My grandmother’s field notes

Here are my grandmother’s fieldnotes — crude conglomerations of wizened tales constructed from folklore and the time she spent sprinting between dark alleys amidst the whirs of Japanese planes looming on the horizon. Here are her entries — stories told under amber glows emanating from antique oil lamps. Here is her logbook — containing records that epitomize the silence between each round of projectiles launching from ugly cavalries, bolides pelting into forts and naval bases resting along the Malaccan Straits. She recites these stories tirelessly for the fear that her history would fade into nothingness and disappear over the ambit where many quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore rest.

Providence had dealt my grandmother’s family a winning hand. As they, hungered and hollowcheeked, peeled open the scabs, picked at the hangnails and pulled open the lesions to finally witness the birth of a new nation. However, pestilence had sequestered into the cave of my grandmother’s chest, leaving ulcers and cavities in its wake. It is now simpler for her to scorn than accept, to sharpen her tongue and project bullets of acrimony. While the world moved on, she stood transfixed.

At a towering height of 5’ 2”, and the young age of 78, you would see her charging down the buzzing streets of Penang on her motorcycle, weaving in and out of congested lanes while her trigger happy fingers rested on the horn. The scowl she plasters on her face incites fear in street vendors who attempt to upsell her, family members who cross her, and the city council members who have tried, and failed, to tame her shrubbery which has overflown to the vicinal roads. In fact, her disordered garden has no boundaries — wild ferns creeping up the walls and mango tree branches growing outward and away from the old-fashioned corner terrace.

Yet, her bitter black bile becomes detoxified in the evergreen. She shares her stories as I watch her tend to her plants laboriously: snipping yellowed leaves from monsteras and climbing to the canopies of her rambutan trees, relentlessly sawing branches off with her weathered hands. My grandmother thrives in her garden — swallowed by greenery and flanked by unkempt vines. For these precious hours, the iron-fisted matriarch transforms into a gentle giant within the confines of her haven.

My most stark memory of her was when she was crouched over a patch of weeds, beads of sweat lining her forehead on a Summer’s day. While my feet padded across warm blades of grass, she began beckoning me forth with child-like excitement.

“See, see, the leaves close when you touch it.” There was vulnerability in her soft gaze, the mimosa pudica’s mechanisms splintering through the tough facade of a woman who has seen war. I think of her as a child: scurrying for shelter, cocooned by darkness and blind faith as boulders and rubble from towering edifices rain down on her.

This garden — where roosters and cats seek shade, where birds and bats come to feast, where frogs and newts reside — becomes an ecosystem, protected from the toils of war and rough summer droughts.

This garden has morphed into a reflection of her — stubborn and tenacious, yet nurturing and tender. If you look close enough, you’d see that she has laid her stories bare in this undergrowth, upon these laurel-shaped branches for us to see. She has spread them amongst the bougainvilleas, cocooned with entropy, and plastered them on the custard apple trees whose branches have run amok, much to the disdain of the city council.

These are stories written with words that have bled her dry, skinned her; words that dissected her soul and teared at her nape. These are the stories that have molded me, as I adopt the role of an observer peeking through a looking glass. I am nothing but her mouthpiece, her legacy and scribe.