IN TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN’S FOOTSTEPS IN ENGLAND. – PART II.
…RETURNING TO ENGLAND IN SEVENTEEN YEARS.
NOTE: This is the second and final part of the essay which I had failed to post earlier when I was in England because I had forgotten to save it to the blog.)
I MADE MY FIRST TRIP TO CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY IN JULY, 2009 TO SHOOT A DOCUMENTARY ON TUNKU CALLED ‘THE RESIDENCY YEARS’ AND WHAT I DISCOVERED WAS SOMETHING THAT WAS BEYOND MY WIDEST IMAGINATION.
AS IT TURNED OUT THAT IT HAS BEEN SELECTED FOR THE COMPETITION IN THE ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL SHORT AND INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL DHAKA 2010. UNFORTUNATELY, I AM NOT ABLE TO ATTEND IT BECAUSE IT IS HAPPENING FROM 4 TO 12 MARCH WHEN I AM IN ENGLAND.
I attended the festival in 1992 when I showed some short films made by Malaysian filmmakers and got to visit Dhaka and Bangladesh for the first time. It is an interesting country. But unfortunately, I did not get to visit much of it to know more of the people and see the other areas in the countryside, and learning more of its history.
I may be a Muslim, but I did not look like one to them, with my Oriental features and long hair.
So I got a lot of stares from some Japanese women who were at the airport with their Bangladeshi husbands, waiting for their flights back to Japan, who were wondering what a lone ‘Japanese man’ was doing there because they find it strange to see Japanese men alone outside of Japan.
A bus full of Japanese tourists looked outside of their bus to look at me as I was standing on the sidewalk in Edgeware Road in the middle of winter, and they did not believe what they were seeing, a ‘Japanese man’ standing there in the snow all by himself and looking confident. They probably thought surely, he can speak a bit of English to get by in England.
And true enough when I was waiting for my flight back to Malaysia at Heathrow Airport, a manager of a Japanese car manufacturer who was also waiting for his flight on another plane, came to sit at my table and he was surprised because I spoke in English and not Japanese. He then realized I am not Japanese like him after he took a look at my business card.
I regret for not being able to return to the city and country this time so I thought I could also shoot some footage for a documentary on Bangladeshis who had worked for a long period of time in Malaysia. And I know some of them who were working in factories in Balakong and Ampang many of whom have now returned to their country.
I will try and visit the country later this year.
* * * * * * *
Cambridge University and the St. Catharine’s College stood as we walked along as though time had stood still. I was all the time thinking how from 1922 to 1926 Tunku was here; he walked on the campus path and dined in the Dining Hall where some of the staff was just wrapping.
And when I saw a toilet nearby I immediately entered it thinking also how Tunku had gone there many times to relief himself, especially in the harsh and cold winter ways.
Yes, I consider myself to be quite fortunate to be able to make a brief visit to Cambridge and some other parts of England, where I managed to locate the three buildings where the first prime minister of Malaysia, and our ‘Father of Independence’, Tunku Abdul Rahman had lodged at when he was studying in Little Stukeley in a rural district called Combs about an hour’s drive from the City of Cambridge, and at Cambridge, and London – a trip that had taken me back in time for nine decades when Tunku first came here in 1916.
My father, Puteh bin Sulong was barely ten years then. Their paths would soon meet in November, 1963 when their children got married, in a ceremony which can be considered to be lavish by the standards then as it is now, one which took place at my father’s house in Melaka and the other time at the Residency. It was barely two years after Malaysia was formed, with the expulsion of Singapura.
Tunku, as he was affectionately called, means ‘Prince’, was a member of the Sultanate of Kedah in Malaysia which forms one of the nine Sultanates and four other states in the Federation of Malaysia had gone to England to study.
He was barely 16 years old when he first took the ship from Malaya to England and landed himself in a small village outside of Cambridge called Little Stukeley in Combs.
He was unlike his other brothers and sisters who liked to mix around with the kids from the village, and he would loiter out of the palace to mix with them, until he became known by his family as the ‘Village Kid’. He was also called the ‘Dark Kid’ because he was darker than any of his brothers and sisters.
Here, Tunku was given tutorials by a Catholic Priest and lived in a building close to a church called The Old Rectory. He stayed there for a few years until he was old and qualified enough to study at St. Catharine’s College of Cambridge University.
He was to later become a district officer in Malaysia before being pulled into politics and running for elections, thus allowing him to become the country’s first chief minister and later prime minister when the country gained its independence on 31 August, 1957.
