I heard recently he wasn't well - a minor stroke or something like that. So when he turned up at Nosa's wedding reception Saturday, I walked up to him and welcomed him with a fond embrace, and let me tell you, that's not something I do easily. But "fond" is not feigned here. We go back 63 years, Lobai and I.
When dad moved to Tg. Malim to take up that teaching job at S.I.T.C. (those days the English acronyms were preferred, thus "UMNO" was born) Lobai came along with us. That was 1951. We all took the train from Seremban, my first "sooty" ride. KTM had coal-burning locomotive engines then, and because of the open windows (where got air-con, ma !) it was sooty, and the good rule was don't wear white shirts.
As soon as we moved into the assigned single-storey brick bungalow (wow, "bungalow"!), dad sent Lobai to buy a kettle to make some tea. I remember he cycled to the shop, but can't remember where he got the bicycle from. It must have been from Hj. Hassan, the new neighbour in front of the "Rumah Empat". Because there were 4 similiar bungalows ( wow, "bungalows"!) clustered together, it was rumah empat, like "Rumah Enam" the other end of the S.I.T.C. campus with 6 houses. There's another story about this Rumah Enam, but that can wait.
Lobai didn't stay with us long. But he stayed long enough to help dad set up their first make-shift developing room for the photography that dad took up. That brought in some money, with the college students eager to send home pictures of their stay. Dad later produced home-made Raya greetings with the messages drawn on white manila cards and the photo of the sender set around the handdrawn letterings, all done by dad quite nicely. It was all black-and-white,still.
Lobai was dad's student at Sekolah Melayu Kuala Pilah, right up to Std. 6. That was it, then. If you didn't go further up the studentship, you end up in the uniformed services, or became a clerk or a "normal-trained" Malay school teacher somewhere in Johol or Kuala Klawang. So he came to Tg. Malim. He was the first. Later there was Pak Cik Haris and Pak Cik Chup. That I'll relate later.
I don't know when exactly he left us. I never saw him again until he retired from the army, which was where he went. He got married and all that but I don't know if dad went or was invited. But he looked the way I remember him in Tg. Malim. He looked remarkably the same at Nosa's function, and said "I'm 80" when I asked. Only he had not been well recently. But 80 is still remarkable.
When dad died, Lobai was with me in the grave where he held one side of dad's shroud, me the the foot-side. When I almost lost my grip as we lowered the shroud, Lobai chided me. Lowering apak into the "liang lahad" was Lobai's last service to dad, his old teacher and mentor.
It was a fond embrace indeed, Saturday at Nosa's reception.
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