions, conversations, and flipped pages through the flipping history of Malacca.
The clouds in cotton balls, a white carnival. In ovals that seemed too seeming in pointed paintings, as the 10-year-old me struggled to shape puffs of clouds in pastel colours on an art paper, the fat kind. The UV reflection on the glass misdirects artificial rainbows in my clouds. The faraway sharp white, in slender drops, reminds me of the white Tibetan stupas of Ladakh.
When the flight took speed, within a few minutes, Colombo dropped down, and the city evaporated into a white Narnia-land, before the human-jitter formed an aerial-scape. The red ‘Air Asia’ wing is cutting through the mellow blue of the sky above the cloud-layer in tiers, with altitude. I feel the air pressure. I am above the clouds; the wings meant to be birds’. My Polaroid sunglasses cast another spell on the scene outside. Many colours shoot the clouds.
Leaving Sri Lanka for Malaysia
‘The weather is expected to be cloudy today. The flight may experience some turbulence. Please wear your seatbelt.’ The captain announced. The speaker is not very clear. Some of his words hardly make it across the aisle.
I look out again. The conjugated clouds have framed a floor in the air. A floor that breaks into transparent glasses in cracks, gives you the anticipation that you can see the world beneath. All you see is more clouds, a little down the freckled glasses. The sun is harsh on them. Until the wings move slowly to a thick dark world.
I feel aware of the privilege of being on a flight, to witness the cloudy wonderland. But I can’t also help but think how we are destroying the Disneyland with the flight emission. I know reaching Malaysia is only possible through flights, and again, it’s a privilege. But do we really need to be up here? As human beings, do we really need to be everywhere? Why do I feel sad despite knowing that only through the provision of a plane I could witness this? But I am sad. I almost feel like I didn’t have to see this.
I try to imagine cow-carts in Malacca, passing by the McDonald’s sign. Dior, Gucci, Prada… Mahkota Parade Mall… The scruffy cows waiting in traffic lights right before the crossing line, clip-clopping on the furnished wide roads.
The world doesn’t seem so impossible now. All the country names that once seemed to be such far-fetched ‘concepts’ seem close. South-East Asia – it seemed to be a dream before. But now, it seems possible.
I met Elena at the Colombo airport. She booked the same flight as me, but neither of us knew, and we surprised each other in the check-in queue. I had met her before in Ella, a street-town in the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka. She is from Armenia, travelling with another Armenian 18-year-old girl Ana.
The flight attendant asked me, ‘Miss, are you hungry?’
‘A little bit’, I reply, unreasonably hoping for a free meal, because, sometimes they offer upgraded services to discounted people!
He sits on the empty seat beside me and tells me that they are giving away two meals at a special discounted price. I feel intrigued. ‘The flight is for two more hours. I don’t want you to go hungry’. He opens the menu and points at a Chicken Rice Thali.
Faded brown in half-baked brick-style. In selfies, snaps, and stepped cacophony. This medley of the dead and life misplaced Malacca’s foot on the ground.
‘I am a vegetarian’. His finger moves to a Hyderabadi Veg Biriyani. Indian food in the Malaysian air! ‘The original price is 17 MYR. I can give it to you for 16 MYR, and you also get free water’. I try to understand from his face if he is joking. Free water and a one-ringgit discount! It’s good that he gets paid to smile!
The Overnight Stay at the Airport Before Reaching Malacca
The immigration was as smooth as a latte (no idea what I am talking about). The woman at the immigration was all smiling and asked me if I was on vacation. I told her about my travels, and she said, ‘I hope to save some money. I am tired of hearing people taking a vacation. Now I want to travel!’
I don’t know if it is because we got into these moments of momentarily honest exchange-of-desires or the border is that lax, she asked for no document. Just my passport. ‘You are lucky that you get to travel’, she stamped on my passport, whimsically, like a friend.
‘How do you say ‘thank you’ in Malay?’ I asked.
‘Terima Kasih’.
‘Te-ri-ma….’ She takes my boarding pass and writes ‘Terima Kasih’ on the back of it. My mood changes immediately, the way sunshine takes the chill away. I am in Malaysia.
