Remembering the 60s

Daniel is half asleep on the plane which had taken off just half an hour ago. It then dawns on him that it is now December 1969 and soon it would be the start of a new decade. Events and images of the life he left behind, his early childhood, his family, his friends, and his beloved Janet dance into his consciousness. Soon he is reminiscing and wallowing in his world of the past. He has only lived 2 decades of his life, and naturally the 60s were the defining era of his phase of life thus far. This is the era which has influenced him in more ways than one, be it education, culture, music, fashion, family, friendship, politics and love. Some events that captured his imagination had left lasting impressions on him and helped shape his life.
Grandmother
His deceased grandmother whom Daniel adored dearly was the first person that comes to his mind. She only passed away few years ago, in 1965 due to a fall sustained when she was walking home from buying fresh meat and vegetables from the wet market. Daniel was still in his teens when his mother passed away. His grandmother came from a small village in China to be reunited with Daniel’s grandfather in 1951. She was the last member of her husband’s family to join him in Malaya. Daniel’s grandfather first came to Malaya in the early 40s to escape the hardship that was ravaging China at the time so that he could earn enough money to feed his young family in China. He worked as a labourer in the tin mining industry in Ipoh. He was hardworking, frugal and has a no-nonsense attitude towards work which endeared him to his ‘towkay’ employers. He soon rose to become the mine’s supervisor with many immigrant workers like him under his charge. Life was good and so he decided bring all his young children, including Daniel’s father to join him in Malaya, except Daniel’s grandmother! His grandfather had ordered his grandmother to stay put in the village to look after his own parents. She could only join him in Malaya until after her in-laws had passed away. His grandmother’s in-laws both passed away in 1950. And true to his words, his grandfather immediately made the arrangement to get his wife to come to Malaya in 1951. Daniel’s grandfather died in 1962. His grandparents’ marriage was an arranged one which was the practice at the time. Their world was the period of traditions, customs and ways of life which were still greatly influenced by the teachings of the two great Chinese sages of Lao-Tse and Confucius. In villages of the time, no woman would dare to be seen alone with a man without a chaperon who was usually an elder aunt or relative of the family, let alone marrying a man of her own choice. That would bring dishonor to her family and the village elders. And the punishment could leave a lifetime scar. The whole village would look upon this young lady as a loose woman with low morality and that sort of reputation in her small traditional world would surely confine her to a life of contempt and misery for the rest of her life as no father and mother would want their son to marry a woman of ill reputation. When Daniel’s grandfather was coming into the marrying age, at the ripe ‘old’ age of 19, his great grandfather, through the village’s ‘go-between woman’, made a proposal to a friend of his from a neighbouring village, for his daughter’s hand to marry his son. His friend agreed and that’s how Daniel’s grandparents got married. They only saw each other a few times at a distance during some festivities. They had never spoken to each other before, until the honeymoon night. Daniel wonders how did couples consummate their union on their wedding nights? Did they take any pleasure from each other? Did they ‘do it’ during their first wedding night at all? It could be a terrible ordeal, he thought. Well, he would ever know. Grandmother did not receive any formal education. Her life was dictated and molded by centuries old traditions and customs which defined her female role in family and society. Her job was to care for her husband, her children and her husband’s parents. She lived in a male dominated society. Daniel’s grandfather used to have tea drinking sessions with his friends in the village. Sometimes they would invite friends from neighbouring villages to join them. They would pour hot Chinese tea from a boiling tin kettle into some small gravel tea cups and sip Chinese tea straight from the cups. They would smoke cheap rolled up cigarettes and sometimes if they would pool in to buy some local homemade wines to make merry. Such tea-drinking sessions were only attended by males who were usually husbands or masters of the households. The men enjoyed such meetings greatly and in fact viewed such ‘tea-drinking’ sessions with dignity and importance. It was during such ‘tea-drinking’ sessions that they discussed big and important issues such as politics, clan culture and traditions, who has done what in the villages. They would either sit on granite stools or lay underneath the cool shades of the coconut trees, drinking and smoking, whiling away their time. They were fascinated by tales of their own kind who ventured to ‘Nan Yang” had made it rich. They dreamed of venturing to “Nan Yang’ themselves and fantasized in getting rich so that they would one day return to their villages to provide better standard of loving for their families and their clansmen, e.g , building bigger houses for their families, improving village roads and drains, and put up bigger deities for prayers etc. Household choirs such as cooking, sweeping floors and changing babies diapers etc are menial jobs below their male status. His grandfather was still in his twenties at the time and already he had sired 4 children, including Daniel’s father with his grand mother. His grandmother must not go to sleep first without waiting for his grandfather coming home safe from such tea-chatting sessions with his mates which could carry on until midnight sometimes. At dinner time, the husband must sit, eat and drink first and then only other family members could begin. A woman’s duty is not to control or take charge but rather to be obedient and subservient. A woman’s greatest duty is to produce a son. A husband can remarry or have more than one wife, but his wife must never remarry, even after his death. A woman’s filial piety is not towards her own family but is in honoring her husband's family through ancestor worship rituals, chaste widowhood, and caring for her husband’s living family members. His grandmother was living in such feudal system. Even after living in Malaya for 14 years, his grandmother never saw the need to learn or speak any other language or dialect except her own. Her life evolved only around her immediate family members and people from her own clan. Daniel remembers when he was young boy, and whenever people asked him where was his home, he would tell them that his home was situated at Damansara Road. But, his grandmother would later correct him and remind him that his home was not in Damansara Road but the the village in China which was his grandfather’s ancestral home. However, when it came to Daniel’s own parents, they have a more liberal outlook. His parents both received Western education in Malaya. They both studied in missionary schools and later embraced Christianity while in secondary schools. So, the ways of life of his grandparents and their ancestors were not rigidly followed and practised.
But, it was an incident involving drumstick that left a deep unforgettable impression in his memory of his grandmother. When he was a young boy, drumsticks were Daniel’s favourites. It was also his brother’s favourite food. So, whenever his mother prepared chicken dishes, Daniel and his brother would each have their share of drumsticks at the diner table. Fortunately, a chicken has two legs! However, his brother being two years older, would sometimes get the lion share of it which means he would devour both drumsticks, leaving nothing for Daniel. The incident that imbedded in his memory was one Chinese New Year when his brother had again stolen and eaten his share of the drumstick. Daniel was seven years old at the time. He was angry at his brother for not saving the other drumstick for him. He sulked and threw tantrums the whole Chinese New Year day, much to the annoyance of his parents. Next day, he did not touch his food the whole day and continued sulking and locked himself in his room reading comic books and sketching drawings of his favourite animals and heroes. Later in the evening, his grandmother came into his room and gave him a bowl of rice. She could not bear seeing his grandson unhappy and hungry. She asked him to forgive his brother. Daniel looked at the bowl of rice and was disappointed to see only some pickings of vegetables and a fried egg on top with some soy source over them. Out of respect, he accepted the bowl from his grandmother, but he placed the bowl of rice on his study table continued reading his comic books and drawings. His grandmother left his room reminding him to eat the bowl of rice and that he would love it. But, Daniel still ignored his grandmother. Soon hunger overtook him. So, he put down his comic book and went for his bowl of rice given by his grandmother. As he scooped deeper into the rice with his chopsticks, he felt something hard beneath the rice. He split the white rice and he found a big succulent chunk of drumstick buried underneath the rice!. “What a grandmother. May she rest in peace”, Daniel thinks to himself.