Bok House: Refusing to see

Seeing is never even, never universal. You see only as much as what's in your head. Five experts looking at the same seashell will appreciate it differently. Ultimately, seeing requires light.

Here's Dimwit Version 2.0
“It's just a house belonging to a well-to-do man in town having some ornamental set up in the facade as well as on the outside.”

Rais, Rais...

The Bok House was commissioned by rags-to-riches tycoon and philanthropist Chua Cheng Bok; that it is a rich man's house is no doubt true. As for its lack of aesthetic value, and historical significance, as poohed-poohed by Rais, I'll contend that the man and his ministry are legitimately blind.

In April this year, the Badan Warisan Malaysia had presented its points when nominating the Bok House to be gazetted as a national heritage. The text can be downloaded here. Among the merits, it describes the significance of the house in merging neo-classical design with tropical strategies such verandahs and the “selang” in traditional Malay houses. Clearly, it wasn't enough.

The point was wholly missed. See, Rais revealed that the ministry had already decided not to gazette the building in September last year, even before it was nominated, even before the Heritage Act was gazetted on Dec 31, 2005. "Because it did not deem it fit to do so. It's just another building," he said when asked why this was never revealed earlier.

With such prejudice, did the Bok House even stand a chance?

Beneath the layer of a mere “ornamental facade”, the Bok House helped capture a slice of our nation's history during a period of dizzying changes in this land, either from a cultural, socio-economic, and interestingly, technological point of view.


Here's one: The Bok House had a concrete structural frame with brick infill. And judging from pictures of the demolition, it also had reinforced concrete floors. Just like your house and mine. Just like Rais' house, I'm sure. Common enough? Yes, and that's what's truly amazing.

It may well be that the Bok House was one of the first houses in the country to be constructed this way – the reinforced concrete frame – giving rise to the most predominant building method today. Heritage enough?

The Bok House began construction in 1926 and was completed in 1929. Ferroconcrete in this region was very much in its infancy at that time, and likely was applied mainly in institutional buildings under the British administrators. Most buildings then had floors which were constructed of a timber joist system. These floor loads would be anchored to hefty brick loadbearing walls as support. Drop by any shophouse or house built in that period up to 40s and you'll see this fact.

Even globally, ferroconcrete is a relatively new technology, much newer than iron and steel. First attributed to Joseph-Louis Lambot in 1848, it took 45 years before the first ferroconcrete building was constructed in the US (1893). As a growing material science, it became the hot topic of discussion among European architectural critics, scholars and practitioners – maintain the tenets of neoclassical design or break free with avant-gardism? Sigfried Gideon expounded on its potential in his polemical Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete. These new technologies gave birth to Modernism.

That the Bok House employed a reinforced concrete structural frame showed a daringness on the client-architect relationship to move forward with the times. It echoed the daringness of the tropical-classical hybrid.

It does make sense. Chua was rich. He engaged the services of one of the region's finest architects – the Singapore-based Swan and McLaren – who had worked on the Raffles Hotel, the Sultan Mosque in Kampung Glam, and the Kuching General Post Office among many others. As a practice, its contribution to the ouevre of the Straits architectural legacy and its myriad styles is immense.

Among its key principals was RAJ Bidwell, who while under the PWD was co-architect of the Secretariat Building (now the Sultan Abdul Samad Building) completed in 1897. It isn't established if Chua knew Bidwell. What's clear is that the firm of Swan and McLaren would have been in touch with the most current building methods, and a progressive client with money to spend would have been drawn to the merits of concrete. A good marriage, you may say.

The success of this early case would have no doubt furthered the application of this structural system in other houses and buildings.

Ken Yeang observes in his book, Architecture in Malaysia:
“By the 1930s a new breed of architects arrived in the Straits Settlements with a different approach learnt in England and Europe. These architects clearly departed from the classical tradition and experimented with the new technology and the aesthetics of Modern architecture. Flat roofs were introduced in accord with the dictates of the Modern Movement. The reinforced concrete frame with brick infill and hollow block floors were introduced and superfluous ornamentation was completely abandoned. Visual interest was created by the unconventional positioning of balconies, sunshading overhangs and staircases.”

The Bok House stood right at the precipice of one of the milestones in Malaysian architecture, the bifurcation of the Modern Movement from the neoclassical. It bore the birthmarks of both cultures, one waxing, the other waning. It carried the genetic material of a tropical architectural expression still recessive in the colonial glamour then. It looked West and East and Inside to a glocal answer.

