raya (ii)
nothing feels different for raya this year. the air feels just as empty. as meaningless.
is it just me? this year, i was sick. last year, hmm i can't recall my raya last year. maybe i was sick too. the year before, i had to work, and i was sooo mad about that. kerja ngan muslim company pulak tu. i was the only one manning the office, because my boss said i don't have a family so why would it matter to me. sheeeeshhh...
the raya years before that were full of nothings, too.
i remember my first raya away. i was almost a year into living in the US, and spring season was in bloom. (this was sooo long ago that raya was in late march.) the weather was amazingly beautiful that the community decided to pray eid outside. so there we were, the bunch of us, praying on a wide open field. a different experience, i'll say.
pengalaman berhariraya di perantauan sememangnya jauh berbeda. but what few of us malaysians around did manage to make do. there're always open houses, often late into syawal, because we were all students and weekends were the only time we had to have, and go to, open houses.
but the raya became more and more uneventful for me. i remember one raya night i kalamazoo, we had absolutely nothing going on that we decided to celebrate by playing snooker and billiards all night long. and we got back so late, and slept so late, we missed the eid prayer.
it's not just because i'm away from home, though that's one reason. but being away for so long took every grain and depth and breadth and height of raya joy out of me. i remember my first raya back home, after spending a number of raya in a faraway world, and i felt...gosh, i felt...
nothing. it felt just like every other empty day.
and not just raya. ramadan feels empty, too.
it's so sad, coz i used to loooove bulan puasa, and whole routine that comes with it: the sahur and terawih and buka puasa and qur'an. i used to khatam qur'an every ramadan. (this year, i didn't even touch it... *sighhh*)
my family, every day of puasa, had this tradition of having turns at our favorite dishes. a day would be my dad's turn, and we'd have a treat of his favorite food - usually it's roti canai - and we'd have that for buka puasa. next day would my mom's turn, and then my brothers and sisters and i each would have our own day, and the rotation continued. it's always something different everyday, always something different to look forward to.
when we were kids, raya means new shoes. my parents would always always always bring us shopping for raya shoes. i can't recall any other days of the year that we'd go buying shoes, but there's always one day during ramadan when we'd all go scouring for whatever particular shoes we'd love to have. every other day of the year, no shoe shopping. for raya? holy crap, pick whatever you want!
and when we were kids, every year for raya my siblings and i would join the neighborhood's marhaban group - kinda like the carol group, going around to people's houses and sing? there were a number of us, all the kampung kids, some 30-40 of us, and we'd have singing practice every nights after terawih. and then when raya came we'd go to houses after houses from morning till evening and sing and eat and sing and eat, and this went on for the first 3-4 raya days.
the catch? the hosts would always give money, a little something for us kids, and afterthe 3-4 days were over we'd gather and our adult supervisors would count the money and each of us would get our fair share. and, holy moly, did we get a lot! my siblings and i were sooo into it that for a number of years we didn't even go to our grandparents' place on the first raya day and didn't even get to meet our many aunts and uncles and a hundred cousins. we loved the experience, loved the attention, loved the trek going from houses to faraway houses, and obviously loved to money too.
and i wasn't the eldest in the group but near to being one, but for some reason i became an unofficial leader. after the singing and the complimentary raya dishes and kuih raya yang pelbagai, we ended our visit with a doa, and i was always the one doing the doa. me, and my sister dina, too. and for that, dina and i got a little extra money. weeeeee!!
when i get a bit older, i joined the older guys' marhaban group. (the kids in the kids group were all grown up then and the unit was disbanded.) this group was a bunch of highschool guys from our neighborhood, some twenty of us. i was the youngest in the group, and certainly the one with the littlest voice and highest pitch. so i got bullied into being the lead vocal for the marhaban group.
the routine was the same: practice every night, and when raya came we'd visit houses, and then, of course, counting the money. the fun was the same. the guys, though older, were sporting and hilarious and were kind enough to acccept me into their circle. and being the lead vocal was sooo much fun, even though i was at the point of shedding my voice and my adolescent vocalchords were straining.
