I REMEMBER WHEN…TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN CAME TO MY PARENTS’ HOUSE IN MELAKA IN NOVEMBER, 1963, TWO MONTHS AFTER HE DECLARED THE FORMATION OF MALAYSIA. – PA
…AND HOW I LOCATED THE THREE BUILDINGS IN ENGLAND WHERE TUNKU HAD LODGED AS WHEN HE WAS STUDYING THERE.
By Mansor Puteh
I STILL MARVEL AT THE SIGHT OF TUNKU SITTING BESIDE MY FATHER, PUTEH BIN SULONG WHO WAS SEVEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN HIM, IN THE WEDDING PHOTO. BOTH OF THEM DID NOT SPEAK, AS MY FATHER SELDOM SPOKE.
I NEVER SPOKE WITH HIM UNLESS IF I WANTED MONEY TO WATCH FILMS IN THE CINEMAS IN MELAKA TOWN, TO TAKE HIM TO THE IMMIGRATIONS DEPARTMENT IN THE CITY FOR ME TO APPLY FOR THE RESTRICTED PASSPORT WHEN I WANTED TO GO TO SINGAPURA, OR TO BUY PLANE TICKETS FOR ME TO TRAVEL ABROAD.
IT WAS PROBABLY A GOOD IDEA FOR THEM NOT TO SPEAK OR ASK WHAT MY FATHER’S POLITICAL AFFILIATION WAS, AS IT COULD BE VERY EMBARRASSING BECAUSE MY FATHER WAS A STAUNCH SUPPORTER OF THE LABOR PARTY (PARTI BURUH) WHILE EVERYBODY IN THE FAMILY WAS STAUNCH UMNO SUPPORTER.
And only much later could I notice a photo of my face in the same photo when I scanned the original photo to the computer which brought my face out so that it became the only photo of me with Tunku.
I remembered then on how I had gone everywhere during the wedding and ending up below the house when the group photo with Tunku, Mak Engku, Ghafar Baba and the bride and groom was taken.
While Mak Engku was busy doing her family chore of marrying one of her sons, her husband was busy performing his official duty as prime minister of Malaysia.
So all those people who later came to the wedding were shocked to find Tunku and almost everybody in his family including his grandchildren. He was accompanied by the then chief minister of Malacca, Encik Abdul Ghafar Baba (later Tun.)
All of them had seen him on television when it was first introduced in 1963, at our house in the area in Melaka because it was opened to everybody from six o’clock to midnight.
Now all of them were seeing Tunku for the first time with most of his immediately family members in tow.
That was the first and the last time Tunku ever came to this area, but the memories of him being there remained in the memories of the people there for a long time.
My mother just passed the invitation card for the wedding to the guard at the gate of the residence of the chief minister in Peringgit and Encik Ghafar came, as it was not a common invitation for him.
His wife, Hajjah Asmah was also a close friend of my mother’s first sister who was also very active in Umno with her husband, Longche Nayan who ran for the Bandar Melaka in one of the general elections held during the 1960s.
I remember seeing posters of him being hung on every tree in the town, and only realized he was also running in the elections.
I cannot say Tunku’s presence in my life had not affected me. It did. But in the indirect way.
And I could say the reason why I finally got into Columbia University in New York City was because of him, or of my brother-in-law, Syed Abdullah.
He had just returned from Washington DC., where he was staying in the keep of the Malaysian ambassador then, Ong Yoke Lin, for the brain surgery he had following an accident when he drove a car in Kedah, for which he had to stay back for six months before he fully recovered and was allowed to return to Malaysia.
Syed Abdullah flew on PanAm.
On one of his trips back to Melaka after the wedding he brought some of the brochures from the airline which I got.
And in it I saw for the first time photos of the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and New York City. I was entranced by what I had seen and I wanted very much to go to America, a country I had not heard of before that.
I was still very young then, and only much later I wanted to pursue my education in film directing.
And when I was in the last semester at the school of mass communication of Institut Teknologi Mara (ITM) in Shahalam where I was majoring in advertising, I applied to few other universities in America which are non-competitive ones, but they all rejected my application, except for Columbia which readily accepted it.