These are the countless stories – myth, patterns, values – which if only there was light, one would surely see. A light the Minister of Heritage regrettably failed to turn on.

Real order

This is Chefchaouen. It's a little town nestled in the Rif mountains off the Straits of Gibraltar in Morocco. It's a traveller's haven - its meandering, pulsating spaces are lessons in texture and light. There is fine grain and an incredible organic order.

Under the great visionary laws of Selangor and KL, this would be bad. This would have to be demolished.

Chaouen started off as a refugee camp back in the 15th century. Muslims retreating from the Christian reconquest of Andalusia in Spain sought shelter in these hills. They brought with them their memory of Islamic Spain and imaged it in stone, the most readily available material there. Jews also joined the settlement, as did fleeing Andalusians giving rise to different quarters within the medina.

Today, this is one helluva slum. This is heritage.

This is Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York.

If you're old enough, you would remember extensive scenes of it in the movie When Harry Met Sally. To say the least, Greenwich Village is the bohemian soul of Manhattan. Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, the Beat poets... they were here.

If the Napoleons of Selangor and KL today were administering New York in the 1800s, we wouldn't know of this today.

Greenwich Village was borne out of marshland. Early Dutch settlers farmed there till, in 1664, when the English annexed New Amsterdam and made it part of the larger New York. Even so, it remained a hamlet largely neglected by the other larger and faster growing burroughs. It was, in our own colloquial tongue, a kampung.

Greenwich Village is an oddity on the island. See, in 1811, Manhattan went through radical restructuring – a formal grid pattern was superimposed over the island under the Commissioner's Plan complete with a huge central park. But they left Greenwich Village alone. Even if on the drawing board, it didn't look pretty to the eye, they let it be. They allowed its narrow streets (some curved) and buildings to mature and take its course. They had faith in its people.

Suffice to say, the same wisdom that realised the creation of Central Park also foresaw the eventual charm that Greenwich Village and its mews today would hold.

Even as the pressures of real estate clamour lasciviously for demolition and subsequent erection of higher-rise buildings in space-hungry New York, Greenwich Village snubs them all.

Would our educated city planners have that wisdom? that heart? that steely resolve?

The wonderful Jane Jacobs once said:

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.

Jacobs, who died in April this year, authored The Life and Death of Great American Cities. Her book ought to be required reading for all architects, planners and developers – why, anyone who cares a damn about the cities we live in.

For the city is our mirror. And what do we see in us?

Almost a month ago, MPAJ demolished the entire village of Kampung Berembang. At least 50 families lost their homes and their societal bearings.

Earlier this month, DBKL demolished Kampung Chubadak in Sentul.

The official reason was tagged stubbornly to the Klang Valley's Zero Squatter policy. If only they swore such allegiance to the Rukunegara.

On Saturday night, I returned from a trip to Singapore to learn that the uber-mansion Bok House was being demolished. This despite relentless efforts by Badan Warisan Malaysia to get it registered as a heritage building.

The official reason: It's under private ownership, and the Ministry of Kitsch and Pop can't do squat about it. Said its Minister Rais Yatim: “The Government cannot take over all buildings considered by many as having heritage value due to the high cost of rehabilitation and conservation.”

You know, idiocy cannot be masked. Neither can greed. You can smell it from the breath that passes by their fat tonsils, you can peel it from between the lines of the mainstream media.

What differentiates a squatter from a genuine settlement? Land titles that were promised but never delivered? Could Kampung Berembang have become an urban oasis in the years to come? If inclusive rules were formed and upheld, why hell yes. Can Kampung Baru, Kampung Semarak and Kampung Loke Yew? Yes, yes, and yes.

Could the Bok House have been saved? You bet a datuk's ass it could.

But, but, but... in the media, the govt seems to imply that it has to acquire the property. Nope. That's what those idiots want you to believe. Scrutinise the following.

The freshly-minted National Heritage Act states:

Care of Heritage Site - Section 38.

(1)Where a heritage site is situated on an alienated land, the Commissioner may after consultation with the State Authority —

(a) make arrangements with the owner or occupier for the inspection, maintenance, conservation and preservation of the heritage site;

(b) purchase or lease the heritage site;

(c) acquire the heritage site in accordance with the provisions of any written law relating to the acquisition of land for a public purpose; or

(d) remove the whole or any part of a building or monument on the heritage site.

