A (short) reflection by Wilson Khor W.H.
…and ride to Pantai Bersih
which was where he wanted to go all
along since the time when he woke up
before he went to bed
last night and this morning
and all the nights and mornings before this one.
He sits and watches
the tide pass in and out
where he stays
seated on a stone marble bench
framed by twigs scattered like ink stains on the sand
crow-callings dark echoes
perched in the casuarinas
shadows-drawn tents of soft needles and shade
shaped by the wind, those mornings; the sea.
Excerpt from
Chee Siew Hoong’s “My Grandfather’s Garden”
in Home Groan: A NutMag Anthology (2020)
Chee Siew Hoong’s “My Grandfather’s Garden” from Home Groan: A NutMag Anthology was one of the poems I introduced to the Book Club back in 2022. It was a light-hearted but intimate poem, in which the persona reminiscences on the everyday life and final days of their late grandfather with the people and places in Penang mainland as its setting.
The students were particularly amused with the presence of Penang Hokkien vocabulary and colloquial Malay phrases in the poem as the grandfather went about with his everyday routine – from the breakfast at the kopitiam to his amusing encounter with the medicine oil seller – and they loved it so much, a few of them actually grouped up to perform an expressive reading of that particular excerpt during last year’s festival. Like the pot of cabai burung described at the beginning of the poem, the colourful language use gave the poem life and spice in ways that many of us intimately know in the taste and smell of our everyday food – a flavour many of the students had never experienced (which I hope they would grow to appreciate) in poetry reading prior to signing up for the Book Club.
As for myself, however – my experience with this poem was a little bit different.
While colloquial language use was something I am already accustomed to from my years of dabbling with local Malaysian literature, I had never known (or thought much about) how casuarina trees looked like. Believe it or not, it was only then – during the time spent reading and pondering on this poem – that I finally got curious enough to look it up on Google.
This is one of the pictures that appeared on my image search results:
The trees looked strangely familiar – in fact, it occurred to me on the following day that they are the trees with needle-like leaves I have been seeing all these while along the Lim Chong Eu Highway, as I rode past Jelutong and Karpal Singh Drive on my way to town. They were also the same trees I would see when I ride on the opposite direction, as I travel past Queensbay Mall on my way to Batu Maung on a nearly weekly basis.
It was only from this humbling epiphany, despite having traversed on it to and fro on my motorbike for already more than a decade, that I began to be aware of their presence along this coastal highway – and just like my students who had experienced a shift in their perspective with their encounter of this poem, I too have had my reality transformed as this new information reshape the way I look at the world around me.
This is precisely why I enjoy literature so much – with each poem or short story covered, students gain more than just new vocabulary and language proficiency. The weekends spent with me at the Book Club becomes an opportunity for growth and maturity – as they explore, engage, and watch realities and perspectives collide and expand, while being filled with an endless sense of wonder.
Home Groan: A NutMag Anthology – in which the full poem of “My Grandfather’s Garden” can be found – is the special 5th anniversary issue of the NutMag anthology, featuring works by 22 Penang writers from all walks of life.
The links to purchase its physical and digital copies (along with the latest information on this annual local anthology) can be found on its official website, which you can easily access by clicking here.