Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my late maternal grandmother. She passed away in 2004 and her 16th death anniversary just passed a couple of days ago.
It’s only in the past few years, when I share with people about my family, that I realized how much of a badass my late grandma had been.
She lived a pretty normal, quiet life raising eight children in rural Pahang. In her later years, she moved around quite a bit to live with some of her children and grandchildren. She even spent a few years in Singapore with us in the 90s, and eventually moved to Kuantan and spent the last few years of her life with my eldest aunt.
Despite our little tiffs and arguments here and there, she had been a pillar of support for me during the times I had needed it; always encouraging and willing to lend a listening ear.
It’s only in the last few years that I had been hearing the real life story of my grandmother.
I had known that she lived through the Japanese occupation of Malaya, and she was in the Jhansi Rani Regiment (Indian Army Unit for women) as a soldier, but that was not all.
She had been orphaned at a young age and was raised by an abusive aunt who saw her as a liability and didn’t really care about her.
When my grandmother was alive, she had told me that she ran away from home to join the Indian Army because she was treated badly. I asked her why she was treated badly, but she wouldn’t go into details.
About five years ago, I heard from my mother that the aunt that raised my grandmother had actually sold her off to a drunkard for a mere $10; granted, it was a lot of money in those days, but still!
My grandmother had cried and pleaded with her aunt not to send her away but her aunt showed her no mercy and packed her off to live with her new owner.
My grandmother had no choice but to go with the drunkard, but after a few days, made up her mind that this shit was not going to be her life.
In the middle of the war, she left.
She made her way from Rawang to Singapore (this is the part of her story that I remember), sometimes by foot and sometimes by hitching rides, and eventually joined the Jhansi Rani Regiment.
It was here that she had met my grandfather, but she also admitted that he wasn’t the only man she had ‘dated’, there were other men, but my grandfather had proven to be a worthy man, hence she decided to marry him after the war was over.
She had gone back to Malaysia by then, and my grandfather followed her and they settled in Pahang.
My grandmother’s abusive aunt had died during the Japanese occupation, presumably from some illness (people back then didn’t live very long anyway) but her young children were still around; my grandmother took all of them under her care, no questions asked, and raised them as her own.
I find all of these very fascinating… Even in the 1940s, when people were presumably conservative, my grandmother had been extraordinarily ahead of her times: she had the courage to leave her circumstances and took control of her life and lived on her own terms.
I also heard that she had been a very stylish woman in her youth; while other Indian women wore their traditional sarees and thavanis, my grandmother had opted for short skirts, sleeveless blouses and shirts, and sported a cropped hairstyle.
All of these isn’t a big deal now, but back in the 40s, I can imagine how many tongues my grandmother must have set off wagging.
It’s a pity that I don’t have photos of my grandmother from her younger days, but I hope to collect more stories of her and set up a blog in her memory in the near future.
Adios.
Yours truly, Nathan. 