and i discovered that i had a fan. there was a pakcik who was impressed with me and every year when we went to his house he always asked that i sing and do the doa. one year, the group went to his place again, and i was very much looking forward to watching him beam and smile and nod at me. but i couldn't locate him around. so i led the group into a couple of songs, my eyes kept scanning around looking for him. then after the singing, we had a little tahlil and yasin, and that's when it hit me that he had died. i shed a quiet tear during the yasin.
anyway... moving along... one of my responsibilities during raya night, ever since my siblings and i learned to mengayam the ketupat (sorry for the minglish), was to cook a whole big-ass load of ketupat. and i just looved doing it. there was a hot burning fireplace set up at the back of the house, and it's all my area and my area only and nobody else must intrude. ketupat, if you must know, takes hours to cook, and if you have a humungus amount of them, then you'll have to attend to it all night long. but i didn't mind it much, not at all, coz when everybody tries my ketupat then i get to say hey i cook them delisious big things and that's my contribution. of course, ketupat's my number one favorite raya food, and i always set aside an armful of them just for me don't nobody touch them coz they're mine mine mine.
(nowadays, since i haven't been back home much, which is a huge chunk of a decade already, there's nobody at my parent's place to do the ketupat. every year i'd call home and ask who's preparing the ketupat and my mom would say she's waiting for me to do it coz nobody else wants to. my sister confided that our mom has the daun kelapa ready every year, just waiting for me, and every year it rotted away unused.)
raya, of course, also means duit raya. kaa-chingggg!!! duit raya from marhaban, score! duit raya from grandparents, aunts, uncles, et al, - score!! then the duit raya from scavenging neighborhood houses and knocking on strangers' doors and dropping into people's houses uninvited. score scoreee!!! whooowee, we were mad little kids.
and, of course, my siblings and i knew the routine would be the same when other unfamiliar and uninvited kids came hollering and knocking at our doors. sometimes we let them in, but only our parents are home. otherwise, whenever we hear tiny voices shouting "ASSALAMUALAIKOOOOOOMMMMMM!!" at our gates, my siblings and i would quickly scamper and turn off the tv and hide behind the closed curtains, sneaking a peek at them kids and giggle watching their astonished faces coz they surely knew somebody was home and saw us running away.
that was like a sport for us, every raya. was it cruel? sure. was it funny? whaa-ha-haa you betcha!
oh how i missed those years.
is it just me? this year, i was sick. last year, hmm i can't recall my raya last year. maybe i was sick too. the year before, i had to work, and i was sooo mad about that. kerja ngan muslim company pulak tu. i was the only one manning the office, because my boss said i don't have a family so why would it matter to me. sheeeeshhh...
the raya years before that were full of nothings, too.
i remember my first raya away. i was almost a year into living in the US, and spring season was in bloom. (this was sooo long ago that raya was in late march.) the weather was amazingly beautiful that the community decided to pray eid outside. so there we were, the bunch of us, praying on a wide open field. a different experience, i'll say.
pengalaman berhariraya di perantauan sememangnya jauh berbeda. but what few of us malaysians around did manage to make do. there're always open houses, often late into syawal, because we were all students and weekends were the only time we had to have, and go to, open houses.
but the raya became more and more uneventful for me. i remember one raya night i kalamazoo, we had absolutely nothing going on that we decided to celebrate by playing snooker and billiards all night long. and we got back so late, and slept so late, we missed the eid prayer.
it's not just because i'm away from home, though that's one reason. but being away for so long took every grain and depth and breadth and height of raya joy out of me. i remember my first raya back home, after spending a number of raya in a faraway world, and i felt...gosh, i felt...
nothing. it felt just like every other empty day.
and not just raya. ramadan feels empty, too.
it's so sad, coz i used to loooove bulan puasa, and whole routine that comes with it: the sahur and terawih and buka puasa and qur'an. i used to khatam qur'an every ramadan. (this year, i didn't even touch it... *sighhh*)
my family, every day of puasa, had this tradition of having turns at our favorite dishes. a day would be my dad's turn, and we'd have a treat of his favorite food - usually it's roti canai - and we'd have that for buka puasa. next day would my mom's turn, and then my brothers and sisters and i each would have our own day, and the rotation continued. it's always something different everyday, always something different to look forward to.
when we were kids, raya means new shoes. my parents would always always always bring us shopping for raya shoes. i can't recall any other days of the year that we'd go buying shoes, but there's always one day during ramadan when we'd all go scouring for whatever particular shoes we'd love to have. every other day of the year, no shoe shopping. for raya? holy crap, pick whatever you want!