My backpack came fast, as I enthusiastically called my sister in-between to deliver the good news of my hassle-free entry to Malaysia! Elena came to say goodbye. Malaysia was more of a transit on her way to Indonesia. And in that moment, I made a sudden decision to stay the night at the airport instead of travelling to Malacca. Kuala Lumpur, the Capital of Malaysia, is almost a 40 km journey from the airport, and I didn’t have the energy and daylight to navigate through the stone-faced urbanization of Kuala Lumpur. Twin Towers! I knew what to expect. No, I don’t want to see them.
I slept at the airport. My butt on a stiff black chair, my head sprawling across the upper surface of my backpack, and my clumsy daypack supporting my chest from falling off. Together they made do with a few hours of sleep, interrupted by the new arrivals and uninterrupted in long-stretched uneven hours before heading to Malacca.
Before the entire sleeping-or-not-sleeping choreo, I hauled to the Foreign Currency Exchange, only to hear that they won’t exchange my Sri Lankan Rupees! I was carrying 20,000 LKR from Sri Lanka, which was approximately 350 Malaysian Ringgit! I should have exchanged them in Sri Lanka! To a ‘big’ currency like the USD, Australian Dollar, or even Indian Rupee. But I didn’t! And now all the currency shops denied taking my Sri Lankan money!
I take out 100 ringgit from the ATM just to sustain my way to Malacca, where I will meet my first local host Jo.
In a little over two hours, the bus transported me to Malacca, a Heritage UNESCO-city in Malaysia. What happened outside the bus went unnoticed, as I slept my ass off in the air conditioner and a comfy seat!
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Jo Became My First Friend in Malacca
Melaka Sentral. I logged in to the free Wi-Fi of the market to connect with my host Jo. He is supposed to pick me up in his car in 30 minutes. Jo is a Malaysian Hindu with a family lineage falling back on both the Tamil and Punjabi cultures of India. Malaysia is more of an amalgam of Malay, Chinese, and Indians, while remaining Muslim-majority, the country also has 22.8% of Chinese-Malaysians and 6.8% of Malaysian-Indians. Their cuisine is also a fusion!
With Jo, the conversations always take an airy turn. He is happy-go-lucky and easy-going, making jokes to laugh himself off! A 28-year-old young man from Malacca who used to be an accountant. With Covid, he bid goodbye to his job, and started two hostels in town. One of his capsule hostels is a 100-year-old heritage house with wooden floors that creak with marathon jumps. ‘Be careful! The roof can fall down!’ He invited me to the next-door local restaurant for lunch.
‘You can take a day off on Thursday, and may go to Singapore. There are direct buses to Singapore from here.’
‘I don’t want to go to Singapore.’ I probably had made a face.
‘Okay, don’t throw the plate or anything! You don’t have to go to Singapore.’ Jo has a blank face. He says things right out flat. I laughed for 5 minutes straight!
‘I make jokes with the guests. They take me too seriously! One time I took the guests out for sightseeing in my car, and this girl was sending the location to her mother. And I told her ‘I know what you are doing!’ The girl got scared. She said, ‘How do you know?’ I said, ‘I know, because I am going to kidnap you!’
My Teh-O (Tea) almost fell off my nose in laughter. ‘You have to find me a way to exchange my Sri Lankan rupees, Jo. I have 20000 LKR in cash! And nobody is accepting!’
‘I have some underground contacts.’ Jo orders lunch for both of us. Everything on the menu is gibberish to me, so he does the honour. The waiter in pink costume brings a plate of Mee Goreng Biasa, which is basically fried noodles with Tauhu (Tofu). I soon learned not to order anything with ‘Goreng’, which meant ‘fried’!
The next day I walked to a money exchange counter in Malacca. I told the sweet-faced Chinese-Malay man about my situation. He kept repeating ‘Sri Lankan, Sri Lankan, Sri Lankan…’ 15.5 times, thoroughly investigating a long digital spreadsheet as his round glasses slipped down the perfectly-shaped nose, before he shouted from behind the bars, ‘Yes!’ I was relieved. ‘Are you from Sri Lanka?’ ‘No, I am from India. I just came from Sri Lanka. That’s why I have all the cash!’
