THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

King Edward VII School, Taiping 57
Underneath the school’s wooden stairs was a storeroom where real
guns, not the wooden make-believe ones of my former Malay school, were
kept. When during recess, I saw boys playing marbles and spinning tops,
I planned to bring mine the next day.
My brother told me that a plate of Indian noodles cost four cents.
So, on the first day, I bought a plate, to which I added other accompaniments
such as boiled potatoes, fried soy bean cake and prawn crackers.
Several days later, I found out that four cents was the price of plain
noodles alone. I did not mean to cheat or become one of the boys who
did not pay after eating. Later, my oldest brother opened an account with
the Indian-Muslim noodle vendor, for all of us brothers, which we settled
at the end of each month.
There was an interesting assortment of food: rojak (cut fruits and
vegetables in a spicy sauce), ice cream, sweetened ice water, bubur
kachang (green-bean porridge), bubur gandum (wheat grain porridge),
satay (grilled skewered meat) which only the well-off pupils could afford,
fried tit-bits and fruits. With the ten cents pocket money mother gave each
of us, we ate well.
Besides that, my mother stocked us up with sweet-cakes, Malay pancakes,
banana dumplings, fried noodles and fried rice. This was because
we spent almost all our daylight hours away from home. Each day, we
left home at 5.30 am, walked two miles to the Matang Road Train Station,
rode the train six miles to the Taiping Railway Station, from where we
walked another mile to get to school before 7.30 am.
School ended at 1.30 pm, but the return Taiping-Port Weld train only
left at 5.30 pm. So, after the time taken to walk home later on, we only
got home at about 7.00 pm. The ten cents pocket money and extra food my
mother prepared were to keep us going from the crack of dawn to dusk.
Between school closing at 1.30 pm and the train ride home at 5.30
pm, we spent some time doing our homework under one of the many
shady rain trees in the school compound. After that, we either played ball
or wandered all over Taiping. Sometimes, we brought salt to eat with
young tamarind fruits we stole from trees at the Lake Gardens. The largebellied
Sikh guard at the Lake Gardens suffered from advanced hernia,
and we often teased him into chasing us, but he never did.
We usually played soccer or rounders at one of three different fields.
There was the circus field and the field in front of the government
building, but our favourite was the unkempt one in front of the hospital,
because it was just across the street from the train station. One afternoon,
my father caught me playing rounders at our favourite field. He called
me and asked point-blank, “Do you want to be caned here or at home?”