My Root

My father passed away when I was four. He was forty five and my mother was twenty four when I was born. That was before the end of the Second World War. I was ten when I asked my mother about my father. He was a married man with one daughter and three sons. My mother was his mistress while he also had another mistress.

It was war time; and life was very much complicated. Malaya then a British colony came under the Japanese occupation. After the war, the two sons were executed by the Communist guerrilla for working with the enemy. They both died young.

When I was in my teens, I visited the daughter (Lucy), the son (Simon) and my father's wife. My sister Lucy (almost the same age as my mother) and her husband with two sons (Patrick and Columbus) and daughter (Helen) migrated to Australia soon after the May 13 racial incident in Malaysia. The last time I met my sister was in 1992. She came back to visit her mother's grave. She told me they stayed in Melbourne and gave me her address which I misplaced. One son is a doctor and the other an engineer.

Her mother passed away before the family migrated. She worked as a prison warden, and I visited her a few times.

Occasionally I went to my brother Simon to pick up some pocket money. He worked as a stockbroker. Later he worked in Singapore as a liquor sale person. He died there at the age of forty five.

My father and the family were Catholic while I am a Buddhist.