Drowning in the crowd

Entry posted before Raya 2004


Now that Eid is just round the corner, I feel sad. I wish I were back home with the family, making biskut raya and ketupat rendang. I just realize today how much I miss the balik kampung excitement and the raya feeling. I am alone in a strange land and no countryman to celebrate with. The only Muslim compatriot with me celebrates Eid in his own way. Btw, he's a man, what does he know about raya goodies?

When I was little, my family was just ordinary working class people. My father was a teacher just ordinary working class people. My father was a teacher and mum a housewife. Every raya we had a blast just getting things done from hanging up new curtains to vacuuming the whole house and of course, preparing the food. Mum would bake some cakes and thousands of baulu for us and her customers. She didn't have to do that because she was always careful with money and considering that we lived in Alor Setar, things were a lot cheaper. She had a passion for food, be it cooking, baking or just plain eating. So when she started baking baulu for raya and since she made really good ones, people were quite taken with it because normally they would just buy them. Soon after, she received quite a lot of orders from friends, cousins, dad's colleagues and neighbours. From 300 pieces turned to 1,500 turned to 10,000 or more. I was only 9 years old and had been appointed as her assistant. The best job I could ever want at that age. My mission, to find all the burned baulu and eat them. Who was I to argue?

Normally, she would start the day at 6 am just to prepare the ingredients. By 7 am, the Moulinex was up and running battering the eggs, sugar and flour for the mixture. The dapur minyak was ready and the sabut kelapa burning incessantly on a big aluminium plate waiting for the first batch. She put some sand in the periuk to avoid the acuan from getting direct heat from the dapur minyak. Then she would cover the periuk with the sabut so that the baulu were cooked thoroughly from the top to the bottom.

Every few minutes she would check to make sure they were not burned because if they did, then they'd be handed to me for further inspection. Sometimes she let me have the pretty ones as well. When they were nicely browned, she took them out and waited for them to cool before packing them away. Being a mum, she just knew that I had my eyes on them. For me, a slightly warm baulu was the best baulu you can ever eat. By 1 pm, she'd be ready to fold up for the day and if she made more than 1,000 pieces, it was considered a successful day. All this was not for money, but she did it because she didn't know how to say No when people asked her and because she got the pleasure of seeing people faces lighten up. She charged just RM10 for 100 pieces and that was still cheap considering the efforts, time and energy she put in. From 6 am till 1 pm just for a pitiance!

As I got older, she would continue making them and I was allowed to help with the baking process as well. It's kind of delicate because you just have to know the right timing since you can't have the bottom part of the baulu burned and the top part paled. It doesn't go that way. They have to balance to get a perfect baulu.

Did I mention she had a great passion for food? Oh, I did. Well, it didn't stop with the baulu. She went out of her way to learn new things. She would sign up for cooking classes just about anywhere and because she didn't drive, my father was her chauffeur. This was in the 80s, there was no Chef Wan to celoteh in the box at the luxury of one own home. She learned about baking delicious-looking cakes that could only be found in a posh bakery in KL. She also learned to cook asparagus in a lot of different ways when the word asparagus still sounds a bit foreign to many. When she heard there were some cooking competitions, she would gladly join in. Sometimes she won something, sometimes she didn't. It didn't matter to her.

It was the learning that matters. I guess she passed on her passion to us, my sister and I. She would come home and experiment with her new found toy of the day and her enthusiasm rubbed on us. By the age of sixteen, I sold my almost-perfect Kek Batik (the one with biskut marie and choc fudge) to my first customer. This was the day when Kek Batik was not one of the crazed raya goodies like today. And when I was seventeen, she handed over the raya baulu business to me with extra added guarantee that I could keep all the money to myself. What joy! If I had my way I would have raise the price, yet she still charged them the same. She was slowing down. She had enough. Time to move on and pass down her knowledge to the daughters.

From then on, we put our foot down and conquer the territory, with her looking over our backs. All the odd baking trays she bought years ago and the thick recipe books were now a shared asset. Every raya we went crazy with the baking and ended up with 20 odd different cookies and at least 6 types of cakes to suit everyone's taste. It wasn't greed or lust or simply nafsu but it was the passion. Her passion had become ours. Her recipes had become our little secret. Raya was the time of the year we waited in anticipation, to showcase our abilities and to make her proud. As Kedahans, hypothetically we should only know ketupat palas. But no, mum made us learn to make the ketupat nasi the authentic Johorian way. So we had the best of everything. These were for us.

Sadly, yesterdays were just yesterdays. Since mum left us, we lost our touch. The passion was buried with her. Raya is just another day to get over with. We used work as an excuse for lack of goodies. The things we used to DIY now came in plastic tupperwares. We make do with the mass production of manufactured biskut raya that were usually left in its sorry state. They're for the guests and I myself certainly do not want to gorge on them. Baulu, I avoided at all cost. Haven't had one since I was 21.

Now with me being away in a foreign land, my sister would have a tough time to resurrect the old raya tradition. I wish I can go to her. I wish she can catch hold of my hands so I will not drown any deeper. I wish I can hold on tight to her. I wish for laughter and noisy raya morning. I wish for a calm and peaceful raya prayer. I wish to hand out duit raya personally and see the nephews and nieces shriek with happiness. I wish for a ketupat. I wish for mum.