Once Upon A Time
(The Gasoline Lamp Lighted Up The Entire Room)
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| Stylish Guy |
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| Two Siblings |
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| On Wedding Dais |
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| View Of Jalan Mawar |
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| SK Sungai Choh |
Sometimes I kept on wondering where light
came from. Yet it was still amazing when the gasoline lamp lighted up the
entire room. The light was so enchanting. It seemed to danced on the walls and in the corners of
the room.Yet we could do nothing, just looked at the gasoline lamp. The only
source of light. There was nothing was offered at night to keep us stay awake
all night. There was no bedtime story and no sleep orchestras whatever. No tv or radio and no electronic games to play. So might as well
we kept snoring all night long. Yet no girl would come to my dream to play the
main character. However, ten-year-olds had to go to bed early for school.
Although Sekolah Umum Sungai Choh was not even half a mile away.
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| Kampung Umbai |
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| My Sisters |
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| Sek. Umum Sg. Choh |
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| Sek. Kebangsaan Sg. Choh |
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| Jembatan Sungai Choh |
Sometimes my eldest brother and I played
shadow games to fill the nightlong weekend. It was amusing to see shadows in
different shapes. By twisting our fingers against the light, we could also
performed a shadow show, a simple wayang kulit. Anyway my eldest brother was
good at making shadows in various shapes. I think he deserved to be Tok Dalang
of our family. Might be I could be just as good as Awang Batil. However all
night long, it was really quiet and dark. There was no dancing of lights to be
seen and no rhythm of colours to be
heard. We could only see dark space with frightening shadows and scary sounds. Sometimes we could
hear the beats of raindrops or the wild cries of animals. However the night calls
slowly fading away. Finally the entire Kampung Sungai Choh was covered with
darkness. By then silence filled every corner of darkness.
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| Aton My Niece |
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| On The Bridal Dais |
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| After Wedding Ceremony |
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| Flowing Under The Bridge |
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| Bridge Of Sungai Choh |
Nevertheless we just let the time pass by in silence. Every night was empty and meaningless. It's just a scary darkness. Sometimes we found it hard to sleep. So we might as well count the holes in the roof or imagine the moon looking shy. As it’s said, "counting sheep jump over a fence one by one" was a mental exercise for when you have trouble sleeping. Sometimes we felt like cold air entered the room through the cracks in the wooden walls. Once in a while we could hear the click sounds of lizards under the roof and the wild calls from somewhere in the distance. By then everything was like a dream, floating in the cool breeze of the night. However the night was so nostalgic to let the night rhythms whisper in the ears in the dark. Sometimes we just let a few mosquitoes entertain us with songs that annoyed us.