He was proud to say how he had managed to achieve independence or ‘Merdeka’ for the country ‘without spilling a single drop of blood’ which endeared him to the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth and his consort Prince Philip who became their dear friend.
Queen Elizabeth paid Tunku a visit to his modest home in Kuala Lumpur when she visited Malaysia to open the Commonwealth Games that was held in Kuala Lumpur in 1989, barely few months before Tunku died in December 1990 for which the Times of London how he was ‘Born a prince, died a Sultan’, as the headline for their report on his death.
I first got to know Tunku through his nephew who is also his first adopted son, Syed Abdullah Barakhbah, when he visited my parents’ house in Melaka (Malacca) on his wedding with my elder sister, Rokiah binti Puteh.
In my later years, I became interested in writing and photography, a hobby which later took me to study for my Master of Fine Arts in Film Directing at Columbia University in New York City.
And my brief trip to England, focusing on Cambridge was to locate the three buildings in Little Stukeley, Cambridge and London where Tunku had lodged at. It is for the documentary called, ‘The Residency Years’ I am working for the Malaysian government ministry and film agency.
Its main attraction however, is the interview I recorded with Tunku in 1988 or so, when he was very much alive, which I am using in the documentary for the first time. He spoke of many things, but what attracted me the most was on how he had gone to Cambridge to study.
Of course, Tunku had lodged at few other places on short-term basis, including the room near the old Malaysia Hall in Brynston Square where I was surprised to be told by a Malaysian friend who was renting the room, that it was also the room where Tunku had rented at when he returned to London to study in the 1940s, where his good friend, Abdul Razak and some others, would come to visit and squat with him. Abdul Razak would later become deputy prime minister when Tunku was prime minister.
Surprisingly, no Malaysian paper wanted to publish the interview, so I kept it for future use, until now – or 21 years later and 90 years since Tunku first went to England to study. I learnt that his alma mater, Cambridge University is celebrating their 800th anniversary this year, so I could see large and colorful banners hanging everywhere on campus when we got there.
I feared that some of them might have succumbed to ants and crumbled, leaving nothing at all, other than the addresses.
Fortunately, my fears were totally unfounded. This is England where they take great pride in looking after their old buildings, treating them like they had just been built.
NOTE: This is the second and final part of the essay which I had failed to post earlier when I was in England because I had forgotten to save it to the blog.)
I MADE MY FIRST TRIP TO CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY IN JULY, 2009 TO SHOOT A DOCUMENTARY ON TUNKU CALLED ‘THE RESIDENCY YEARS’ AND WHAT I DISCOVERED WAS SOMETHING THAT WAS BEYOND MY WIDEST IMAGINATION.
AS IT TURNED OUT THAT IT HAS BEEN SELECTED FOR THE COMPETITION IN THE ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL SHORT AND INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL DHAKA 2010. UNFORTUNATELY, I AM NOT ABLE TO ATTEND IT BECAUSE IT IS HAPPENING FROM 4 TO 12 MARCH WHEN I AM IN ENGLAND.
I attended the festival in 1992 when I showed some short films made by Malaysian filmmakers and got to visit Dhaka and Bangladesh for the first time. It is an interesting country. But unfortunately, I did not get to visit much of it to know more of the people and see the other areas in the countryside, and learning more of its history.
I may be a Muslim, but I did not look like one to them, with my Oriental features and long hair.
So I got a lot of stares from some Japanese women who were at the airport with their Bangladeshi husbands, waiting for their flights back to Japan, who were wondering what a lone ‘Japanese man’ was doing there because they find it strange to see Japanese men alone outside of Japan.
A bus full of Japanese tourists looked outside of their bus to look at me as I was standing on the sidewalk in Edgeware Road in the middle of winter, and they did not believe what they were seeing, a ‘Japanese man’ standing there in the snow all by himself and looking confident. They probably thought surely, he can speak a bit of English to get by in England.
And true enough when I was waiting for my flight back to Malaysia at Heathrow Airport, a manager of a Japanese car manufacturer who was also waiting for his flight on another plane, came to sit at my table and he was surprised because I spoke in English and not Japanese. He then realized I am not Japanese like him after he took a look at my business card.
I regret for not being able to return to the city and country this time so I thought I could also shoot some footage for a documentary on Bangladeshis who had worked for a long period of time in Malaysia. And I know some of them who were working in factories in Balakong and Ampang many of whom have now returned to their country.
