of over glorified water carriers and all that jazz.....

friends , dato and tansri,

on the day when all and sundry were waiting for numero uno to announce the   date for the 14th   general election, when the many substantive raayat's grouses will be once and for all addressed, instead we have the 'not at all  great  and surprising 'news that an old 'fart' is returning to his old lousy and foul smelling den.

this same old 'fart' who some 15 years ago was proclaimed world wide to have carried a couple of million rm in a brief case in australia but relieved of his guilt of money laundering in a foreign land on the premise  that he can be excused he did not understand proper english and thus was free to rob and launder money as much as he like and to where.

what he was going to do with that bagful of ringgit did not fire any imagination with our local attorney general of that time.
let alone from where he got it.
that was the depravity we as a nation already were wallowing even 15 years ago.
dr m was numero uno at that time!

malaysia, was known as  'boleh land', translated as 'everything can do one' with the proviso one is well connected politically. 

not, 15 years later not  much has changed.

in fact things has gone from worse to worst.

the degree of depravity in 'boleh land' seemed to be a bottomless pit .

and why not?
from top to bottom , the machineries of ' boleh land ' are inundated by over glorified water carriers and sycophants bidding each and everyone to be the best of  the worst.

from time expired and function expired cabinet ministers, to attorney generals, other 'generals', editors and general of editors ,right down to the lowly ' clerks'   and 'general chief clerks ' manning  the counters at the various ministries.

most , except for a few have lost their raison de' tre and meaning of their functions and existence.

from my humble opinion and perspective, many have even lost even their 'ugama', in favour of 'cari makan'.

the raayat are now itching for the next general election so that 'justice and the order of law'  and some degree of dignity can be  restored to 'boleh land'. 

some idealists, like me, even  are nursing a dream that we can put a few on the top behind bars permanently for the rest of the meaningless lives.

but i am a pragmatist.
i doubt this can happen.
the malays are nature's gentlemen, according to old winstedt, and thus even in the event that ge14 go on to the required result, the new power that be would string up some form of 'save waterface' manuerve.

we are famous for that.
in fact we are world champion at that.

this being the case, i pray to allah that,
 ' ya allah ya rabbi, letak kan lah mereka2 ini di maqam yang setimpal dengan kerja2 mereka didunia ini.
dan jika didalam ilmu mu yang menjangkau penilikan hamba2 yang serba berkurangan dan lemah ini adalah, mereka2 ini hanyalah  sebagai satu bala kepada saya bangsa yang telah lemah dari segi ugama dan sa'siah, bagikan lah kepada kami , sabr dan riddha menempuh dugaan mu....amin, ya rabbi alamin! "

dr nik howk

....................................................................

 From: hamzah
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2017 3:01 PM
To: Nik Isahak Abdullah
Subject: Re: Fw: surah ash shuura.......epilogue

More convincing if it happens in this world!

......................................................................................................................

On 18 Sep 2017 16:51, "Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah" <drnikisahak@hotmail.com> wrote:

if it does not happen in this world it is because our muslim -malay world has for centuries become corrupted and irreligious.
part of which is due to our very feudal character.

partly also due to our pseudoreligiousity....being malay means we accept carbuncles warts and all readily......that is in our genetic makeup.

dont blame that on islam
belum apa2 lagi a malay will start with ;

sembah patik harap di ampun......blah blah blah, when
'your excellency' would have sufficed.

in a time when  all ' his excellencies' were all upright in characters, things would have been better but when they are also feeding in the same trough as patik2, a new class of patik2 would share power and status.

perhaps dato, you and me , we would not live long enough to see any movement towards the better in our lifetime.
there seemed to be a ganging up of the selected patik2 and the excellencies todate to maintain the status quo.

dr nik isahak


.................................................................................................................................

 hamzah

|

Tue 9/19/2017 7:42 AM

To:

Nik Isahak Abdullah (drnikisahak@hotmail.com)

Cc:

Wan Azmi (azmiw);

)

You replied on 9/19/2017 8:59 AM.

To view it seriously, doc:  It is because our society has remained feudal in outlook, and greedy in character.

The combination of these two traits results in superstition and low public ethics. 

There is no 21st Century concern here for high ethics in public life, no drive for modern education (we still go for non-rational Tafiz schools and madrassas; we are reminded of them from time to time by tragic fires and loss of young lives), no passion for rational, scientific, and technological excellece...  

The real reason is this: we are caught in an old mind-warp. Not because of no religion. 

If it is "because of no religion" how is that 25 secular societies (including Japan, Taiwan, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Singapore) have such honest and efficient governance, excellent schools (no madrassas where children die in fires from time to time), very low drugs, crime, and sex abuse?

I have made these points many times in the past, but you ignored them. Don't you think educated Malays like you have a role in analysing the problem with modern pragmatism in your blog?

But l don't think you can. Your mind is cast in an old mould, that of a dakwah, a proselytiser. Not that of a reformer.

A real pity. There are so many smart Malays from Kelantan and Kedah.

.............................................................................................................

Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah

|

Tue 9/19/2017 8:59 AM

To:

hamzah (hamzah

Cc:

Wan Azmi (

;

l.com;

niknathasha@gmail.com;

Nik Adnan Nik Yusoff (nikadnan141@gmail.com);

;

Che Ibrahim Che Idris (cici.kgboy@yahoo.com);

;

;

;

we have roles to play dato, specialize roles.

what are you doing?
you and your very quiet generations of ex ksn, ksu, a whole load of ts and datuk sris warming their..ses......why are you guys soooo silent and so comfortable.......guys who meet over lunch in lake club, with fine wine to follow and lament about the good old days in britain and your foreign adventures and misadventures under the guise of foreign service.

what is tsming doing apart from minting money?

what is my good friends, che heng  and the maurauding oil baron, nadzru azahari,doing?

what is everyone doing?

i have two prof in my family who are 100 % behind ntr......that speaks a lot about the volumes of what remained to be done.

i am just an observer of life on this planet, albeit a 'noisy' one,

i know my limitation and skill.

what are you more talented, more 'collected'  and more connected individuals doing!!!???

apart from lamenting in limited private circles in muted voices lest numero uno knows!


