Adat: "My Malaysia" Photo Series (5) - PART TWO

“Hidup dikandung adat, mati dikandung tanah.” (Peribahasa Melayu)

“Live under the custom, die under the land.” (Malay Proverb)

 

Pulau Sayak. Kedah, 20 October 2019

Walking through the streets of a village that overlooked the beautiful beach of Pulau Sayak, in Kedah, I stopped to have a coffee with two elderly men, in a kedai, those small shops selling coffee and something to eat with the wooden benches and tables, on the street. It was there that I saw this man arrived by motorbike, stopped, parked it on the side of the road and fumbled behind the vehicle, and here, in a few minutes, he was roasting the sate – some very famous chicken skewers in Asia – until a child approached to buy them. I was amazed; never seen such a thing. The two elders looked at me and laughed.

This photograph, when I showed it, aroused much nostalgia; many have told me that before (“zaman dulu”) it was a custom – and remember that custom is said by them “itu biasa!” but that is also the etymological meaning of Adat. But now it's no longer found. I was very lucky, they told me. Yes, and happy to be.

Still in the same place, crossing the road, I saw a hammock swinging, hidden among the plants of a garden. I went into the plants to go out into a garden, where two women were chatting in total relaxation, sitting on a wooden stage and sliding in the hammock, sipping something in a plastic bag, as is usual in these cities to save on the glass of the bottles and spend even less.

Relaxation is not just an empty space in the time of our days. In Italy itself, the tireless worker of the North reproaches the South for the laziness of the siesta, of rest (a classic commonplace). Nothing more wrong, because it's a necessity to break the rhythm sometimes, to indulge in some oxygen in the rhythm of the days. Ever since my visit to Indonesia, I noticed how much Indonesians cared about relaxation.

Even in traffic, on the street, smoking a cigarette sitting in the classic position on the ground as on the Turkish toilet, or lying down for a moment, is important. It is not only a purely physical fact, but a category of the spirit. And the more one enters the villages, the more this rest becomes shameless, or lack of any formality.

It's my quiet moment and I take it.

Pulau Sayak. Kedah, 20 October 2019

So, nothing strange about swinging in a hammock, but seeing these two women, in Kampung Bunohan, in Kelantan, lying on the ground, sleeping outside, at home, made me smile. Something that is normal to see in Indonesia, but which I had never seen in Malaysia; and it made many Malaysian people who saw this photo smile. But this image is what's called suasana kampung, difficult to translate, something like the atmosphere of the villages. What was once normal but now becomes uneducated, rough, “from the village”, in fact, but which reminded me, instead, of the most true soul of Malaysia; like the women who washed in the mornings in the rivers and then returned berkemban to the house, that is with the cloth (kain) tied up to the breast, something that now makes you shout to the scandal or explode in an almost arrogant laugh, but that was not other than the daily Malaysia of fifty, sixty years ago.

Kampung Bunohan, Tumpat. Kelantan, 21 June 2019

The deeper you go into the kampungs, the more you can capture images that look like postcards from a not so distant past. Often the photographer is metaphorically compared to the fisherman, I like more the butterfly hunter. And still in the same kampung in Tumpat, there is this wonderful lady intent on collecting wood for the fire, near her wooden house (which we will talk about in the future).

Kampung Bunohan, Tumpat. Kelantan, 21 June 2019

Life in kampungs is usually marked, in its activities, by the rhythm of the sun, from morning until sunset, when everyone has to come back, because as they say, you must never be out of the house (especially the girls) or go to visit someone, in the moment of sunset (waktu maghrib). Families lock themselves in the house. Social life becomes private.

Entering their homes, capturing simple moments like cooking, perhaps with the magic of light reminiscent of Vermeer's paintings, always gives a great emotion.

Kampung Permatang Buloh, Kepala Batas. Penang, 13April 2019

 

Malaysians are very sociable, jovial, like many Asian populations. After hard work, or in idleness, we find ourselves drinking a coffee, especially the elderly, the famous pakciks, while women have a great passion for fishing. As I happened to notice the second time I arrived in Malaysia, in 2017; I saw this lady in baju kurung (the traditional female dress) intent on fishing, alone. Since then I have seen many of these ladies in the afternoon, spending time alone or with their husbands and children, fishing.

Kampung Kedai Buloh. Kelantan, 15 October 2019

Tanjung Dawai. Kedah,  11 December 2017

Although the photo that struck me most was this one taken in Ipoh, where this woman was intent on fishing with the looming profile of the buildings in front of her. A strange, disturbing and melancholic mixture of village and city, tradition and modernity. That makes you think.

Ipoh. Perak,  24 March 2019

Never, however, with the same intensity as the time I found this group of people intent on cooking bubur asyura for an Islamic event, in the parking lot of an apartment building, in the classic style called “gotong-royong”, that is the collaboration, the spirit of working together, a pillar of the Malaysian Adat.

