Melancholy

Watching the sepia-tinged After Our Exile brought about a sense of melancholy in me. Surprisingly set in (early 90s?) Malaysia, I watched with amusement the two Hong Kong leads sparred in accented Cantonese that I grew up with.

The setting is working class-typical; single-storey terrace house in a tired-looking housing estate, the corner unit with sagging fence and overgrown weeds, rusty road signs, dilapidated backyard with zinc roofing and the ubiquitous yellow bas sekolah, non air-conditioned of course. Everything was so reminiscent of my childhood home in Semenyih that I was feeling a bit homesick.

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So much has changed over the years.. The boy I snogged when I was 3 is now often elbow-deep in machine grease and can hardly recognise me.. The bougainvilla that mum so lovingly tended has been chopped down to accommodate another set of shiny wheels.. The garden that was once filled with pots of desert roses is unrecognisable now.. The town even has a TESCO now.. The prodigal cousin that returned home after a stint in behind bars is selling durians now.. I wonder if the townspeople has ever looked at us and mused about the family where "all their daughters has gone off to study in Singapore"?

Happy Merdeka; sorry I was one-day late. Better late than never eh..