The govt only has to register – not own – any particular heritage site. The site can easily remain in private ownership with a viable business. Take the Heeran St Museum in Melaka. Or the Station Hotel in KL Railway Station. They're not on the heritage register, but they could easily be listed. It's about teamwork; it's about faith.

And especially so in the emerging cities of metropolitan Kuala Lumpur, Johor Baru, Melaka, and Penang, where the dangling ringgit constantly twists the meanings of squatter, heritage and desirability, it is about taking out the hoodlums in govt and taking back the 'hood.

It's time we restored some sense of real order.

Photo credits:

Chaouen: stuBCN75

Greenwich Village: Amazing Jane

Kampung Berembang: obwique , www.jelas.info

Bok House ruins: Badan Warisan Malaysia

Caging culture

Back in 1992, Singapore unveiled it's Tang Dynasty Village amid much fanfare and regional media coverage.

It was an ambitious big-dollar project replicating the ancient Chinese city of Chang-An. And if you know Singapore, you'd know this – the detailing was faithful down to the groutline of the stonework and the glazing on tiles. They had restaurants, a wax museum, period performances and people in costumes reenacting daily life in the 7^th century Chinese street. There was good public transportation to the Village, and a fighting-fit company was set up to manage the compound's sustainability. Part of the economic gameplan was to lease the spaces for film production; in fact, a Hongkong crew was filming when I was there many years ago.

In short, Singapore did all it could - as it often does - to make TDV a resounding success.

Today, if you take the Second Link from Gelang Patah into Tuas, drive along the Ayer Rajah Expressway (AYE) towards the city, some 10km or so from the Immigrations you'd pass by a seasoned stone enclosure to your left with the roofs of Chinese pavilions peeking beyond its walls. Strangling figs have begun to grab the masonry. Tall trees obscure its still-majestic proportions. But this is a strangely unSingaporean sight; strange because it is abandoned. This is the Tang Dynasty Village today. Defunct.

There is a lesson in here. Fourteen year later, and many repeated mistakes on our very own shores, will we learn?

Rais Yatim says the govt is planning to build a cultural village. Chances are, it'll be in the Titiwangsa area in KL. The Star reports that it'll “feature typical Malaysian icons like coffee-shops, warongs and traditional houses plus filming facilities at the site”.

Deja Vu.

Rais is Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister. Maybe the portfolio should be appropriately renamed the Ministry of Kitsch, Pop, and Theme Parks.

Haven't we learned? Hands up anyone who's been to the Mini-Asean Park off the PLUS highway at Ayer Keroh, Melaka. Or Mini-Malaysia nearby? Or the now-defunct Safari Park in Johor? Hands up all who think the RM3 experience of a whored-up Fort Cornwallis in Penang was mind-blowing and the costumes very clever and cute?

Time after time our leaders show their shallowness in the belief that culture can be imaged. When the Mall in KL was opened, the foodcourt was dressed as a kitschy Melakan street. It is a pathetic space today, like an aged porn star. The interior of KL's Central Market has a similar theme going. Fake roofs, fake windows. It's a disaster in tourism promotions. I've seen many a tourist walk-in, suck in the aircon and then make a bee-line out.

You cannot create culture.

Not unless you're talking nutrient soup in petri dishes, you can't. Culture is the patina of social activity played on an everyday basis over generations. Culture breathes, just as we breathe. Culture can be rich as our jungles or plain as plastic. An intricate set of relationships – values, geography, population, resources – determines whether the culture of a certain place grows, remains static or dies.

You cannot pick a spot and say let there be life. You will fail.

You can force a settlement to emerge out of the belukar, but you cannot seduce culture to reside there. Look at Shah Alam. Of all the state capitals, it's arguably the nation's most sterile. This despite the obscene advantages it has had in development over the past decades.

Most of all, culture reflects.

It is a mirror to who we are as communities. No amount of dressing can bluff away our values and maturity, nor express how much we interact and exchange, nor how inventive we are.

It's not all bleak; we've had triumphs. Take the KL Performing Arts Centre in Sentul, which I believe to be the most intelligent contribution yet by the private sector in recent memory. It is a testimony of a group of well-informed people synergistically making the right judgement with the right experts and keeping it real. It had only a tiny fraction compared to the Esplanade's budget in Singapore but I consider it immensely successful. This place has soul.

Keep it real, said Ali G.

Gross humour aside, that's sound advice. It ties back to the origins of the feared word – hell. The Indo-European root to this word is kel-. It means “to conceal, to hide”. Does it not make sense then that people who are constantly preoccupied in hiding their true selves invariably live in hell, constantly on the lie?

