The irrigation canal, running south through the pekan and westward, is an integral part of Semanggol, its signal identity besides the iconic Madrasah Ehya’ as-Sharif. It was certainly an integral part of a growing boy’s life in the village. Swimming successfully across the canal was a rite of passage for my cohort, as must have been for previous cohorts. As being able to play the gasing (the spinning top), carved out of rubber wood, is another, giving rank to the boys in the group. These of course didn’t determine one’s success later in life. But it mattered growing up.
The Ehya' girls kolam (bathing pool) served as the training ground for these wannabe canal swimmers. No more that four feet deep, this large enclosed but roofless facility was about half the size of a 25-metre swimming pool. It is not meant for swimming, but as an enlarged water tank made out of concrete above ground, just like the tank for ritual ablution in the traditional mosque, except bigger. The bathers would pick their spot around the pool and bathe with the help of dippers. The source of water came from a small reservoir initiated by Ustaz Abu Bakar from damming the “katok”, a clear natural stream, not like the muddier irrigation canal, running down the lower slopes of Bukit Semanggol behind our house. Not unlike modern water tanks, the dam was high enough to contribute pressure via gravity for the water to be delivered by a system of pipes to the school’s pool and neighboring houses around the girl’s wing of Ehya. My parents house were not supplied with this piped water, as with other houses in the village not linked to this private water supply system, but obtain our water from a well set about 10 meters away at the back of our house.
This Ehya tank served as our swimming pool during the long breaks in the school term. Yes, we used it as a swimming pool. We did drain out the water after swimming in it, which of course took some time, and let in a fresh supply; but it was worth it. We played the usual kids games or just linger around in the empty surrounding hostel as the pool was draining out. During the school session when the tank reverted to its original purpose, we spent our swimming sessions in the canal itself. The canal also served as an bathing area for the boys wing of Ehya, taken out in the open, they not being constrained by required modesty unlike the girls.
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| The Semanggol canal and stone bridge today |
Along with the senior or more accomplished group members, the junior starters of the boys group would learn to bathe in the canal, clinging to the sides or the bathing platform and testing the depth of the canal. It was not more than six feet deep and the water flow was quite gentle, until there was the periodic discharge of the Bukit Merah reservoir at the source of the Krian irrigation canal system. That was the time of the ritual test when the canal flow was faster. There was never a case of drowning crossing the canal as far as I can remember. But for a young starter, it could be quite a scary experience. The width of the canal is no more than three meters normally, but widened by an additional meter during the water discharge. The reward for successful crossing was not just admission as a full member of the boys group and an end to the incessant teasing before that, but immediate access to the keriang fruit, from a row of local tropical berry trees lining the other side of the canal in front of the Ehya boys hostel and classrooms. We would all be blue in the mouth especially the tongue from eating these berries. From the successful crossing then on, you partake of these fruits at will. Of course, one can also access these berry trees from the pekan side, at the famous crossing where the irrigation canal lock was situated forming a bridge for the Bagan Serai-Taiping road; there were also bridges, made out of wood in those days, across the canal at periodic intervals of a kilometer or two all along it to Selinsing in the west, for people to get to the padifields to its north from the Semanggol village side. And many bathing platforms in between. But going around along the bund to the other side would upset the ritual, wouldn’t it?
