The house I grew up in in Malaysia had a large forest just behind our backyard. In essence, our home was quite like a zoo; but only one animal, our dearly beloved Labrador (now deceased), Leo, was actually welcome there.
We had a good sized garden – it housed a bunch of tropical flowers and a swimming pool, as well as a basketball ring. In the mornings, especially on weekends, we’d have breakfast on our patio and was always greeted by a sunbathing Iguana my shockingly amazing creative mind named, Mr. Iguana. He was quite large and very still, and sat on our garden wall in the sun all day long. Watching him was like watching paint dry, or a round of golf.
I used to talk to Mr. Iguana telepathically because as a child, I was an oddbod.
“Hello Mr. Iguana!” I’d say. No response. “What are you doing today?” No response. “Nice tan.” No response. Then I’d wave a goodbye to him (possibly her), in my mind.
Growing up, having animals popping in and out of our property from the forest was both normal and exotic at the same time. From a distance, they were nice to observe, from up close – not so much. One time, a cobra climbed up through our washing machine piping system and ended up in our kitchen. Its timing was perfect. It showed up just as my nanny was walking into the room, and out of fright, she leapt with both feet onto the kitchen counter top – a spectacular feat displaying Olympic gold metal-type athleticism seeing as she only stood no more than 4 feet in height.
Since it is believed that killing snakes is a bad omen, we sprayed it with Mortein to induce drowsiness. And once it was sufficiently high from mosquito repellent, we returned it to its rightful habitat.
We also had bats and frogs. At nighttime, the bats would go skinny-dipping in our pool, and during the day, whilst swimming, we’d often find a blob of green-goo saliva from a frog having laid some eggs in it. Other reptilians were the cold, pale-skinned, translucent lizard, or as we call them in Malaysia, cicak. Cicaks love falling on your head. I don’t like it when they fall on my head. At all.
Other times, the animals were more aggressive. In Malaysia, almost every house has monkeys whether they like it or not. The term, ‘mi casa es su casa’ is not lost on them – ‘mi casa is NOT su casa’, isn’t. They also travel in packs, and because they know everyone has seen Outbreak, they are even braver than ever.
I remember one day, there were at least six of them sitting casually on our garden wall. I watched them closely, squinting my eyes, threatening them with my stare because I’m the kind of person who laughs in the face of…danger. Anyway, it didn’t work. The monkeys jumped from our shared neutral state line and raced across our garden and into our pantry.
The next time I saw them was from my bedroom window. They sat, in our garden, feasting on a selection of papayas, bananas and a jar of jelly beans they stole from our home; taunting me with each delectable bite and revelling in their successful crime against the civilised world.
And so, I grabbed a packet of crisp and a jar of sweets, and from the safe haven of the top floor, I began pelting them with Twisties and candy, but to no avail. They were much too far to reach, and thought I was handing out treats. To clarify, I was not – I was simply trying to get rid of them.
Whenever it rains in Malaysia, it’s a storm. It’s torrential and unrelenting. Lightning, like the crack from a whip, shudders the sky and thunder echoes like a vibrating force. It is strange to say, but I miss blackouts. Not the kind of blackouts that lasts for days, but the ones that last entire evenings, the ones where you know the lights will come back on eventually.
When I was younger, more often than not, every time it rained we’d have a blackout, and it’d come midway through baking a cake, watching TV or halfway through a shower. For a moment, there would be complete silence; the buzzing sound of modern life that we are so accustomed to and never notice would cease, making room for that white noise of rain. It would feel as if the rain, like a blanket, was suddenly all around you and nothing more, just darkness.
During those blackouts, my parents would light up candles and place them all over the house. Back then, we didn’t miss having a TV, or the Internet, or computers – maybe just my first Sony. The rain was inviting; it brought with it the much needed cool air and breeze we don’t often get in Malaysia. We’d draw our French windows open and drag our bean bags to the foot of it, relishing in the coolness and watching as the rain terrorised the forest trees, and turned our swimming pool into a pimply liquid cheek.
I learned that only rain such as the ones I used to witness could bend skyscraping trees to the ground, and flip it right back up again like whiplash. Sometimes a large branch would break off – snap – fall to the ground with a noise silenced by the rain. And somewhere, without raincoats, the monkeys, the snakes, the frogs, the bats and Mr. Iguana were beneath a canopy of leaves, huddled over the earth with remnants of Twisties stuck in their teeth and cicaks on their heads.
In the summer of 1997, despite protests and signed petitions, a two-tier highway was erected behind our home. The entire forest was chopped down to make room for a monstrosity so cold and brute, which leaned over our neighbourhood like Big Brother. Everything was gone – everything - the view of the trees, the energy of the vibrant, cheeky forest, once so alive, was replaced by the underbelly of a lifeless concrete slab.
Not long after that, we moved out. But now, having recalled these memories the question remains: How much, for the sake of (unnecessary) practicality, are we willing to destroy?
Image 5 is an actual photo of the highway.
