Something old, something new, as even childhood surroundings change with time. But is it for the better?

I AM on my way back to Kuala Lumpur as I write this. We hadn’t balik kampung in four years, and Terengganu has changed a lot.

It was a shock to see the house in front of my late grandfather’s gone. The talk is that a fast-food outlet will be built there soon.

That house and its garden many, many years ago had an abundance of hibiscus flowers and frangipani trees. The owner bred goats, and neighbourhood chickens rooted in the garden.

The area itself is historical and housed many families of Malay and Chinese descent. There have always been very few Indians in Tereng­ganu.

Thirty years ago, it was lush with trees, cats, and in the evenings, children ran in and out of homes, playing and laughing.

Now?

My nephew asked me if my late grandfather’s house had Wifi. What a change it is.

Even the mosque we prayed in had seen a major facelift. It’s bigger now and air-conditioned. The cemetery my tokki was buried in has changed too. There were new mausoleums, paths.

Cousins I played with are now parents who have children. Now that we are adults, we see our parents with love, but also realise that they are very much human, with flaws.

It’s shocking to realise that, for every child grows up idolising his parents, and to finally see them as people can be unsettling. It’s the same for relatives – no longer are they tall beings who exerted so much fear. As we have grown (up), they have aged.

I don’t know if I like the Tereng-ganu I am seeing now, because my childhood was fantastic. I’ve always said I’m not suited for the 21st century.

The changes are a bit too much. The romance I have associated the state with is now gone.

When we performed our prayers in the mosque, celebrating Aidilfitri, I was relieved to find that prayers are still the same and the imam greeted us with Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri.

No Jazakallah, Arab words; everything was in Malay. The khutbah was simple and sweet.

And some of the characters who have made appearances in my writing were still around. You may remember my grandmother’s neighbour Mek Yang, who had 13 husbands (not at the same time).

Her tiny wooden house which was situated on someone’s land was now surrounded by a fence and an imposing gate. How on earth was I going to visit her?

Her neighbour peeked out of his house when he heard me calling out for her. “Why don’t you just climb over the gate to get to her house?”

And that was what I did. I suppose in my kampung, a grown woman clambering over a gate is not an unusual sight.

Age had caught up with Mek Yang. She blinked a lot more as she looked out of her house, and she kept holding on to my arm.

But she was excited to have a visitor, as she scuttled about in her small kitchen, boiling water.

The coffee she made was hot and lethal for diabetics, and the biscuits she offered were past their expiry date. But of the conversation we had – we just picked up from where we left off years ago.

Her days of love and marrying were over. “I have no time to mengorat these days. I collect discarded things now, not husbands.”

She’s practical, this woman. If things aren’t good for her, she chucks them out. Just like some of her former husbands.

“Your heart cannot be too soft. And whatever people say about me, they’ll kena balik.”

She went outside and plucked a mango from a tree.

“Here, take this home, “ she said. “I can’t give you duit raya because I’m poor and you’re an adult, but I can give you a mango.”

With a mango in my bag, we walked around the neighbourhood, in the blazing sun, taking pictures of old homes. This, I thought, would never happen in KL.

Here, there is still that innocence that we long for in our private moments.

People are still generous with their smiles, and genuinely curious about your life.

They may find you and your work too modern, too odd, but you have come back for Raya, that’s all that matters.

How wonderful it is to experience this, despite all the changes.

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