What the hell then is this proposed cultural village – an assortment of fake kopitiams, nasi kandar stores and warongs amidst kampong houses and Melakan shophouses? It doesn't happen that way. Why offer a cheapened buffet when all these delicious spaces could be had 10 minutes from each other on foot in almost any decent town in Malaysia?

Would it not make more sense to rejuvenate Kampung Semarak and Kampung Loke Yew whose predicament was reported in The Star just yesterday? I mean, surely it cannot be because it was inaugurated by Mahathir, no? Just make it good. The patterns are already there.

Here we have an authentic Malay village and a centre for handicraft facing extinction because of a proposed highway, while on the other hand, we're planning fake artifacts and calling them cultural villages.

The Ninth Malaysia Plan deserves more inspiration than that, fellas. But before true inspiration, first learn. You can't cage culture.


Photo credit: Flipboy

Save Klebang

A reader wrote in the Star Friday: Help save Malacca bay.

Yesterday's Star carries more meat - a group of Melaka residents along the Klebang coast have started organizing themselves to lobby against senseless land reclamation along this historic waterfront. The nice thing is, they seem to have way more intelligence when arguing their case, unlike what's been happening over at Penang and Umno youth.

Says a 10-year-old, Brandon Pau: "There's no more sea left."

(!) Does it take a 10-year-old to teach us such things?



Above is an undated image of Melaka lifted from Google Earth. That white patch left of centre is what they mean. Move your eye right and you'll see the Melaka River, this country's most storied chapter. It's easy to see how much has been destroyed in the name of insensitive progress. The wonderful fine-grain of the historic core which used to reach all the way to the sea is now pushed inland by Mahkota Parade and Kota Laksamana - a foolish legacy of the 80s and 90s. It mustn't be repeated.

Yes, stop Klebang's land reclamation. Stop it for simple good sense. It's a true-blue Malaysian heritage we have here; transracial and transreligion. Especially in a time such as this, it's something worth fighting for.

The sea, and all its history and stories, is also Malaysia, no?

Coliseum: Rais Yatim, show us the big plan

That's the problem with this government. It makes plans behind closed doors and keeps its stories close to its chest. Then it implements - awarding contracts, acquiring property, before it announces to the press.

This essentially assumes the rakyat, especially its local community, are imbeciles incapable of critical thinking. This is feudal thinking. This is stupid.

The Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry wants to acquire (or at the very least, lease) the Coliseum as part of its masterplan to make Jln Tuanku Abdul Rahman a cultural and arts hub in the city. The building owner, Dr Chua Seong Siew, was slapped with a 30-day notice yesterday by DBKL to vacate the premises. He has been offered RM500k for the property as fair compensation.

Rais Yatim, CAH Minister said: “Back in December 2004 the Cabinet made a decision based on a Cultural and Arts Development paper that the city should become a notable arts, heritage and cultural centre and it would start along Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.”

Reports the Star Online:
( http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/8/9/nation/15085625&sec=nation&focus=1 and http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/8/9/nation/15087006&sec=nation )
No other place, he said was as good as Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman as it was where tourists converged and it was ideal for them to see musical shows staged here. Cinema shows could also continue.
Currently, Rais said, adjacent to the Coliseum is an open place used as a car park and where wayang kulit and cultural performances are staged in the evenings. These are all multi-racial and multi-cultural activities.
“Then came the idea that if we can acquire the Coliseum and maintain its cinematic function, it would serve us better and this was the decision of the committee,” he explained.
The plan, he said, was to show Malaysians films and hold workshops, film activities, stage performances and make the Coliseum cinema a multi-purpose venue.

Dammit, Rais, you guys had a plan back in 2004 and till now we've not seen a thread of it. All that's been emerging of the KL Arts Centre Plan are words from your mouth even till today. Is this the way to gain public support? Keep the people in the dark?

Show us the plan.

Show us the homework from your consultants and advisors. Publish the KL Arts Centre Plan, visuals and all. Get the real specialists to speak, not the minister. Start from the big picture to the small, and perhaps we can understand why The Coliseum is so critical that it has to be acquired from the legal owner; and why the Tamil/Bollywood moviegoers have to be deprived of a favourite haunt; and how Jln TAR can maintain its vibrant spontaneous patina.

Chances are the reasons will not be half as compelling. I dare say that.