‘India! I have been to India three times!’ Then he mumbled a few places in India which I didn’t understand, until at the end he shouted, ‘Bihar!’ Then he repeated ‘India, India, India….’ 15.5 times and handed over 333 ringgits and 15 cents!
I texted Jo, ‘I don’t need your Malacca Underground contacts anymore. I have the money!’
My Introduction to Malaysia, Or Southeast Asia As A Whole
Cars speed up in startling chaos with unbraced grunts, sudden sounds, in snorts, but the hostel remains deterred from entering the outside humid velocity. Modern Malacca is humid around the year, and with its capitalist high-end shopping malls and ugly buildings, the inside of the hostel keeps my sterile core even calm. Except for the reception area, the rest of the building doesn’t get much swayed by the grunting of the traffic show outside. Especially inside the capsule dormitory, it’s as calm as an empty and meaningful space. Capsule dorms are the Japanese intervention of creating a capsule-like space with three solid walls, giving you the impression of sliding into a private room. The yellow light shines on the wood-walls around me and a working desk opens up in tailor-made elasticity. That space really inspires me to work. The wood colour, the complementary light, and the sliding desk…. There’s something very inspiring in it.
I needed to buy some fruits and vegetables, and Jo sent me to a location that turned out to be in the underground of a big-ass shopping mall ‘Mahkota Parade’. My reluctance didn’t win over me, since I really needed to buy some fruits. I entered the chain called ‘Family Store’ and a sweep of terror swept over me. A section dedicated to fruits and veggies, and all wrapped in plastics! Every piece of cucumber has plastics around it.
It’s wonderful to look at something you don’t understand but create your own sense around it. I can look at art as art, bereft of any social, religious, political, personal, or even cultural connotations.
With only a bunch of bananas (the only thing without any plastics) and the resumption of boiling anxiety, I crossed the sensory door of Malacca’s shopping mall. Overwhelmed, helpless… A Malay man was playing a tune on his violin. The bow moved in a lurid sensation of a formed sound, till new waves mashed with another tune from the speaker he kept by his feet. Nobody stopped to listen. And standing there, I felt like he was just waiting for me with his violin and a horizon.
I returned and told Jo, ‘I can’t buy things from there, you know! It’s depressing! You have to tell me about a local Farmers’ Market around here.’
Pasar Besar. A wet market. I will have to go there.
Travelling around Malacca – A’Famosa & St. Paul’s Church
Malacca has a combination, like in an old-fashioned dial-pad, with its twists and turns, 10-floored moronic/modern bolt-high abominations (I mean buildings), and heritage leftovers from the colonial Portuguese and Dutch lineage. Right from the arched doors of the ruins of St. Paul’s Church, as you bend through from the gap, ignoring the stone epithets, appears the modern grey buildings. Jo said, ‘You see the shopping mall there? Right after that, there used to be the ocean. For years they put sand to create the extension to build more buildings.’ But this is the ‘Modern Malacca’. The old Malacca is still heritage in its Red Dutch Square and the admirable street art.
But A’Famosa saddened me. With its long history of sabotage, this heritage stone door, Porte De Santiago was the Portuguese remnant. At the intersection of the Malacca War and the intrusion of the Dutch, the enemies destroyed the remaining Melaka Fort, except for a five-storey keep. Then appeared the British, only to bring it down further. What remains of the Portuguese-built A’Famosa is the getaway and the Middleburg Bastion.
There is a red-roofed perfect house straight out of a storybook. I thought I had the toy of a house like this as a child, only in a different colour, the one from which a comic dog jumps out as you whirl the key. With a coarse sound, snubbed. A’Famosa stands a few metres right. Brown. Faded brown in half-baked brick-style. In selfies, snaps, and stepped cacophony. This medley of the dead and life misplaced Malacca’s foot on the ground.
A’Famosa has no name.
