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Sting Garden.
I was moved to write about it when I frequent the area almost every Saturday.
I was brought up in this area. People used to call it with many names for example 'lightning house' or Rumah Kilat because of the speed of the construction time. Yesterday it was an empty space, tomorrow when you wake up, there they are, a house complete with its toilet ! However there was one name that I dislike to be associated with at that time. For all I know that my father paid for the house, so how can they can called it ‘Rumah Haram’ ?
During that period, they were a lot of immigrants from kampungs want to try their luck in big town such as Kuala Lumpur. There were mixed backgrounds of people in that place. There were family from Kedah which father's selling laksa penang, big Boyan family which famous with their entertainment skills, a Minang family - 'orang awak' and of course from my so-called own kampung, Perak.
My house is next to lombong. I think it was a tin mine once. At that time, there we still plenty of lombong next to it. I used to roams to those lombongs and the surrounding areas with friends to catch butterflies, dragon-flies, playing kites or just playing around Sometimes we do fished with our joran buloh. When they decide to close the lombong, it was a very exciting time. They will release mud into it, and that’s when you can easily catch fishes, and a lot of fishes. It is like catching fish in padi field or 'bendang' after harvesting season. The fish will emerged to the surface to catch air and because of their movement restricted by mud; it is easily to catch them barehanded. It was like a festival around the lombong. When the mud is hardened, the settlers start coming from everywhere. And they start marking their territories! I still remember working with some neighbors to level the land and marked some area and get some money by selling them later. What an experience for my real estate venture!
It was hard time those days, without proper running water and electricity. We used to dig wells and collect rains water in used oil drums. Oil lamp and 'gas lamp' used to be the sources of the light at night. Don't get confused with the gas lamp which get the power from gas. This lamp get the power from 'minyak gas' or 'minyak api'. I think it was also called Kerosene. I still remember the way to start the 'gas lamp'. First you must put some 'spirit', then light it with matches and then start pumping. But remember not to let the 'sumbu' broke or else you have to run to the shop to get a new one. Sometimes it was just candles when we run out of kerosene. But this doesn't stop us from being excellence in our studies. My brother becomes centre of the newspaper when he pass his SRP with flying colours, and some of the lines used were something like this " Student excelled under candle light !"
Nowadays, only a handful of houses still intact, since the ‘paksarela’ moved to flats. Due to my parents’ health reasons, my family is among the first to join the resettlement program. Those who stay put, still fight for their right to own the land. One of my close friends becomes one of the spokesperson in their struggle. I have lost tracks on their numbers of visit to the courtrooms or even jails for that matter. I’ve just heard they lost their latest case. If government plans materialized, by next 2 or 3 years, my childhood playground will be a thing of the past. STING-GARDEN NO MORE !
last modified Sep 20, 2004 at 0:54
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