Chances are I, for one, can tell you that the Central Market and its immediate locale make for a far, far better alternative to your pursuits. The extant forecourt, the river, Dayabumi, the LRT, are solidly inbuilt. The old Klang Bus Station can be appropriated easily to serve this cultural palate.

Petaling St and Jln Masjid India fall within easy walking distance. Ditto Lebuh Ampang. The Padang quadrangle is equally accessible. The old KL Train Station, a beautiful but underused relic is nearby, and the grand Hotel Majestic. This whole area is a cultural goldmine. It already has a balance of civic and commercial, something so vital to the success of a cultural hub.

In fact, efforts had been made in the 80s when the Central Market was first upgraded. It was a fantastic idea left to rot. What was once a galleria by the Gombak River is pretty much dead. Why not rejuvenate this jewel properly and make it right? Make it the place instead of bullying the property out of honest citizens by implementing yet another half-baked scheme.

Show us the plan, Rais. And let us - the people - weigh the merits.

(Photo credit: Kelly - http://www.blogexplosion.com/review.php?SiteID=24363 )

Mute and salted

He smiled. His fine teeth seemed bleached against his dark skin, dark as the chengal boards cladding the shops on the side streets of Kuala Besut.

“My ah-kong’s ah-kong’s ah-kong’s ah-kong… That’s how long we’ve been here,” replied Chengal Dude lightheartedly in Mandarin, a language I’m alien. He seemed to be in his early 30s, well-toned, chiseled, sharp-eyed. He was maybe a guide, a pro-diver at Perhentian Islands, we couldn’t tell.

Names, existing terms, fail to describe the man. You may say he is Chinese as I am, but the seasons under the salted sun of Terengganu has bronzed him to the point anyone would mistake him for a Malay.

You may say Chengal Dude is a peranakan of the East Coast, a people less publicized than the Baba-Nyonyas of Melaka or Penang, but no less present. They’ve been around this place for a long time. Chengal Dude is unmistakably a true son of the land, speaks the loghat without ponder or pause, reads the Malay papers, wears the mannerisms of the locals to the subtlest levels. That’s because this culture is his culture; his people contributed to it no less. The Hokkien he shares with the coffeeshop owner is so thick with its own inflections and phrases – a loghat in its own right – you’d miss what was being said. Chengal Dude is Sino-Malay-Siam-Javanese forged by the monsoon winds, ground by the fine sand of its beaches.

There is yet an appropriate name to describe all this.


Records about early settlements in the East Coast are relatively thin, still more fuzzy than pinpoint. Its people are believed to have migrated from Indochina and southern China but the prevailing culture today stems from Java. There are accounts of the expansive kingdom of Langkasuka which reigned in the Isthmus of Kra. Excerpts from a 5th century Chinese script makes reference to a place called Ho-Lo-Tan where a thriving settlement existed.

Who were these people? More importantly, who are they now? There is a very high chance integration occurred on a fairly large scale, a mongrel breed that evades current definitions of race. They are a monsoon tribe who rightfully pwn this land. This time of the year, their sky is blue and their breeze fresh and still unsullied by the corporate pheromones of Guess?, MNG nor Nike.

This is a piscean landscape. They dig fish here. Fish - fresh or seawater - is eaten whole, diced, sliced, fillet, fried, boiled, satayed, grilled. It is processed into a dozen different types of keropok – keropok losong, keropok lekor – and this wonderful conical lump of fish paste called satah. At Kota Bahru’s central market, your eyes pop at the variety of fish sauce available.

And even as we marvel at the cultural peculiarities, the language, the muara settlements, the pregnant storm clouds, the shape of roofs, the friendlier eyes, we learn to draw lessons seldom discussed in west coast circles.

Here again is a lesser-told story of mainland Malaysia – the role of geography in shaping culture. The Titiwangsa Range, rumbling like a dragon from the Ismuth of Kra, wedges the peninsular flatlands apart, creating a jungle curtain practically impenetrable until recently that the East and the West coasts of mainland Malaysia culturally evolved on parallel paths.

If the west coast was about Sumatra and SriVijaya and the Melaka Sultanate, the east was Java and Majapahit and Siam. (Besut, for instance, is a Thai derivative which means Land of Far Away) This gets increasingly evident as one travels northwards along the east coast.

For this was where colonial influence was least – hence less tempered – again thanks to the physical barriers of Titiwangsa. The Portuguese and Dutch waived it, the British had only a token presence, thinning out as the main mountain range thickened up north. The east coast states of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang are today a living resource of how things operated without the economic allure of the Straits and tradewinds and without the open-house policy of the British East India that was concentrated more on the west.

