My Childhood Days

During the Second World War my stepfather served in the British Army and was awarded with two medals which he gave to me. After the war he worked in the civil service of the British government as Malaya then was a British colony. Our family shifted out from the grandmother and stayed in some squatters. Later we shifted to the upper floor of a shop. A few years later we shifted to the government quarter.

Kuala Lumpur in the 1950’s was a small town consisted of rows of double storey shop houses with hundreds of squatters, mostly occupied by the Chinese community. In the mid 1950’s there was a big fire and hundreds of squatters were burning for days. The Malays stayed in their villages and the Indians in their own. The Chinese were either in business or worked for the government, The Indians mostly worked in the rubber estates or for the government, The Malay are either farmers or fishermen. That was the social structure of the people before our 1957 Independence. Life was simple and peaceful.

The tallest building was the seven storey Federal House which belonged to the government. Until today it is still there after many renovations over the past five decades. People from out of town would always visit this building whenever in town. Crimes were few because the town folks were under the protection of the Triad (Chinese secret societies). Only the very few rich Chinese had cars. Buses were few too. Mostly people cycled to their work or walked.

I used to cycle to school managed by the church. My classmates are mostly Chinese with a few Indians and Malay.

My school days were tough. I hated going to school because there were things that I did not have. There was no money for new books or uniform and no pocket money for break time. When some books were not available from the second bookstore, I went to school without those books. I had to share my classmates’ books and got punishment from my teachers for not having books. The teachers never knew my problem. Some classmate did not like sharing books. For that, I skipped some classes and spent my time in the library. Only the exercise books were new, and yet I did not enough exercise books for every subject. Most of the time, I did not hand over my homework. My school uniforms were full of stitches with patches as well. After school, I collected bottles from the rubbish bins in my neighborhood. The money from the sale was the only pocket money for school break time.

I spent most of time reading books borrowed from the school library as well as from the British Council Public Library and the United States Information Service Library. Finally, I passed the Cambridge Certificate “O” Level examination, my only paper qualification.