Just an Individual of a Species
Chapter 1
Spice Heritage
For about nine months I floated in the dark and when I saw the light and breathed the air, I cried. It must have all began around the 1st of November 1936 I guess that one of the 50 – 300 million of my dad’s virile sperm found my mother’s fully developed descending ova that resulted in the conceptualisation of their 6th child. On the 31st July 1937 I was delivered by a midwife, Tome Arshad, at No. 27 Merican Road, Penang. She wrapped the severed umbilical cord and the expelled placenta bathed in blood, amniotic and allantoic fluids, in banana leaf and rags, and quickly buried them in the soil behind the house. Dr Babjee Ahmad and Khatum Mastan decided to bless their sixth child with the name Ahmad Mustaffa (The choice of God). As my dad was busy with work in Kedah, the midwife registered my birth with the Registrar of Births on the 3rd, August 1937, unfortunately leaving the Child Name’s column blank. Thus officially I had no legal name till the 17th November 1949 when my father had to make a sworn declaration in front of the Magistrate in Sungei Petani and for some reason again before Mr R. Dorai Raju, the Commissioner for Oaths, Supreme Court of Penang on the 31st July 1962 to confirm that the child born at Merican Road was Ahmad Mustaffa. In addition to the blank left in the name column, the midwife reported my mum’s and dad’s race as Bengali. The Malays, at least in Penang refer to Sikhs as Bengalis but for sure my grandparents were not Sikhs. I don’t blame the midwife for the assumption as my parent’s features were more of
02
An Autobiography of Ahmad Mustaffa Babjee