‘Bukit Melaka’ is aligned in big white letters. ‘Bukit’ in Malay means ‘hill’, Jo had taught me before. I could see a blink of another old-ish building and steps leading up to it. I thought it could be some parts of the Malacca Fort destroyed by the Dutch. So I followed the steps, and almost scared a Malay woman taking pictures of her friend. But no, it’s a church!
Rather, it was a church. A church in ruins. St. Paul’s. Deconsecrated.
Open roof. The walls end in the white sky. The entrance wall is divided into three tiers with a cross on top. Smiling, I felt, the stylish edges of the cross. In every tier, there are big holes, two in rectangular and the upper one in a circle. Heavy rectangular stone tombstones are laid up on each side, carved in Portuguese words and Catholic insinuations. ‘Raven’ ‘Memoriae’ ‘Piaeque’ – I mumble a few. The religious carvings don’t have much meaning to me. I touch the lines.
Some of them are birds. Abstract human structures with bird’s wings. Some are just birds. I think it’s just my imagination.
One skull. In danger. Carved.
Another has a shiny golden cross, the rest is grey.
I scrutinize the stones. All so old. I may not understand what they mean, not at its core, but I can have my own interpretations. It’s wonderful to look at something you don’t understand but create your own sense around it. I can look at art as art, bereft of any social, religious, political, personal, or even cultural connotations. Stories born out of religion or mythology are more so, stories of characters. Animals, birds, or humans. Objects. Magic. Power. I find non-symbolic elements in the obvious elements of the society that drape the sanctity of anecdotes… Hide it.
An annoyance, stealthier than obscure, that propels you to question why we as a civilization felt the need to build windows that take forever to count. Should we live high up the ground?
The Dutch Square & Stadthuys Museum Are the Pillars of Malacca
Walking around Malacca’s Dutch Square (Red Square) and inside the Stadthuys Museum opened new windows in my mind. Being in Stadthuys, which used to be the administrative quarter of the Dutch, now a two-storey museum on Malay history, I profusely enjoyed learning the chronology of the ruling stories; the Sultans, then the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then the British… Malacca, if you solely look at its buildings and architecture, may not particularly hold your attention at bay. But once you feel the history, the trade route, and all the coins and cards this heritage town bears, you know you are standing on long-surviving ground.
At the Dutch Red Square, the bekas circle with tourists, playing jumpy music to create a vacation mood. Beka is a three-wheeled cycle that the riders have decorated with pink bunnies, Pokémon, animated characters, teddy bears, and blinking fluorescent lights that create moving halos at the Jonker Street Night Market. You can hear them before spotting their first wheel. The music comes closer and rolls away.
‘What was Malacca like 20 years back?’ Jo takes a pause. I continued, ‘When you were eight.’
‘We never had bekas. They started this for kids and tourists. We used to have cows and carts back then. And the ocean was right behind us, where you see all the modern buildings’. Jo says again.
I try to imagine cow-carts in Malacca, passing by the McDonald’s sign. Dior, Gucci, Prada… Mahkota Parade Mall… The scruffy cows waiting in traffic lights right before the crossing line, clip-clopping on the furnished wide roads. The light turns green, the cow looks directly at the standing pole, then the policeman’s signal, before it pulls its front leg over the zebra crossing, ready to whoop. It’s not hard to see it, but the redundant ‘Imperial Heritage Building’ that occupies the heights of the sky gives me an icky pain. An annoyance, stealthier than obscure, that propels you to question why we as a civilization felt the need to build windows that take forever to count. Should we live high up the ground?
‘Is that a real heritage building?’ I asked Jo.
‘No, they built it a few years back.’
Jonker Street – Malacca’s Very Own Night Market
Jonker Street Night Market wears lights and colours from Friday to Sunday. An open feast, as you may call it, with music, dance, and local food! The light chains strike through St. Francis Xavier Church with the high-head yellow light positioned in the middle of four-spiked garrets. Jonker Street’s music has a tune that reminds me of Charlie Chaplin moving his legs in cross-cross exuberance. The tune is comic with a black-and-white dancing aura. I dance on the streets; in my mind, I am tapping my feet at the exact cues and slithering my flower dress in ballooned rounds and rounds. That tune will always be Jonker Street’s.