The land did not experience the full impact of the population boom, nor the divide-and-rule politics until recently. Rather like a gang of moored perahus, it bobbed and rolled along a slower, more organic development pattern.

Current terms fail to capture what one senses. Rumah doesn’t capture the essence of an east coast dwelling, it sounds wrong; waktu senja is too flaccid for the raging coastal sunset, pasir is ridiculously out of place. Perhaps it’s just personal, but I dare say much of our local Malay nouns evoke a Straits-Sumatran sheen. I feel like a mute.

Malaya, now Malaysia, is a country defined and shaped by the British colonists, just as India and Burma. There is geographical wholeness to it although the region of Sabah and Sarawak is clearly based on political allegiance rather than geology. Within our shores are pockets and folds of cultural dialects each unique to its geography and history. The east coast is but one. As the country rifles through the 21st century, it is our task to nourish and sustain these diverse patterns that exist in the many enclaves.

Pray Putrajaya has the wisdom to opt away from a mono-Malaysia. The east coast – like Sabah and Sarawak, like hill towns and coastal towns, like muara towns and hulu kampongs – has to be allowed the faith to grow in its own imagination, locked genuinely to its current patterns and practices.

If a west coast Bandar boy would take the trouble to see, he would see a lot. Yeo and I did that. On the Buddhist holiest full moon of Wesak, a period revering Gautama’s search and eventual understanding, we too set on a search and came out understanding a little more about our land and who we are.

We entered from the drylands of Jelebu – onto the riverine settlements of Temerloh, onto Kuantan and Kuala Terengganu and Kota Bahru, through lemang land, keropok coasts, and nira fields, through the oil refineries of Kerteh, into the womb of the Penarik lagoon, kissed the shoulder of the Thai-Malaysian border – and emerged through the very, very wet rain scoop that is the East-West Highway.

In that little pilgrimage we are reaffirmed that our land is beautiful, yet raised from a viewpoint heavily slanted towards the west, we are clipped in tongue to describe its being. In a land where elements of Malay, Java, south China, and Indochina are pounded on a monsoon pestle, marinated with the spice of time, we can only taste so well its flavour but not describe it with due justice. Our language falls short.

Chengal Dude doesn’t fret.

“Oh, Ko’lompor…” he mutters when we tell him where we’re from, makes a smirk on his lips and a slight shrug of his shoulders. In not so many words, it said – Orang Bandar, you who seek escalators and aircon, perched in 30-storey tiled concrete boxes, wear jackets and gowns to dinners, jump to synthesized beats and throbbing lights, of course, you’re mute.

P.S. For material that speak more than a thousand words, pls see http://www.aiyeo.net/?p=64

The water margin

Here’s a bad dream. Imagine you're on a boat leading to Venice, its hull cutting the lapping waves silently. Your palms sweat in anticipation of the experience ahead. Then your eyes pop.

Straight ahead, newer buildings – some very tall, some faux-botteghe types – present themselves as lighthouses to a 'revitalized' Veneto region. The ferryman pulls over to dock at a spanking new harbour; you know, one of those blob designs with plenty of glass and steel.

Try as you might, you cannot see the historic Lido beachfront. The original Lido of Lidos, nature’s gateway to the Venetian archipelago. You ask the ferryman. “Oh, that’s another 3km inland,” he replies fluently in the international language you speak. “We are on reclaimed land. Progress, man. Economics.”

“All this, from here around to Murano and one-third of the Canale di San Marco is now terra firma. New, new, all new! It is good. You can walk to the Piazza San Marco now. No floods, no smells. Massage? You like entertainment? Shopping?”


******

Wake up.

That’s not Venice, can never be Venice. Despite its shortage of land, despite the annual floods, despite the obvious sanitation problems, Venice wrestles with these issues but treasures its heritage above all. Its history has been meticulously recorded by scholars, simplified to pop level for tourists, and continues to be spun. Artists, musicians and writers reach for its essence. Italo Calvino alluded to it in Invisible Cities, Joseph Brodsky in Watermark. Venice remains a living pearl, ever-growing layer by layer and never subsumed.

No, that’s not Venice. Wake up, wake up to reality.

That’s Melaka. Beautiful Melaka – arguably the most important seaport this side of the world in the 15-19th century, seat of an empire that stretched from Acheh to Riau, and land of a hundred cultures. Beautiful but vain. And in its vanity, turning ugly.