An activity that is still present in every place in Malaysia, but which is starting to be more and more frequently carried out in these unnatural, asphalt contexts. This is a tangible sign of what has been previously written.

It is a form of resistance, of keeping an important tradition, but for how long?

Pangsaspuri Rimbun, Sungai Batu. Balik Pulau. Penang, 15 October 2019

  

Pasar Bisik in Kuala Muda is the latest market of this type in all of Malaysia, where freshly caught fish in the sea that borders Thailand, is sold to the highest bidder who whisper (bisik) the price to the ears of the auction batsmen. You will no longer see this if one day it closes; and already now, in the nearby kampung, the ancient wooden houses and working on ships are inhabited by Rohingya men, to whom the Malaysians have left their jobs and rented their houses, to move to the new condominiums in the gardens (taman). “Because our children no longer want to keep those old wooden houses and do these hard jobs, go overboard, to fish.” An old Malaysian from that place said to me.

A link in the chain breaks and the pedal no longer turns.

The bicycle parked, rusted. It died.

Pasar Bisik, Kuala Muda. Penang, 27 February 2019

Like the use of the Tenun Songket, the ancient hand loom: this was on display during a festival linked to the tradition of Malaysia in Balik Pulau, in Penang. It reminded me of when I was in Pekalongan, Indonesia, I spoke to a woman who was the last one left to do batik still by hand, boiling the ink with fire and drawing the patterns on the fabric. Everything is now done in an industrial way.

Faster, more pieces, and poor quality.

Balik Pulau. Penang, 21 July 2019

The clothes are also an essential element that defines the Malaysian identity. Like this traditional dance group in Kelantan wearing the Baju Melayu (Malaysian dress) made up of sampin (the dress) and the tanjak (the headgear), or like the child wearing the same dress with the songkok, the classic headdress from man: this same type of dress is worn during Lebaran, the Eid festival at the end of Ramadhan, called for the occasion Baju Raya, usually worn by the whole family in a single color, as it has been in trend from not many years in Malaysia.

Pantai Chap, Bachok. Kelantan, 21 July 2018

Ipoh. Perak, 23 March 2019

Religious anniversaries and ceremonies are very important.

This woman who wears the telekung (women's dress for prayer) and rides a bicycle to the mosque for prayer seems to have come out of a table by Lat: the perfect iconography of the life of the kampung.

Kampung Kedai Buloh. Kelantan,  15 October 2019

 

Just like the old lady, makcik, in front of her house with the cow, almost posing to stop time.

Kampung Canggung, Bachok. Kelantan, 21 July 2018

This is the secret to keeping the Adat alive, so that that link in the chain doesn't break. Make sure that the different generations remain tied together, like the hands of the two young spouses clasped in the hands of the elderly mother, sitting in the middle of them. There was no better way to photograph this wedding, for me, because from the private detail they became a powerful symbol of their own culture.

Don't untie that bond, hold it tight.

Teluk Bahang. Penang, 14 December 2018

Some time ago I saw an electric buai in a house. The buai is the typical cradle for children made of cloth, hung from the ceiling or on a hook, in which the small child sleeps, rocked by his mother or brothers and sisters, as in Lat's table. In every home, in the villages, if there is a small child there is a buai; and I've always wanted to go inside and try it, being able to go little again. But in that house the mother showed me the modern, electric version, with the possibility of regulating the duration and intensity of the rocking.

Things change, they are transformed.

We cannot always remain perched on what we like, with our gaze turned to the past. I understand. But that type of traditional buai had another meaning: the presence of someone, of a voice that perhaps sang a lullaby, the child felt the presence of them, and not the hum of an electric motor.

Kampung Kedai Buloh. Kelantan, 15 October 2019

 

These were the old customs, when everything was done by hand. Like when in this kampung in Alor Setar in 2017, this sprightly elderly lady took me to see how the children crossed the river to go to school, every morning, thanks to a mobile iron platform pulled by a hand rope (titi tali) from shore to shore. And how she laughed when she saw my scared expression, crossing the river.

“This type of vehicle is no longer used, but we still use it here,” she said grinning.

Kampung Alor Madi, Anak Bukit, Alor Setar. Kedah 15 December 2017

 

I hope this journey in pictures has warmed your heart and made a sweet trip into the past, even if I don't own the time machine, and these are all photographs taken in these three years. They are real. But they already seem tack in sepia, discolor.

Always keep what you love alive, blow on the embers so as not to extinguish the fire. And remember: it's for your children.

As a great photographer wrote: “For a reason I photograph: so my children to know the world I lived in.” (Gordon Parks)

Monkey Beach, Teluk Bahang. Penang, 13 July 2019

Teluk Bahang. Penang, 14 December 2018

 

Recommended song: Ally Noor & Mastura “Apo kono eh jang”

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