I will try and visit the country later this year.
* * * * * * *
Cambridge University and the St. Catharine’s College stood as we walked along as though time had stood still. I was all the time thinking how from 1922 to 1926 Tunku was here; he walked on the campus path and dined in the Dining Hall where some of the staff was just wrapping.
And when I saw a toilet nearby I immediately entered it thinking also how Tunku had gone there many times to relief himself, especially in the harsh and cold winter ways.
Yes, I consider myself to be quite fortunate to be able to make a brief visit to Cambridge and some other parts of England, where I managed to locate the three buildings where the first prime minister of Malaysia, and our ‘Father of Independence’, Tunku Abdul Rahman had lodged at when he was studying in Little Stukeley in a rural district called Combs about an hour’s drive from the City of Cambridge, and at Cambridge, and London – a trip that had taken me back in time for nine decades when Tunku first came here in 1916.
My father, Puteh bin Sulong was barely ten years then. Their paths would soon meet in November, 1963 when their children got married, in a ceremony which can be considered to be lavish by the standards then as it is now, one which took place at my father’s house in Melaka and the other time at the Residency. It was barely two years after Malaysia was formed, with the expulsion of Singapura.
Tunku, as he was affectionately called, means ‘Prince’, was a member of the Sultanate of Kedah in Malaysia which forms one of the nine Sultanates and four other states in the Federation of Malaysia had gone to England to study.
He was barely 16 years old when he first took the ship from Malaya to England and landed himself in a small village outside of Cambridge called Little Stukeley in Combs.
He was unlike his other brothers and sisters who liked to mix around with the kids from the village, and he would loiter out of the palace to mix with them, until he became known by his family as the ‘Village Kid’. He was also called the ‘Dark Kid’ because he was darker than any of his brothers and sisters.
Here, Tunku was given tutorials by a Catholic Priest and lived in a building close to a church called The Old Rectory. He stayed there for a few years until he was old and qualified enough to study at St. Catharine’s College of Cambridge University.
He was to later become a district officer in Malaysia before being pulled into politics and running for elections, thus allowing him to become the country’s first chief minister and later prime minister when the country gained its independence on 31 August, 1957.
He was proud to say how he had managed to achieve independence or ‘Merdeka’ for the country ‘without spilling a single drop of blood’ which endeared him to the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth and his consort Prince Philip who became their dear friend.
Queen Elizabeth paid Tunku a visit to his modest home in Kuala Lumpur when she visited Malaysia to open the Commonwealth Games that was held in Kuala Lumpur in 1989, barely few months before Tunku died in December 1990 for which the Times of London how he was ‘Born a prince, died a Sultan’, as the headline for their report on his death.
I first got to know Tunku through his nephew who is also his first adopted son, Syed Abdullah Barakhbah, when he visited my parents’ house in Melaka (Malacca) on his wedding with my elder sister, Rokiah binti Puteh.
In my later years, I became interested in writing and photography, a hobby which later took me to study for my Master of Fine Arts in Film Directing at Columbia University in New York City.
And my brief trip to England, focusing on Cambridge was to locate the three buildings in Little Stukeley, Cambridge and London where Tunku had lodged at. It is for the documentary called, ‘The Residency Years’ I am working for the Malaysian government ministry and film agency.
Its main attraction however, is the interview I recorded with Tunku in 1988 or so, when he was very much alive, which I am using in the documentary for the first time. He spoke of many things, but what attracted me the most was on how he had gone to Cambridge to study.
Of course, Tunku had lodged at few other places on short-term basis, including the room near the old Malaysia Hall in Brynston Square where I was surprised to be told by a Malaysian friend who was renting the room, that it was also the room where Tunku had rented at when he returned to London to study in the 1940s, where his good friend, Abdul Razak and some others, would come to visit and squat with him. Abdul Razak would later become deputy prime minister when Tunku was prime minister.
Surprisingly, no Malaysian paper wanted to publish the interview, so I kept it for future use, until now – or 21 years later and 90 years since Tunku first went to England to study. I learnt that his alma mater, Cambridge University is celebrating their 800th anniversary this year, so I could see large and colorful banners hanging everywhere on campus when we got there.
I feared that some of them might have succumbed to ants and crumbled, leaving nothing at all, other than the addresses.
Fortunately, my fears were totally unfounded. This is England where they take great pride in looking after their old buildings, treating them like they had just been built.
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