it was normal in those days for a village to be inhabited by the descendants of one or two particular families.
aunts and uncles, cousins and in-laws lived side by side. footpaths joined timber houses on stilts; airy well ventilated abodes with long windows, perforated gables, mysterious attics, floors with narrow gaps, deep eaves acting as transitional space against the tropical sun, steep nipah roofs allowing smooth unhindered flow of rain, verandahs where folks loved to sit of an evening ........
each household had its own kitchen garden filled with herbs, chilly, vegetables. chicken, ducks, cows, goats were reared by almost everybody. fish from the nearby straits of melaka were so fresh they tasted divine.
and the fruit trees were everywhere, providing shade and bounties to all. it was a self sufficient sustainable era. of course you had to buy salt and sugar, clothes and bicycles.
such was the rustic, simple yet wonderful pastoral life in the village clinging to the slopes of bukit gemuroh where hyenas still roamed, while tributaries of the 'pirate river' reached out to the open sea.
after the padi harvest, the village folks would have a picnic at a bay called 'telok ayer' facing the turtle-shaped island. she remembered walking in single file along a footpath by rubber trees on the sea facing hill to reach the sheltered inlet.
the children and teenagers were perhaps the happiest, frolicking in the shallow lagoon, then playing on the pristine white sands, the hills around echoing with their joyous laughter.......there was even a spring of fresh water from the hills forming a small pool before emptying into the sea. and the blue skies up above ........
under the shade of spreading jungle and 'ketapang' trees, adults busied themselves fishing at the rocky promontory, looking for 'remis' on the beach, and then grilling them , cooking rice and even curries using firewood in the open as well as making lots of 'kerabu' from shoots and young leaves plucked from nearby trees and shrubs.
oh the happy happy moments.........
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