It was across such a bridge, the nearest about a kilometer away west from the spot we usually pick to swim across to the berry trees, that I took one day, when I was about four, to go look for my parents who that planting season had leased a plot of the bendang (padifield), in all two relongs in size, to try to earn an income during the building off-season. That was the one and only time I can remember my father trying his hand at padi-planting. That morning I must have escaped from the watchful supervision of my sister Rafidah, who was a bit more than six at the time, and who was charged with looking after me, ever since carrying me around when I was struck with polio when I was about two years old, after I recovered from that affliction the following year. That fateful day the two other elder sisters were at school, and my elder brother Abdullah was up “naik bukit” (going up the hill), with a group of his class friends, a ritual or a past-time of the young adults at the time. Then he saw me from high on Bukit Semanggol walking on my own alone along the canal towards the bridge crossing. Apparently, recognizing the potential danger of me falling into the canal, he ran down the hill, the path being cleared by years of climbing by different cohorts of Ehya students, boys and girls, and managed to grab me and took me safely back home. I felt so bad and cried for Rafidah when that evening Abdullah gave her a hiding for that dereliction of sisterly duty and neglecting me earlier that day. It must have been out of a sense of responsibility on the part of Abdullah, who took up the role of enforcer in place of our absent father, that he decided to teach my sister a lesson in discipline. But I suspect now it may be also that he was miffed at having his excursion with his friends cut short that day.Kamal Salih Episode 3 chapter 1 crossing canal
Thinking back to that incident, I too may have learned something from that episode, that the quality of filial support and care can mould the character of a person in the process of growing up, and stay with him for a long time in his adult life. My elder brother used to insist on all of us, me and my sisters that we take a spoonful of cod-liver oil (Scotts Emulsion) every morning, and later in capsule form. And he took care of my parents when they migrated to Kuala Lumpur, even when he was still working in Singapore with the magazine Mastika, and later migrated to KL to work for a stint with Utusan Melayu, before joining the Istiadat (Ceremonial) Department of Istana Negara on a permanent basis. His talent at khat (the Arabic cuniform) writing, employed in designing the artwork for letters of the King, or to inscribe on royal gift plates and other tableware, came in as a very handy specialty for the job. I used to go with him to the belukar (bushes) behind the house to collect ferns out of which he fashioned the quills for his khat work. My brother must have been very good at his job that he eventually rose to the position of Chief Bentara (head, royal office staff) until he retired.
A boy’s life in rural Malaysia in the second half of the 50’s was very much like that depicted by Lat in his cartoon drawings collected in his book, Kampong Boy. His frolics in the river in Batu Gajah mimic my own sessions in the canal with my friends. Not just in the canal, but also the katok, looking for colourful tiny fighting fish, or in the rain when the whole village was flooded by prolonged thunderstorm, or just playing our version of the modern “paintball” battlegames, the rifles made out of the bertam (a fern) stem with the small passion-fruit like berry that grew wild on fences for bullets, and rubber elastics providing the force to the projectiles. The girls often joined in the game of “rounders” with wooden bat and tennis balls, or during terawikh evenings while the adults perform their Ramadhan prayers, playing “tui”, a kind of tag-team game requiring opposing teams to invade the opponents’ side of a battle square etched out in the ground, without being touched. Friendly fights often interrupt these inevitably boisterous games. I myself got into two “fights” that I can remember, one with an older friend whom I beat, but in turn got beaten later by my brother when word of it filtered back to the house; and another with Ghazali Tain, of the family that had bought out my house later, but against whom I managed only to stuff his songkok with earth; meaning he beat me good, with a bloodied nose to show for it.
Long after the successful crossing of the canal, and blooded by
these boyhood activities, many of the boys would reach that time they were
expected to “masuk jawi” (ritual
circumcision), marking their passing into adulthood. This was like another crossing of the canal
for us, a crossing to the other side of innocence. That was how I felt. The feeling must have developed
from when we were even younger, but it was in that last year of my life in Semanggol,
in 1957, after which I was to move away to stay in Taiping to complete my
primary schooling in the English stream, that I experienced a huge crush on
Sanah, the younger sister of an older friend, Abdullah Hassan. The latter would become a professor with me
in University of Science Malaysia in Penang in the early 70’s. I had just turned eleven then, and she was
just a year older than me, and a regular member of our gang. A few days after I had recovered from “my
ordeal”, I chanced upon her with a friend at the pekan; she teasingly rolled
her eyes up, smiling, as if to say “so, you a man now!” I do not know to this
day whether she recognized the feeling I had for her; maybe she did know but
chose not to acknowledge it. But quite
soon after that encounter I left Semanggol to complete my Standard 6 year in 1958
in King Edward School, in Taiping, not telling her how I had felt. That was one “canal” that I failed to cross.
We also enjoyed during those days the train rides along the small-gauge
railway line that was built from behind my house down to the canal, past the
Hassan family house and onwards to Selinsing, to carry earth from the quarry in
the Gunung Semanggol hillside, in small bogeys, to widen the road that was to
become Highway No. 1, the old trunk road, linking Ipoh with Penang. This was way before the advent of the North-South
Highway, which also now passes Gunung Semanggol on its eastern side nearer
Tasek Bukit Merah. We would hang on the
sides, sometimes riding inside an empty one of these bogeys, for dear life during the
ride, and all the way back, much to the chagrin and anxiety of the parents. It was however not as scary, nor dangerous to
us, as swimming across the canal for a novice.
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| Contemporary picture of Sanah, my first crush and her brother Abdullah (Courtesy of Semanggol.com.my) |
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