A New Year's Day In Malaya

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Title:     A New Year's Day In Malaya
Author: Rounsevelle Wildman [More Titles by Wildman]

A New Year's Day in Malaya And some of its Picturesque Customs.

My Malay syce came close up to the veranda and touched his brown forehead with the back of his open hand.

"Tuan" (Lord), he said, "have got oil for harness, two one-half cents; black oil for cudah's (horse) feet, three cents; oil, one cent one-half for bits; oil, seven cents for cretah (carriage). Fourteen cents, Tuan."

I put my hands into the pockets of my white duck jacket and drew out a roll of big Borneo coppers.

The syce counted out the desired amount, and handed back what was left through the bamboo chicks, or curtains, that reduced the blinding glare of the sky to a soft, translucent gray. I closed my eyes and stretched back in my long chair, wondering vaguely at the occasion that called for such an outlay in oils, when I heard once more the quiet, insistent "Tuan!" I opened my eyes.

"No got red, white, blue ribbon for whip."

"Sudah chukup!" (Stop talking) I commanded angrily. The syce shrugged his bare shoulders and gave a hitch to his cotton sarong.

"Tuan, to-morrow New Year Day. Tuan, mem (lady) drive to Esplanade. Governor, general, all white tuans and mems there. Tuan Consul's carriage not nice. Shall syce buy ribbons?"

"Yes," I answered, tossing him the rest of the coppers, "and get a new one for your arm."

I had forgotten for the moment that it was the 31st of December. The syce touched his hand to his forehead and salaamed.

Through the spaces of the protecting chicks I caught glimpses of my Malay kebun, or gardener, squatting on his bare feet, with his bare knees drawn up under his armpits, hacking with a heavy knife at the short grass. The mottled crotons, the yellow allamanda and pink hibiscus bushes, the clump of Eucharist lilies, the great trailing masses of orchids that hung among the red flowers of the stately flamboyant tree by the green hedge, joined to make me forget the midwinter date on the calendar. The time seemed in my half-dream July in New York or August in Washington.

Ah Minga, the "boy" in flowing pantalets and stiffly starched blouse, came silently along the wide veranda, with a cup of tea and a plate of opened mangosteens. I roused myself, and the dreams of sleighbells and ice on window-panes, that had been fleeting through my mind at the first mention of New Year's Day by the syce, vanished.

Ah Minga, too, mentioned, as he placed the cool, pellucid globes before me, "To-mollow New Year Dlay, Tuan!"

On Christmas Day, Ah Minga had presented the mistress with the gilded counterfeit presentment of a Joss. The servants, one and all, from Zim, the cookee, to the wretched Kling dhobie (wash-man), had brought some little remembrance of their Christian master's great holiday.

In respecting our customs, they had taken occasion to establish one of their own. They had adopted New Year's as the day when their masters should return their presents and good will in solid cash.

At midnight we were awakened by a regular Fourth of July pandemonium. Whistles from the factories, salvos from Fort Canning, bells from the churches, Chinese tom-toms, Malay horns, rent the air from that hour until dawn with all the discords of the Orient and a few from Europe. By daylight the thousands of natives from all quarters of the peninsula and neighboring islands had gathered along the broad Ocean Esplanade of Singapore in front of the Cricket Club House, to take part in or watch the native sports by land and sea.

The inevitable Chinaman was there, the Kling, the Madrasman, the Sikh, the Arab, the Jew, the Chitty, or Indian money-lender,--they were all there, many times multiplied, unconsciously furnishing a background of extraordinary variety and picturesqueness.

At ten o'clock the favored representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race took their place on the great veranda of the Cricket Club, and gave the signal that we would condescend to be amused for ten hours. Then the show commenced. There were not over two hundred white people to represent law and civilization amid the teeming native population.

In the centre of the beautiful esplanade or playground rose the heroic statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, the English governor who made Singapore possible. To my right, on the veranda, stood a modest, gray-haired little man who cleared the seas of piracy and insured Singapore's commercial ascendency, Sir Charles Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak. A little farther on, surrounded by a brilliant suite of Malay princes, was the Sultan of Johore, whose father sold the island of Singapore to the British.

The first of the sports was a series of foot-races between Malay and Kling boys, almost invariably won by the Malays, who are the North American Indians of Malaysia--the old-time kings of the soil. They are never, like the Chinese, mere beasts of burden, or great merchants, nor do they descend to petty trade, like the Indians or Bengalese. If they must work they become horsemen.

Next came a jockey race, in which a dozen long-limbed Malays took each a five-year-old child astride his shoulders, and raced for seventy-five yards. There were sack-races and greased-pole climbing and pig-catching.

Now came a singular contest--an eating match. Two dozen little Malay, Kling, Tamil, and Chinese boys were seated at regular intervals about an open circle by one of the governor's aids. Not one could touch the others in any way. Each had a dry, hard ship-biscuit before him. A pistol shot and two dozen pairs of little brown fists went pit-a-pat on the two dozen hard biscuits, and in an instant the crackers were broken to powder.

Then commenced the difficult task of forcing the powdered pulp down the little throats. Both hands were called into full play during the operation, one for crowding in, the other for grinding the residue and patting the stomach and throat. Each little competitor would shyly rub into the warm earth, or hide away in the folds of his many-colored sarong, as much as possible, or when a rival was looking the other way, would snap a good-sized piece across to him.

The little brown fellow who won the fifty-cent piece by finishing his biscuit first simply put into his mouth a certain quantity of the crushed biscuit, and with little or no mastication pushed the whole mass down his throat by sheer force.

The minute the contest was decided, all the participants, and many other boys, rushed to a great tub of molasses to duck for half-dollars. One after another their heads would disappear into the sticky, blinding mass, as they fished with their teeth for the shining prizes at the bottom.

Successful or otherwise, after their powers were exhausted they would suddenly pull out their heads, reeking with the molasses, and make for the ocean, unmindful of the crowds of natives in holiday attire who blocked their way.

Then came a jinrikisha race, with Chinese coolies pulling Malay passengers around a half-mile course. Letting go the handles of their wagons as they crossed the line, the coolies threw their unfortunate passengers over backward.

Tugs of war, wrestling matches, and boxing bouts on the turf finished the land sports, and we all adjourned to the yachts to witness those of the sea. There were races between men-of-war cutters, European yachts, rowing shells, Chinese sampans, and Malay colehs with great, dart-like sails, so wide-spreading that ropes were attached to the top of the masts, and a dozen naked natives hung far out over the side of the slender boat to keep it from blowing over. In making the circle of the harbor they would spring from side to side of the boat, sometimes lost to our view in the spray, often missing their footholds, and dragging through the tepid water.

Between times, while watching the races, we amused ourselves throwing coppers to a fleet of native boys in small dugouts beneath our bows. Every time a penny dropped into the water, a dozen little bronze forms would flash in the sunlight, and nine times out of ten the coin never reached the bottom.

Last of all came the trooping of the English colors on the magnificent esplanade, within the shadow of the cathedral; the march past of the sturdy British artillery and engineers, with their native allies, the Sikhs and Sepoys; then the feu-de-joie, and New Year's was officially recognized by the guns of the fort.

That night we danced at Government House,--we exiles of the Temperate Zone,--keeping up to the last the fiction that New Year's Day under a tropic sky and within sound of the tiger's wail was really January first. But every remembrance and association was, in our homesick thoughts, grouped about an open arch fire, with the sharp, crisp creak of sleigh-runners outside, in a frozen land fourteen thousand miles away.

[The end]
Rounsevelle Wildman's short story: New Year's Day In Malaya

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