langkau fiction

I’m not an off-roader. I do often travel offroad though but that’s just to get from one place to another. Preferably, as quickly as possible. There are times when work requires me to travel on 4×4s, treading through some roads so bad that if you wear dentures you’d run the risk of choking on it.

But I have friends who get their adrenaline rush from driving through these severely impaired roads. Or a stretch on the ground that used to resemble a road. For them, the uglier the road condition is, the prettier the challenge becomes. That’s excitement, they’d say. (Y’know, the kind of excitement that makes you froth in your mouth?) Yeah. Sometimes, I don’t really get it.

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I remember trying to convince my cousin, Bani, to listen to this song in the 80’s. I was 16 and he was two years younger, but he was already driving his dad’s 4×4 Suzuki jeep then! It was early one evening after dinner that Bani’s dad told us to get ready. We were going on a hunting trip.

Bani instinctively jumped into the driver’s seat and I walked around to the passenger’s seemingly insignificant seat. Then, I felt a firm tap on my shoulder. It was Bani’s dad with his shotgun slung around his shoulder to the back. He asked “What are you doing sitting down here, boy? You’re going on the roof with me!” referring to the open back part of the jeep where a plank of wood acted as a makeshift seat. I got out of the passenger’s seat and joined Bani’s dad on the ‘roof’.

As I was conditioning my ass on the wooden plank, he gave me a huge spotlight. “Here, you hold on to this,” as he handed me the gigantic spotlight. As he laid his gun on the Suzuki’s roof he announced to me my job description: “Your job, son, is to shine the area for animals while I [as he tapped his gun] do the shooting, ok?” I nodded my head. That was my first time experiencing the ‘American-style’ hunting, as they call it. I had that spotlight in my hand but didn’t know what exactly was I supposed to do. I didn’t even know how to turn on the bloody thing! He then tapped the roof loudly and told Bani “Let’s go!”

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Be as still

There have been three deaths in this month alone. All three were good friends of mine but they passed on at different times under different but tragic circumstances. That made it a bit more difficult to take. On those three occasions, I was out of town amidst a jungle of oil palm plantation in another state. To receive phone calls and text messages about this in an unfamiliar setting can be depressingly weird, I tell you. And oil palm plantation is already a depressing sight in itself. It’s like some of the stairs on the staircase have gone missing, leaving huge gaps to step over. If you miss it, you’ll trip. And that’s not good. It’s worse when there’s no way to know how to handle that gap.

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I can’t sleep because I’m thinking. Thinking about what am I going to do with me. And life.

I really don’t like long weekends. Especially when I’m stuck here. But I have to catch an early morning flight tomorrow. Finally, work!

I wanted to go to the office and write this morning. But I overslept. ‘Overslept’ even though I did not set the time to be there. I’d probably look stupid. But managed to get some work preparation done for tomorrow’s trip.

I feel weak today. Must have been the drinks last night. Drank all kinds of fruit-based tuak (apple, ginger, dragon fruit, grape…okay, so ginger isn’t a fruit) and top it up with beers and vodka. It’s nice, no hangover. Just tired.

I need to go. I need to find solace in…something. I need space.

Got a call yesterday evening from a friend in one of the kampung I used to visit. Bad news. Tragic, actually. Something that I never expected could happen to a man, to my friend. And now, he’s gone leaving a permanent dark scar on the community’s history.

I have little interest in pointing fingers and putting value judgments on the person. Nor do I have any interest in the different versions of ‘factual details’. I’m just damn curious to know what the fuck does this all mean?