and when we were kids, every year for raya my siblings and i would join the neighborhood's marhaban group - kinda like the carol group, going around to people's houses and sing? there were a number of us, all the kampung kids, some 30-40 of us, and we'd have singing practice every nights after terawih. and then when raya came we'd go to houses after houses from morning till evening and sing and eat and sing and eat, and this went on for the first 3-4 raya days.
the catch? the hosts would always give money, a little something for us kids, and afterthe 3-4 days were over we'd gather and our adult supervisors would count the money and each of us would get our fair share. and, holy moly, did we get a lot! my siblings and i were sooo into it that for a number of years we didn't even go to our grandparents' place on the first raya day and didn't even get to meet our many aunts and uncles and a hundred cousins. we loved the experience, loved the attention, loved the trek going from houses to faraway houses, and obviously loved to money too.
and i wasn't the eldest in the group but near to being one, but for some reason i became an unofficial leader. after the singing and the complimentary raya dishes and kuih raya yang pelbagai, we ended our visit with a doa, and i was always the one doing the doa. me, and my sister dina, too. and for that, dina and i got a little extra money. weeeeee!!
when i get a bit older, i joined the older guys' marhaban group. (the kids in the kids group were all grown up then and the unit was disbanded.) this group was a bunch of highschool guys from our neighborhood, some twenty of us. i was the youngest in the group, and certainly the one with the littlest voice and highest pitch. so i got bullied into being the lead vocal for the marhaban group.
the routine was the same: practice every night, and when raya came we'd visit houses, and then, of course, counting the money. the fun was the same. the guys, though older, were sporting and hilarious and were kind enough to acccept me into their circle. and being the lead vocal was sooo much fun, even though i was at the point of shedding my voice and my adolescent vocalchords were straining.
and i discovered that i had a fan. there was a pakcik who was impressed with me and every year when we went to his house he always asked that i sing and do the doa. one year, the group went to his place again, and i was very much looking forward to watching him beam and smile and nod at me. but i couldn't locate him around. so i led the group into a couple of songs, my eyes kept scanning around looking for him. then after the singing, we had a little tahlil and yasin, and that's when it hit me that he had died. i shed a quiet tear during the yasin.
anyway... moving along... one of my responsibilities during raya night, ever since my siblings and i learned to mengayam the ketupat (sorry for the minglish), was to cook a whole big-ass load of ketupat. and i just looved doing it. there was a hot burning fireplace set up at the back of the house, and it's all my area and my area only and nobody else must intrude. ketupat, if you must know, takes hours to cook, and if you have a humungus amount of them, then you'll have to attend to it all night long. but i didn't mind it much, not at all, coz when everybody tries my ketupat then i get to say hey i cook them delisious big things and that's my contribution. of course, ketupat's my number one favorite raya food, and i always set aside an armful of them just for me don't nobody touch them coz they're mine mine mine.
(nowadays, since i haven't been back home much, which is a huge chunk of a decade already, there's nobody at my parent's place to do the ketupat. every year i'd call home and ask who's preparing the ketupat and my mom would say she's waiting for me to do it coz nobody else wants to. my sister confided that our mom has the daun kelapa ready every year, just waiting for me, and every year it rotted away unused.)
raya, of course, also means duit raya. kaa-chingggg!!! duit raya from marhaban, score! duit raya from grandparents, aunts, uncles, et al, - score!! then the duit raya from scavenging neighborhood houses and knocking on strangers' doors and dropping into people's houses uninvited. score scoreee!!! whooowee, we were mad little kids.
and, of course, my siblings and i knew the routine would be the same when other unfamiliar and uninvited kids came hollering and knocking at our doors. sometimes we let them in, but only our parents are home. otherwise, whenever we hear tiny voices shouting "ASSALAMUALAIKOOOOOOMMMMMM!!" at our gates, my siblings and i would quickly scamper and turn off the tv and hide behind the closed curtains, sneaking a peek at them kids and giggle watching their astonished faces coz they surely knew somebody was home and saw us running away.
that was like a sport for us, every raya. was it cruel? sure. was it funny? whaa-ha-haa you betcha!
oh how i missed those years.
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