The story of Melaka is a vivid tale which can only be told from the point of a water’s edge. It is Gita Bayu - a settlement carved from the tradewinds. It was a truly global city in its time and, in that context, rivaled by few – not in Europe, not the Far East. For here, the twain did meet.

It was on this sandy margin where Parameswara, the Sumatran prince, fleeing from the ghosts of his testosterone, arrived by sea perhaps in a gang of perahus. He made it his estate and named it after a tree. The man knew his PR, I guess. In time, Melaka grew as a seaport where merchants from Arab, India, Siam, China and the surrounding islands steered in, rested and traded. Silk must been unfurled, camphor and sandalwood burned, ceramicware stacked on shelves, jade traded alongside jaspers. I imagine the air was thick with the scent of spices, the ground coloured from their spills. And the music and languages and food.

It was on this margin legends of the Malay warrior were born. Perhaps they trained and meditated near the rocky escarpment at Tanjung Kling, perhaps at a gelanggang by the river, we’ve yet to know.

It was on this margin the Ming Dynasty Admiral Cheng Ho moored during his Imperial expeditions in the 1400s. Melaka was more than a pitstop for the 300 ships that comprised his enormous armada. It was the warm quarters of a good friend, a place to strengthen the body and spirit before the next leg.

It was this margin, whose real estate was so valuable, Europe just had to own it. The Portuguese snatched it over blood, then the Dutch, then the British, in a game of musical chairs lasting almost five centuries. A fort rose out of the laterite; a town grew from inside and around it. Bridges crossed the river. Brick structures began replacing wood construction. Churches, temples and mosques were built. Schools too, along with other institutional buildings.

On Feb 20, 1956, Tunku Abdul Rahman fresh from a successful mission in London, announced at Bandar Hilir’s Dataran Pahlawan that the Merdeka Agreement had been signed. We shall be free, the Tunku promised at the park by the water; and indeed a year later we were.

The Water Margin – old Melaka’s real-life storybook. By the 1980s, it was gone. In a frenzied, ill-informed move, the government allowed land reclamation right onto the richest page of Malaysia’s history. For me, this devastating decision is akin to the burning of libraries in many civilizations past.

Today, at the Bandar Hilir side is the reclaimed Melaka Raya, pushing the shoreline a further 3km out. Beneath it, on the original sea bed are artifacts and stories, an actual maritime museum of Chinese junks, perahus, Dutch and Portuguese ships forever entombed under sand and rock that supports Mahkota Parade today.

It happened in my lifetime. I remember as a kid being on a family trip to Melaka. It must have been the mid-70s before Saturday Night Fever. A Formosa was a stroll away from the water’s edge as St Paul’s Hill rose up quite suddenly. Melaka’s tip was essentially a promontory. Its layout made sense. There is an organic logic to its settlement pattern. Behind Tranquerah was the sea. Shops such as the row where the Baba Hotel is today had backs that reached over water. In the mornings, servants of these dwellings would open trapdoors and walked down ladders to boats bearing fish and vegetables. The market floated to your backdoor. Today it is Taman Kota Laksamana, a housing area like any other in any Malaysian town.

Just great. Visionary idea. A++.

Why so? Did it meet with resistance? Is Melaka so land-strapped it has to resort to such foolish, short-sighted moves? I cannot find the answer nor can I accept it.

The nightmare continues today.

Land reclamation is proceeding northwards along the Klebang coast. The pattern is clear. About 3km away from town, a signboard on hoarding is up with an Evora Business Park announcing some oncoming paradise of offices. In time to come, tall buildings will obscure your view of the sea as you drive along the Klebang coastal road. You would have forgotten that it was here fishermen mingled with the rich, sharing a smoke and a prize catch together. Never mind that further up, Tanjung Kling was a vibrant Malay settlement in its time. That may be defaced as well, artificially pushed inland by land reclamation. In the scale of local economics, history is cheap, the senses only rewarded to those who can pay.

They made the same mistake with Port Dickson; miles of beachfront have been converted to resorts and denied public access. The drive from Port Dickson town along the Teluk Kemang coastal road was once a great treat to the senses. Today, a wall of private hotels and service apartments block that view. In what was once a perfect weekend laze-about amongst idyllic casuarinas is now a pay-per-view commodity. Port Dickson failed its people.

Please, not Melaka. This isn’t renaissance. True progress embraces history, soars on its currents, never suffocating it.

