THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

66 Memoirs of Mustapha Hussain
me develop a higher degree of confidence, entrepreneurship, thrift, resilience
and self-reliance. As tasks and games were mostly accomplished
with my brothers and friends, we learned to work as a team and to have
trust and faith in one another. Similarly, at school, we competed in the
name of the house or the school.
As play items – such as tops, kites, catapults, balls, bats and bird traps
– had to be made, we learnt to be resourceful. We also learned fair play
and to follow the rules of the game without adult supervision.
During school holidays, we loved to cycle to the waterfalls at the foot
of Maxwell Hills and to the Burmese Pool, where we used upehs (large
dried and curved flower-sheaths of areca nut trees which looked like
miniature canoes) to slide down huge boulders, into the clear invigorating
water at the bottom of the falls. We brought food like Indian pancakes,
dhal curry, bread, sardines and fruits. We did not recognise ‘exhaustion’
until we got home.
Sometimes, we cycled eight miles to the foot of Maxwell Hills and
trekked another six miles to the peak. There were challenging short cuts
through the hill’s jungle slopes, but these were dangerous as pythons lay
in wait. It was cool, tranquil and scenic at the peak. The first railway
track in Malaya, the Taiping-Port Weld stretch, looked like two straight
threads from the peak. In our young and innocent minds, we compared
our feelings of achievement with that of Mount Everest climbers, except
there was no snow on Maxwell Hills.
As soon as we got home, we slept like logs. The next day, every inch
of our body ached. In despair, we swore never to climb the hill again.
But three days later, after our mother had relieved the aches and pains
with massages, so would go our resolve not to climb the hill again.
Maxwell Hills was developed by a British citizen with vast experience
in India of converting hills into scenic resorts. A staple of colonial lifestyle,
hill resorts provided white men their much needed respite from
scorching heat, and also acted as convalescent homes for white men
serving in tropical climes. It was named Maxwell after Sir William
Edward Maxwell, Acting Resident of Perak and later Colonial Secretary
and Acting Governor of the Straits Settlements.
In 1883, my granduncle, Datuk Panglima Nakhoda Taruna, a Jebong
headman, and his brother, Nakhoda Hassan, were two of the six Malays
who accompanied Sir W.E. Maxwell to Acheh (then at war with the
Dutch) on a dangerous mission to rescue several Dutch nationals shipwrecked
after the horrendous Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883.
The developer of Maxwell Hills supervised hundreds of South Indian
labourers from atop his horse’s saddle. Gradually, at the insistence of the