Lurking behind the Fog

Finally, I'm back. In case everyone's wondering, I'm talking about the AUN Educational Forum and Young Speakers' Contest held on the 20th to 27th of May 2008. I tell you it was a wonderful experience. I made new friends, had a great time, eat good food, yada-yada-yada...

Anyway, can't get carried away writing about that experience when I still have something else to do. I'll probably write about it in the near future, orderly this time.

Anyway, I'm here to share with you something that binds us people of ASEAN-our ridiculously scary ghost stories. Yeah, I know. We share stories of ghosts coming out at night, accompanied by the sweet smell of jasmine and appearing in toilets or the streetside, or even in your bedroom. The Malaysians have their Pontianak, the Indonesians their Sundal Bolong, the Filipinos their Aswang and so forth.
Of course, these stories have such an effect on our mind compared to the Westerners, probably because of the affinity of the peoples of Southeast Asia with the mystic and our ghosts being powerful in nature, compared to the cutboard cliches of Western spooks. Just thinking about this topic would make anyone sully their trousers.

Not that I have been through it or anything...

Anyway, moving on. Here's an example of a story that is very famous in Malaysia. The names may change according to place, but the formula is pretty much the same.

Harun cursed as he stared at his watch. It's already 11.30. 'I'm late,' he said to himself. He was too busy playing Playstation 2 at his friend's house that he didn't notice the time.
'My dad is so going to kill me.' He stood at the bus stop, a dilapidated one, where every part of it is covered with rust. He didn't like the look of it, especially with the sinister full moon shining above them. He half-expected a werewolf to jump out of nowhere, but shuddered to think what would happen next.
Of course, he didn't have a choice and walked towards the bus stop. Harun stared at his watch. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes...but still, no bus in sight.
He almost gave up and pondered calling his dad when he saw a light glimmered from afar. He got to his feet. It came closer, to bus, slowly, bus moving closer and closer.
As the bus stopped in front of him, he immediately hopped in. He couldn't believe his luck! He probably got the last bus home. Of course, there are some things that concerned him as he took his seat. One, where is the bus conductor? Two, where is the driver? Three, why is the bus moving by itself?
He cried out, but then remembered something. He has heard of this story before. 'Yes,' he thought, laughing faintly. 'The driver and the conductor are behind this bus, pushing it. Well, I'd better go see what's going on.' He ran to the back, hoping to see two men pushing the bus. He saw nothing. There was no one pushing the bus, yet it moves by itself.
Harun knew he was in trouble, and ran towards the door. To his dismay, the door was shut. The windows were shut. Harun realised, as he slumped onto a chair, that he was going be on that ride for a very long time...

Phew! Finally I'm done with this. Now I'll definitely sleep with my night lights and radio on.

The Trickster

Hello. Me again. I haven't been writing in for over a month now, so I have to work doubly hard to make sure this project works (stupid exams!) Anyway, I'm going to post some stories regarding Malaysian mythology, then I'll move on to my next section.

My plan is to write a weekly or bi-weekly serial about an amateur detective on this blog, in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe and Veronica Mars. I'm still trying to put some meat on this, so it'll not be on here any time soon. I'm hoping that some of you people out there should start writing your own weekly serials. Who knows, somewhere in Hollywood, some down-and-out director might steal our stories and make it his own, and earn millions of dollars while we bitch about it on our blogs.

Sorry, did I get carried away again? Here's a tale about Sang Kancil the mousedeer, a trickster character in Malaysian and Indonesian mythology, whose role is similar to that of Sun Wukong of the Chinese and Juan Tamad in Philippine lore.

One day, Kancil wandered around the forest and accidentally offended the elephant (how he offended the elephant we do not know), and so the elephant feels obligated to crush the little critter like scrambled eggs.
'I'm going to crush you,' said the elephant, who only says what the narrator tells him to.
'Oh, dear. Why do you wish to destroy God's beautiful creation such as little ol' me?' answered the Kancil. He's scared, but since he's the hero of this story, he's not supposed to show it. Instead, he thought of an idea. 'Tell you what. Why don't we play a game? Let's see who's tail is stronger, yours or mine?'
The elephant accepted, of course, since he has a long tail, and the Kancil barely has one. 'Fine, I'll accept your challenge. But if you lose, I get to crush you.'
The Kancil agreed, but lamented the violent nature of the grey beast and his limited vocabulary. He took a long piece of rope (where he got the rope was not mentioned, probably a nearby village) and tied it to the elephant's tail. Then he ran all the way to the beach, bringing with him the rope (don't ask me for details, I'm just the penglipur lara) and offended the whale. The whale also felt obligated to crush the Kancil, only he used harsher language than the elephant.
Again, the Kancil challenged the whale to the contest, and tied the rope to the whale's tail. Feeling a strong tug at the other end, the elephant and the whale started pulling the rope, and the earth shook. Eventually, the elephant and whale were exhausted, and admitted the strength of the Kancil.
The Kancil walked away happy, and thought of other ways to trick other animals in the forest.

Personally, I believe Kancil has a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War hidden somewhere.