In the not too distant future, the people could plausibly appreciate – why, demand to know – Melaka’s larger history, for instance its sister relationship with Muar of which another Portuguese fort once stood. Conceivably, boutique hotels will occupy the present Dutch houses in Muar and boat cruises will ply this historic route offering a different view of the water margin. Pagoh, Batu Pahat, and Alor Gajah are awaiting a true masterstroke which can release the latent spirit of this locale and return it to a renewed vigour. All it takes is sensitivity and a little imagination.

Melaka is a settlement carved from the tradewinds. Like Venice, like Goa. For the tales yet uncovered, for respect of history, for heritage and for commonsense, Melaka’s coastal aura must remain. Remove that and you remove its soul.

Breathing Nusantara

It strikes you before too long. You peer around, near and afar, along the main roads and alleys. You move from urban to rural to urban again, but it’s scarce. It’s just not easy finding a clump of lallang when in Central Java. Land gets no spare change here.

The earth is constantly worked, rejuvenated and reworked; sawah padi, sugarcane fields, rivers, parit, settlements in the form of cities, shanties and villages. Just about every square inch matters in this contiguous weave of human activity and nature.

I spent four days in Central Java and merely brushed its beautiful lashes. Central Java, as sopan as they come, intoxicates with its quintessential cycles. You feel it in your bones. You smell it in the air after the rain. The rivers murmur ancient stories from the deep ravines they carved in time’s bed.

In the rice-fields, the mud basins bear generations of paddy in different stages of growth. In one segment you see tanned stalks of grain, in the next they are merely saplings. Irrigation must have enabled this capacity for year-round planting. The sawah is everywhere; it comes right up to the road shoulder, wraps around houses and courtyards, punctuates vacant plots in urban Yogya, and sweeps for miles terrace upon terrace towards the mountainous folds.

Every few years or so, the active volcanoes in the region take turns to burp. Sometimes it’s a mild clearing of the throat. Sometimes it erupts. Gunong Merapi, 35km from Yogyakarta, is next. Volcanologists say it’s a sure thing. In fear and trembling, in reverence, the locals await the episode. It is a good thing, they know. The rich organic payload from volcanoes such as Gunong Merapi have for centuries churned their land, renewing it with freshness. It is like spring. It is the hand of Lord Siva – with destruction comes rebirth. The cycle will continue.

Coupled with predictable rainfall and graced with gentle slopes which rise suddenly into mountains, it begins to explain why Central Java has played host to some of the oldest civilizations in the region and is today one of the most populous regions in the world. The Java Man (Homo erectus) was found at Sangiran. He is believed to be 700,000 years old.

Dynasties made their seat here as well. Sailendra, Majapahit, Mataram, it’s a long list with deep knowledge and technology. Just about the time they were building the earlier temples of the Khmer Empire at Roluos, east of Angkor (circa 877-889), the Buddhists in Central Java had completed their magnum opus, Borobudur (750-842).



Preah Ko and Lolei of the Roluos group of temples were built from clay bricks and local stucco; Borobudur, on the other hand is a ten-terrace temple constructed of stone complete with sophisticated strategies for stormwater drainage in the form of gargoyles. About 50 km east, the Hindus too did their testament in stone with the temple complex of Prambanan.

All these finished between the 8th and 9th centuries. That’s mind-boggling. Something in your head spins when the bus passes through the town of Magelang. It is a pretty town, saddled between two mountain ranges, distinctly Javanese where the buildings are constructed of masonry walls rather than the wooden kampong archetypes we are familiar with in Malaysia. There are street banners everywhere. Seems that Magelang is celebrating its anniversary. The banners read: Selamat Menyambut Harijadi Magelang Ke 1100.

That takes a while to register – 1,100 years of continued inhabitation is a long, long time. Here in babyland Petaling Jaya, people such as my sister comment that the SS2 neighborhood is old. This ought to give her some perspective.


The story of Central Java is an intricate tikar of a hundred stories, a Ramayana in its own right. Millions have laid their prints on its ever-churning soil leaving behind their bones and spirit – from the Java Man, through the great Sailendra and Majapahit dynasties, through the arrival of Admiral Cheng Ho’s fleet in Semarang, through the wave of Islam at Demak, through the Dutch VOC, through the Japanese Occupation, through the writings of Pramoedya Ananta Toer to the bechak riders of Malioboro Street today.

I spent four days in Central Java and peeked at only a passage of its Earth Sutra. I do not understand it, cannot grasp its dimension, but I feel it. I feel deeply about it.