I was surprised by this as it had come much earlier than the rejections I got from the other universities.
I finally landed for the first time at Kennedy Airport in Queens, New York on 27 August, 1978 after stopping over at London for two weeks, where I stayed with friends, one of which was renting a room he said was where Tunku had rented at in the 1940s when he returned to London to resume his studies.
And old Englishman who was supervisor of the building said he knew Tunku and met Tun Razak who often paid Tunku a visit.
If Tunku had not come into my life, I doubt it if I would have got to Columbia to be the first Malaysian to study film at such a university which I would later find to be an Ivy League one.
I therefore became a closeted follower of Tunku and did some research on him to know where he had lodged at in England when he was studying there in 1919, 1920s and the 1940s.
So I was excited when I discovered the three buildings in Little Stukeley and Grange Road in Cambridge and the one at Barkston Gardens in England when I was working on a documentary called ‘Bertahun di Residensi’ or ‘The Residency Years’ for Finas and the Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture or KPKK which was finally shown on TV1 last 7 March.
The buildings are still standing and they probably look the same as they were when Tunku was staying there, except for The Old Rectory in Little Stukeley which was condemned by the local authorities for demolition in 2006.
An English woman called Carmila Payne and her husband managed to convince the authorities to allow them to buy the remains of the building. They then spend a lot of time, money and energy to rebuild it to make it look it was in its earlier design and state.
These three buildings should be declared Malaysia’s heritage buildings in England as they are important buildings.
I also managed to unearth the contents of Tunku’s safe in The Residency which my sister, Rokiah said had not been opened for many decades because they did not have the key or combination to it.
The minister of KPKK, Rais Yatim got an expert to prise open the door of the safe and saw forty-four items belonging to Tunku, which no one had seen before. They have been declared ‘national treasures’ and valued at RM400,000.
There was a sigh of relief at the sight of those personal items, as there were some who feared if Tunku might have left notes in the safe which may not sound pleasing to some.
Yet, despite the safe having been opened, the mysteries of Tunku’s life and his times are still very much intact – the life of someone whom Tunku had described in his taped interview I did with him, to be a person who was a ‘happy and go lucky type of person’ who became the country’s Father of Independence and first Prime Minister of Malaysia.
By Mansor Puteh
I STILL MARVEL AT THE SIGHT OF TUNKU SITTING BESIDE MY FATHER, PUTEH BIN SULONG WHO WAS SEVEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN HIM, IN THE WEDDING PHOTO. BOTH OF THEM DID NOT SPEAK, AS MY FATHER SELDOM SPOKE.
I NEVER SPOKE WITH HIM UNLESS IF I WANTED MONEY TO WATCH FILMS IN THE CINEMAS IN MELAKA TOWN, TO TAKE HIM TO THE IMMIGRATIONS DEPARTMENT IN THE CITY FOR ME TO APPLY FOR THE RESTRICTED PASSPORT WHEN I WANTED TO GO TO SINGAPURA, OR TO BUY PLANE TICKETS FOR ME TO TRAVEL ABROAD.
IT WAS PROBABLY A GOOD IDEA FOR THEM NOT TO SPEAK OR ASK WHAT MY FATHER’S POLITICAL AFFILIATION WAS, AS IT COULD BE VERY EMBARRASSING BECAUSE MY FATHER WAS A STAUNCH SUPPORTER OF THE LABOR PARTY (PARTI BURUH) WHILE EVERYBODY IN THE FAMILY WAS STAUNCH UMNO SUPPORTER.
And only much later could I notice a photo of my face in the same photo when I scanned the original photo to the computer which brought my face out so that it became the only photo of me with Tunku.
I remembered then on how I had gone everywhere during the wedding and ending up below the house when the group photo with Tunku, Mak Engku, Ghafar Baba and the bride and groom was taken.
While Mak Engku was busy doing her family chore of marrying one of her sons, her husband was busy performing his official duty as prime minister of Malaysia.
So all those people who later came to the wedding were shocked to find Tunku and almost everybody in his family including his grandchildren. He was accompanied by the then chief minister of Malacca, Encik Abdul Ghafar Baba (later Tun.)