An old Malay man is singing a famous Indian song ‘Chahe koi mujhe jangli kahe…’ a little behind Malacca’s Maritime Museum. Around the corner, a son-and-father duo goes on drumming on buckets, beside a white-bearded man dancing in a police costume with a fake rifle. He moves his hips to the Malay version of Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’, more like a strip dancer without the strips. In a few minutes he stops the Malay duo and says he needs a break. Then he disappears.
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The carnival is on. A surprising hot sale is jellyballs! Food in colours, with sprinkled ‘stuff’! Yes, ‘Roti Kukus’. Marshmallow candies, colourful water in big glass jars… One unhealthier than the other. Finally, strips of Nyonya food on Jonker, that starts just underneath the ‘Selamat Datang Ke Jonker Walk’ (‘Welcome to Jonker Walk’) orange board with Chinese lanterns. I try Nyonya Kuih, one piece for 2 MYR. Almost everything is sold in plastic plates or containers, and Nyonya Kuih was one of the few dishes packed in leaves. I had to take it.
Jo told me before to try Popia Ayam. I spotted a small stall selling this famous Malay dessert for 1.50 MYR. Sweet!
Leaving the festivity of Jonker Street behind, I found a local vegetarian restaurant on a silent road in Old Malacca, and ordered Curry Rendang Veg Rice and Chncau Juice, a syrupy beverage dipped in grass jelly and pandon syrup. The juice tasted like warm water, and the dish was delicious in a large portion!
But Not Without A Bit of Sadness
All this festivity, but yesterday was rather grim. I stepped into a prison. More refined of course, in a ‘Prison Museum’ in Malacca. There is a big difference. And the difference is in the added bright wall colours, cardboard of inmates with holes in their faces, and showcased relics on Bandar Hilir Prison, the second oldest prison building in Tanah Melayu after Penang Prison.
The death cells are narrow, bare, as if the walls will clamp together anytime, landslid into one. It’s like entering a narrow passage of time, and the passage sucks you in, far down. The cells are like rectangular boxes; a narrow streak in length with a claustrophobic breadth. The only window is high up on the ceiling, at a corner. Inside the cells, breathing seems to need an extra effort. Longer sighs.
A folded mattress. Two buckets. Empty.
And scribbles. The inmates had written their minds while waiting for death on the other side. A hand, the veins are clear. Calendars that cross the passing dates, a rose, a woman, a sword like a rifle, a tree that blossoms out in cryptic branches, eyes with tears, and ‘love notes’…
I love you. I kiss you, Mani. 012-2079756.
I love all mine brothers.
I love you, my soon. J. M. H. P. M. V.
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Inside the death cell, I stood with a vision. The interplay of thoughts wouldn’t leave the idea of me living there alone, and in a hushed current, I wanted to run out. Break free from those grey sombre walls trying to get at me. Gawking.
Who were these men and women? Murderers, rapists, worse, or as it was written on the board ‘criminals or offenders of the British Colonial Government in Malacca’. What does that even mean? In a trice, I wanted more clarity. I wanted to know more about these men and their death-crimes. But I couldn’t find any.
In the upper storey, a gallery is dedicated to all the fateful execution methods that ever existed in human history. Apart from the known methods of Nazi-hanging, electric chairs, or direct shooting, my eyes found some more creative ways.
Like, ‘Snake Pit Execution’; the Viking War commanders used to be thrown into a snake’s nest, which is one of the oldest torture tools. ‘Dead Wheels’; the victim is placed on the wheel and tortured using a sharp hook. ‘Execution Penalty with Elephants’; getting stampeded by elephants for a quick death, adopted in South and South-East Asia. Then there is the ‘Colombian Necktie Execution’, where the victim’s skull will be struck with a knife. The most violent method ever practiced during the Greek times is ‘The Brazen Bull Execution’. The offender will be inserted into a copper bull statue, and the statue will be heated until the victim dies in agony. Then the Americans came up with cemented foot. China came up with slow slicing. The Spaniards invented garrote.
