SOUL SCRIBBLES

The exercise book is torn and tattered at the edges. I believe that it is as old as I am, if not older. In it are recipes my mother had jotted down over the years.  These are recipes that have been passed down through the generations. My mother learned some of the family’s much loved dishes from our late paternal step-grandmother, an aunt or two and from cooking and baking classes that she attended when we were young.  That book is her prized possession. When she moved to stay with my brother in Putrajaya, she accidentally left the book in my home. She nagged me endlessly until I had the book delivered to her.  She refers to it from time to time, especially when there is heavy-duty cooking involved during the festive season. She wants to get the ingredients correct. Yes, there are no measurements in her cooking recipes, just the ingredients, unlike the recipes for baking cakes and cookies, where the ingredients have to be precise. Like all other elders, her cooking...

WE were having lunch at Alamanda, Putrajaya, the weekend before Merdeka when we heard singing coming from the concourse.  Two old men calling themselves Patriot Buskers were performing evergreen Malay songs. The first song was an oldie, Datuk M. Nasir’s Ekspres Rakyat when he was with the group, Kembara.  Their second song caught my attention as well as my brother’s. We actually sang along to it, much to the amusement of his children. It was Setia. No, it isn’t a pop song but a patriotic one and a classic.  Setia was penned by the late Tan Sri Mohamed Rahmat, who was then information minister. Some say it was Malaysia’s second “national anthem”.  I can still remember national broadcaster Radio & Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) airing the song before transmission ends at midnight. The choir singers, dressed in their respective traditional costumes, singing “Demi Negara yang tercinta, Di curahkan bakti penuh setia…”  Oh, how long ago was that? Another friend re...