Clan meeting at Bukit Temensu.

21.5.2008.

I shall refer to it as the "clan" meeting. Pa' Cu Kamil wrote to me about this meeting organized by him for Sunday, 1st. June at Bukit Temensu. Just now I've written a reply which I'll post tomorrow, in which I apologise because on that day and at the same time there would be 2 weddings that I can't avoid attending. However I said I'll be more than glad to attend the next such gathering that he arranges.

Last year I attended a similiar gathering arranged by Zainab Abdul Rahman and her "commitee". About 150 people came, made up of descendents of Haji Muhammad Nor Abdullah, from Pagar Ruyung. That was where I also met my neighbour in Seremban, Cik Gu Satar, who to my surprise is my waris from the Rembau line, where I'm from the Pilah line, on my maternal grandfather's side. Small world.

This reunion is a good idea, and has been done many times, as we have read in the papers. But someone committed has to initiate it. The problem with the Malays is that we don't carry our family name, which would make it much, much easier to trace our relatives.

In the case of Zainab and her "committee", I know their tireless efforts over many,many months eventually succeeded in making that reunion happen in KL. Now Pa' Cu Kamil is attempting the same thing, this time involving the Haji Majid line, which for me is on my maternal grandmother's side. Good for him ! My late grandmother, Hajjah Tiamin Abdul Majid, my mother's mother, was the younger sister of "Wan Aji", Pa' Cu Kamil's late mother. That makes him my mother's first cousin. 

Through the years the descendents have married out of Kuala Pilah, and eventually we have all got our own immediate families and lost contact with our distant kin. The only time we would meet would be when there were family members' weddings, happy times, or when there was a death in the family, a not so happy one. 

Even these got to be more and more selective, not because of deliberate distancing, but rather because of loss of contact, or plain oversight because of infrequency of meeting. Even if Pa' Cu Kamil manages to get hold of just two generations , the number would be large. You see, on my mother's side alone there are four surviving siblings with a total of 36 children. From my mother there are already 17 grandchildren. I can't even guess the numbers from the rest of the clan. It would be interesting to see the wide spectrum of professions represented in the clan.

 Many members of the clan, and later their children, have gone on to universities both local and abroad. Of-hand I know there is already a High Court Judge, several lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, University lecturers,Civil Service Officers, Police and Army Officers, and the odd politician. And the spouses.

The clan has its fair share of exotic marriages - to other races, to royalty, to widows and widowers. I have come across second cousins, and lost them again as time went by. I know of Siti when I used to play with Mat Teleng when in primary school, but only spoke to her when we met and introduced each other at university. After graduation we lost contact until now. Shafie, her elder brother, I also knew only at university, and similiarly lost contact afterwards. Sharif I first met at work in Jalan Maktab. Then we lost contact because I moved, and he went to study in the US. But after that and until this day we have kept in touch. It would be interesting if Pa' Cu Kamil could produce a directory of the clan. In these days of the internet, it would be much easier to keep in touch with each other, introduce new members of the family, and keep track of everyone. In fact we ought to.

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