Humans have created all these creative and thought-putting tools and ways to torture other humans. We are capable of inflicting.
Street Art in Malacca And Hasty Encounters
Cheng Hoon Tong Temple, the oldest functioning Chinese temple in Malaysia. Masjid Selat (Floating Mosque), on the banks of the Straits of Malacca, ‘floating’ anchored to the shore. However the Nawaz time had already started, and I was directed to a ‘No Entry’ board. The last days in Malacca were in direct hide and seek with intense humidity and flipping curiosity. My romantic bubble didn’t burst in sun-intensity; the bubble that was South-East Asia. Fascinating as ever.
‘I don’t believe in prints. I believe in originality.’ Francis is a self-taught street artist who recently changed his artistic whereabouts from St. Paul’s Church to the front of ‘Kiehl’s Mural’, the 3D geometric colourful artwork on a massive wall, just opposite the Chinese Empress with an elaborate hair-do.
‘This one is called The Road Never-Ending. The journey you have to go through in life!’ Francis laughs in heaves and keeps showing me his paintings. ‘My dear, how many birds do you see?’ I could see one on a brown trunk. ‘I see only one.’ ‘There’s another bird here. Look further!’
I tried harder, but couldn’t find one. ‘The second bird has flown away!’ The old man laughs in an out-and-out ha-ha-ha-ha and moves on almost immediately. He doesn’t wait for a reaction. He is happy to laugh.
He sneers at a Japanese couple, ‘This one is called Courtship. She is tackling you, you are tackling her! Two birds!’ I don’t know how well the Japanese couple took the joke! Francis starts to slowly clear up the steps, and puts his paintings inside a sidebar of his cycle. ‘The sun is getting at me. I will get going.’ He hands over a picture to me, ‘This one is for you! For your patience. You can give anything you want! If not, that’s fine too.’
I wasn’t intending to buy anything. But sometimes, when people catch you off-guard, with innocence and smiles, the rest doesn’t matter. The smile wins over.
I gave him 15 ringgit. That’s all the loose cash I had.
He puts another painting inside the envelope. ‘This one’s for you too.’
A lady peeps out of a green window in Malacca, for her rose is at a fist’s reach. Two fishermen frolic with the fish in the baskets, grim and uninspired. A little blue girl pretends to fly with cardboard and a whipped shawl like a flying carpet. The wanderings of daily Malay life – on the wall. I look at ‘The Well’ for the longest. A well, a sad girl huddles in an unnamed sadness, and articulate drops of water fall on her from up above a bucket. On the other side, a boy also hunches over his feet with a toothbrush, and looks over an empty bucket up in the air. I don’t quite know what it truly meant.
Looping in circles, and sometimes walking to and fro between rectangles and breakthrough lines, this is a search along the backstreets for wall murals.
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Leaving Soon
It’s time. Time to board the bus for Cameron Highlands. Jo sends me off with a dinner-treat at an old Pakistani restaurant ‘Pak-Putra’ in Malacca. The owner married a Chinese woman and stayed back in Malaysia. ‘Where are you from?’ He asked, with a dabbling pen waiting to take our orders. ‘India. And you?’ I ask back. ‘Pakistan’. A connection. He immediately shifted to Hindi, ‘India mein kaha?’ (‘Where in India?’)
Jo digs deep into an important phone call, and my eyes follow the Pakistani men shuffling through the menu, the vaporized smell of the Naans, familiar words transmitting from mouths to dusky cooking smoke… Suddenly I imagined myself to be in Pakistan; a privilege I have been denied by nationality. That moment in smell, words, and faces transported me to a world I may never know.
Double Cheese Naan, Lassi that tasted like water, and Jo’s love story. Goodbye, Malacca.
‘We can be like the weather. You see sunshine, yet it rains. You see a very healthy man walking, dying the next day. Life is brutally unpredictable. As long as you live, you do your best. And that’s the best you can do, okay?’ – An old man’s wisdom
How has been your travels to Malacca? I spent more time eating Malay food!
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