All of them had seen him on television when it was first introduced in 1963, at our house in the area in Melaka because it was opened to everybody from six o’clock to midnight.
Now all of them were seeing Tunku for the first time with most of his immediately family members in tow.
That was the first and the last time Tunku ever came to this area, but the memories of him being there remained in the memories of the people there for a long time.
My mother just passed the invitation card for the wedding to the guard at the gate of the residence of the chief minister in Peringgit and Encik Ghafar came, as it was not a common invitation for him.
His wife, Hajjah Asmah was also a close friend of my mother’s first sister who was also very active in Umno with her husband, Longche Nayan who ran for the Bandar Melaka in one of the general elections held during the 1960s.
I remember seeing posters of him being hung on every tree in the town, and only realized he was also running in the elections.
I cannot say Tunku’s presence in my life had not affected me. It did. But in the indirect way.
And I could say the reason why I finally got into Columbia University in New York City was because of him, or of my brother-in-law, Syed Abdullah.
He had just returned from Washington DC., where he was staying in the keep of the Malaysian ambassador then, Ong Yoke Lin, for the brain surgery he had following an accident when he drove a car in Kedah, for which he had to stay back for six months before he fully recovered and was allowed to return to Malaysia.
Syed Abdullah flew on PanAm.
On one of his trips back to Melaka after the wedding he brought some of the brochures from the airline which I got.
And in it I saw for the first time photos of the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and New York City. I was entranced by what I had seen and I wanted very much to go to America, a country I had not heard of before that.
I was still very young then, and only much later I wanted to pursue my education in film directing.
And when I was in the last semester at the school of mass communication of Institut Teknologi Mara (ITM) in Shahalam where I was majoring in advertising, I applied to few other universities in America which are non-competitive ones, but they all rejected my application, except for Columbia which readily accepted it.
I was surprised by this as it had come much earlier than the rejections I got from the other universities.
I finally landed for the first time at Kennedy Airport in Queens, New York on 27 August, 1978 after stopping over at London for two weeks, where I stayed with friends, one of which was renting a room he said was where Tunku had rented at in the 1940s when he returned to London to resume his studies.
And old Englishman who was supervisor of the building said he knew Tunku and met Tun Razak who often paid Tunku a visit.
If Tunku had not come into my life, I doubt it if I would have got to Columbia to be the first Malaysian to study film at such a university which I would later find to be an Ivy League one.
I therefore became a closeted follower of Tunku and did some research on him to know where he had lodged at in England when he was studying there in 1919, 1920s and the 1940s.
So I was excited when I discovered the three buildings in Little Stukeley and Grange Road in Cambridge and the one at Barkston Gardens in England when I was working on a documentary called ‘Bertahun di Residensi’ or ‘The Residency Years’ for Finas and the Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture or KPKK which was finally shown on TV1 last 7 March.
The buildings are still standing and they probably look the same as they were when Tunku was staying there, except for The Old Rectory in Little Stukeley which was condemned by the local authorities for demolition in 2006.
An English woman called Carmila Payne and her husband managed to convince the authorities to allow them to buy the remains of the building. They then spend a lot of time, money and energy to rebuild it to make it look it was in its earlier design and state.
These three buildings should be declared Malaysia’s heritage buildings in England as they are important buildings.
I also managed to unearth the contents of Tunku’s safe in The Residency which my sister, Rokiah said had not been opened for many decades because they did not have the key or combination to it.
The minister of KPKK, Rais Yatim got an expert to prise open the door of the safe and saw forty-four items belonging to Tunku, which no one had seen before. They have been declared ‘national treasures’ and valued at RM400,000.
There was a sigh of relief at the sight of those personal items, as there were some who feared if Tunku might have left notes in the safe which may not sound pleasing to some.
Yet, despite the safe having been opened, the mysteries of Tunku’s life and his times are still very much intact – the life of someone whom Tunku had described in his taped interview I did with him, to be a person who was a ‘happy and go lucky type of person’ who became the country’s Father of Independence and first Prime Minister of Malaysia.
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