planting padi

on the way to fetch the little boy from the 'island' in the sun, she spied some ripened padi kernels left by the side of the fields after the harvest.

so she picked a stalk with lovely golden kernels. in her little garden she planted the padi in a huge pot which had some water retained on the surface of the soil in it. a kind of the tiniest wetland ever...

it rained nearly every day, hopefully the seeds would germinate soon.

hmmm.... a tiny padi plot.....

wouldn't it be wonderful to see padi plants growing in her garden...

and her thoughts flew to those days in the early sixties. her grandparents' padi fields just next to the sea separated only by a stretch of mangrove. when it was the planting season, they would picnic under the swaying palms on the 'batas', the grid of earth dividing rectangular plots filled with bright green padi plants.

her grandmother would cook 'masak lemak labu and pucuk labu', fried salted 'gelama' so delicious eaten with piping hot white rice and 'sambal belacan' on 'mengkuang' mats under the elegant coconut trees. while eating, she would look to the horizon......across a velvety expanse of green young padi plants all around....it was spectacular!

the fields were worked on by a relative. the harvest would be split equally between her family and the relation.

her grandfather often made flutes out of the padi stalks for her. the little girl that she was then happily blew sweet 'music' from the green instrument.  hmmm...maybe that was why she played the flute in the brass band in TKC!

there was always rice on the table every day from their own fields. tasty, fresh, fragrant. nothing beats the rice from your own 'sawah'. the padi from the annual harvest was kept in a huge timber container in a little hut called the 'jelapang' behind the house. strange but the padi was intact there all year long until the next harvest.

every month or so her grandfather took some portions of the padi to the rice mill. for a few ringgits they got fresh fragrant rice. 

she still remember how her grandmother taught her to value and appreciate each grain of rice, never to waste or throw them. as it took so much hard work to produce them.

memories.....light the corners of my mind...misty water colored memories....