Distressing News from a Distant Past

During my very early teaching career, I used to cater my evening meals from an elderly lady. At dinner, there would be five of us  -  four young ladies and me. The ladies had just graduated from teacher training, too. We did things together after dinner. We would go for walks, shopping or to the cinema.

I was rather keen on one of the ladies. I was too shy, then, to date her alone, so five of us continued going out together after dinner. We lost total contact after I left for further specialist teacher-training.

Recently, I made contact with a friend on Facebook. I knew him when I was at that early teaching post. We haven't met for nearly half a century. We started to reminisce about the past. I then asked him about that particular lady I was keen on.

It seemed she fell deeply in love with a marketing executive, had a child with him and then he ditched her. Eventually, it seemed, she died of heartbreak. She passed away when she was very young, then.

I came away from the meeting, feeling rather dreadful and sad. I could not help but shed a few tears. What if I had been brave enough to date her alone?

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I’m just as blue as the sky

Since love is gone,

Can’t pull myself together

Guess I’ll hang my tears out to dry.

Sammy Cahn

A Bijou Malay Hut

After I left teaching to join a British publisher, I was posted to a north-eastern, estuarine, state capital of my country. I hunted for accommodation to rent and managed to find a bijou Malay hut on stilts on a beach, a few kilometres from the city.

The small house was in a coconut grove with huge Casuarina trees lining its sea front. There were a couple of cashew nut trees in the compound, too. There was electricity supply but water was from a well beside it and there was an outhouse toilet at one corner of the grove. 

I enjoyed the pounding of waves on the seashore and the rustling of the fronds of the coconut palms and leaves of the trees by strong winds. Occasionally, there would be torrential rain and I would enjoy the rat-a-tat-tat of the raindrops on the attap roof. I would beach-comb, or jog on the beach after work. I found the house most comfortable and tranquil.

However, a few weeks later, when I dropped in for coffee at the village coffee shop one evening, a Malay man started a conversation with me. He eventually said that I was being rather brave staying alone at that house. He said it had been unoccupied for years except for a few visits annually by a bomoh  -  a shaman  -  who held seances or healing sessions there. It was reputed that he owned a pelesit – a spirit  -  in the body of a grasshopper or cricket.

I came away from the coffee shop feeling quite perturbed with that news. The following morning, I quickly looked for a house to rent in the city and I found a single-storey corner house on a new block of terraced houses. I then moved out of the quaint little Malay house, forfeiting the two-month rent deposit.

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Where could one settle more pleasantly than [in] one's home?
Cicero