Also do read A Voice here -SC should throw the book at TMI
and Rocky here -SC's new chief to come down hard on news portal
Ok, having said all that, I want to write about more mundane stuff...preparations for raya and other nostalgic things related to them.
I'm going to celebrate raya in KL this year. The whole family will gather at my sister's place. In fact that has been the way it is ever since my arwah mother passed away many years ago. Most of my siblings are now living in KL anyway and just before my arwah dad passed away, he told us to sell off our kampung house in Johor as no one was staying there. He didn't want the house to fall into disrepair and would rather for other people to live there and take care of it.
I always miss that kampung house at around this time of the year. It's our family's first house. My dad built it on a piece of small land after his retirement. It costs RM14k at that time. It may not be much by today's standard but I remember the first time I saw it when I came back home from boarding school during term break - it was cute, and I fell in love with it. My mom and dad spent many happy years together there during their final days together. It was the most beautiful home, considering that our family had been living in labourers barrack most of our life before that.
What I remember most about preparations for raya during that time was making the kueh raya with my mom and being assigned to look after the cooking of the ketupat on raya eve.
I enjoyed so much making kueh raya with my mom and sisters. It was like our little kenduri. Most of us will try to go on leave a few day before raya so that we could help mom to prepare the kueh. Our all time favourite is the pinaple tart.
Compared to my sisters, I'm actually quite a good cook. So, my mom always depended on me to make sure all the rendang and serunding and other stuff were ok. My sisters are good at it too...but not as good as me....hehehe.....
However, there is something they all can do, which I can't, weaving the ketupat. I'm totally hopeless at it. Tried so hard to learn but it seems that I have a mental block when it comes to all these handicraft things. So, I ended up assigned along with my brothers to go to the nearby rubber smalllholding of a neighbour to find the firesticks, to cook the ketupat. Me, and my brothers would then spend the whole night making sure the ketupat were cooked properly.
Those days, my mom will make sure each one of us sisters will have a baju raya. She would buy the materials and tailored the baju kurung herself. My brothers would get one too, along with kasut raya, if my dad had extra money to spend. It's the only time when they will have new shoes other than their school shoes.
Yup, I remember all those moments with a tinge of sadness as raya draws near again. My mom and dad are no longer around and I miss them so much whenever I recall all these memories. I pray they are doing ok where they are now, together with my brother who passed away much much earlier before I was born. InsyaAllah.
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