After May

My dream girl (Mabel) is also known as May in Chinese. Two years after my dream disappeared, my stepsisters (Doris and Nancy) introduced their colleague to me. They were sale persons selling textiles. I got involved with her. We had an intimate relationship after a few months. Later she left her work and went back to her hometown in Penang for the Chinese Lunar New Year festival.

That was 1969, the general election year in which the Alliance Party lost control of the Federal government. It was May 13. There were clashes between the Chinese and the Malay in Kuala Lumpur whereby hundreds were either dead or seriously wounded, mostly the Chinese. The Chinese city folks with the help of their secret societies fought back the advancing rural Malay. Rumor was that the army regulars minus their uniform were backing the Malay. All these fighting occurred north of the city bordering the urban Malay areas. I lived in the central. At night I saw the burning of houses in the distance, and there was curfew. I saw Malay soldiers patrolling the streets in the day. Most people ran out of food after a week. Three weeks later there were clashes between the Indian and the Malay further north of the city. After two months of curfew, the situation was calm but then things had changed in the country. A line had been drawn between the races.

1969 was also the turning point of my life. A year earlier I went to Penang to check out a project and met her family. I worked as a tender estimator in an established local electrical contracting company. In March, she and her parents came to look for me. They talked about marrying her daughter. I rented a room and we lived together without any marriage ceremony. I did not have that kind of money and was not prepared for it as I had resigned after Chinese New Year. I was looking a job. A month later the May 13 incident happened. We had to live with whatever I had. For the next two months it was porridge and biscuits to keep going.

The political situation was back to normal, and I got a job as a sale clerk in an Australian switchboard manufacturing factory in Petaling Jaya. Soon we shifted to another place in Jalan Imbi. My eldest daughter Lilian was born in 1970. A year later we shifted again to a nearby three storey apartment as the landowner had sold the land to develop a shopping mall. I was still renting a room. I had changed job by then. I was a salesman selling industrial control switches for a Singaporean company dealing with mechanical and combustion equipments. My second daughter Irene who is now an Australian citizen was born in 1972. A year later, I changed job. I was sales supervisor in a European firm selling switchgears and electric motors. Two years later I left to be on my own.

By that time we moved house twice. Our relationship came to a turning point. It was not her fault but mine. Over the years I realized what I had was not what I wanted. I had lived with it but for how long it can last. It was responsibility rather than love. We never develop a mutual understanding between us. We had not given each other enough time to consider being together. Finally I decided to let it be. Our initial relationship was merely a physical need. Her parents indirectly pushed us into the situation.

I started my own business and the family moved to Penang. I started a small machining workshop jointly with her family. We produced brass items for the electrical installation industry. Our venture did not last long, and I operated on my own. My youngest daughter Jane was born in 1976. I traveled between Penang and Kuala Lumpur for the business. Business was never easy due to cash flow problem.

Eventually in 1981 I gave up the business and went into electrical contracting business. By then I had another family in Kuala Lumpur. My business was able to sustain two families with comfort. I was too busy with my work and seldom went back to Penang but the three daughters were always in my mind.

In 1985 there was economic downturn in this country. Ever since the introduction of New Economic Policy in the early 1970’s the construction industry was re-structure in favor of the ethnic Malay. I lost everything and went broke. My other family in Kuala Lumpur helped me out.

By 1991 my income was substantial and I moved my family in Penang to Kuala Lumpur.