.......................................................................................

Azmi Wan Hamzah

|

Tue 9/19/2017 11:47 AM

To:

Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah (drnikisahak@hotmail.com)

Cc:

hamzah (hamzah@;

replied on 9/20/2017 12:50 AM.nikhowk,

nik howk,

quote: "what is tsming doing apart from minting money ”

is that a question or is it an accusation?

well, if you must know, i do plenty of some, none of others. i try to leverage on the gifts that Allah has granted me, making the best of them, and try to touch as many who can benefit from those gifts or are in need to be touched. I do not do things I am not equipped to do, and leave those to others who feel they can. we shall leave at that, for the good the right hand does, the left does not need to know.

from time to time, i still read your posts. but too often find your ranting and railing tiresome. it reminded me of the slightly loopy or seriously unhinged street characters of our youth in kota bharu. particularly one who used to walk the streets and shout at school buses ‘medeko, apo medeko?’. you remember the fellow - who went by the name 'tok awae'?  there may have been something profoundly wise and deeply insightful in his observation and message about the false promise of independence and nationhood. (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and current evidence, you could make the argument that he was a man ahead of his time - prescient and prophetic).  but going about the way he did, nobody could have taken him seriously, and none did. 

nikhowk, i fear unless you start responding to legitimate arguments (such as posed by dato hamzah) and construct the foundation of your message with clarity as opposed to resorting to broad generalisations and broadsides, you may be risk not being taken seriously. and that would be a shame.

salam and regards,  azmi.

............................................................................................................

---

From: Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 12:50 AM
To: Azmi Wan Hamzah
Cc: hamza
Subject: Re: surah ash shuura.......prologue

alhamdullillah,

before your bp hits the roof and you get a sub arachnoid bleed up there in your brain, do cool down my dear ts!

at least we know our beloved tsming is still very much alive and kicking!
alhamdullillah.

if i have to invoke some 'generalization bordering accusation' to get to hear some 'pearls and gem' from tsming i will do so, even if, he deemed it as an uncalled for and unkind remark.
that ts ming is not important..it is a matter of perspective.

apart from lamenting in limited private circles in muted voices, lest numero uno knows!

yes i mean it,
i am not apologising.
what are you guys doing apart from some,lamenting in a few private circles, in lake club for example, in between lunch and in between heavy doses of dom perignon!
what is g25 doing?
what are the rest of us doing?
our national press is next to nothing
[  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2011/07/bersihbersihbersihbersihbersihbersihber_11.html  ]
our judiciary is nothing to shout about and yet one ex cj recently  came out with his memoir.

i have the displeasure of meeting his publisher just yesterday in my clinic, she lamented that 'doc, it is not selling, i rugi banyak!! '
'what to sell madam...the memoirs of the last 3 to 4 cj's ...there is nothing to read about...they are no salleh abbas.....they are just over glorified water carriers....at least i cried after reading salleh abbas, 'mayday for justice' , not that we have great cj's as far as i can recollect'  "

we cannot depend on the press, our justice system has been so so and tainted etc etc and etc....

the minimum our 'bijak and pandai ' can make is at least a lot of animal noise rather than keeping mump! 

numero uno is a politician....he and his close coterie of friends look out for all these 'noises', then act.
in any civilise soceity apart from malaysia, this kind of excessess would see them behind bars for life 

in japan, it is straight harakiri...no two ways about it.

shame on all of us!
we are not doing enough!!
sorry ts, we are all not doing enough
otherwise the carbuncle and wart in the room would have long disappeared


......and by the way , i take your 'tok awae' thing in this soo soo quiet 21 st century in malaysia, coming from  you  ts, as a compliment!
after that f.u  in 2011 from nothing less than the supremo of malaysian mega media apparatus, 'tok awae' from tsming is a  superb compliment!

one need to be in a state of  a ' tok awae 'nowadays to be above this 'madding crowd' and maintain one's sanity, rather  than quietly accepting substandard, corrupt  and self serving governance as a norm !

dr nik

Interesting Mad Men of Kota Bharu in the 60's and all that jazz.....

my good friend , dato yeh, of titwangsa, whats app me this morning a most beautiful, short  wirid/doa involving some aspect of allah's beautiful names. i was reminded by allah's beautiful name, 'ya latif', and somehow my mind wanders off to kota bharu in the early sixties.

i must be just about six, seven or eight year old then.

for people of that age to be living in kota bharu around that time was extra special. kota bharu was a microcosm of the whole wide world. and why not , nothing else exists beyond kota bharu.

kuala terengganu of old was at least a day away, with a total of 5 to 6 long , and tedious tedious ferry crossings.
and another five before reaching kuantan, kuala lumpur suddenly become very very far away.
crossing the hazardous titiwangsa range via janda baik was no mean feat for the average driver, with narrow one way lane at places and  steep drop to no where.
kuala lumpur was a one and a half day journey  unless you are titled  and loaded and can fly the malayan airways on rickety old dakota prewar planes!

so one has to pardon a seven year old who grew up on the assumptions that, ' sultan ismail college [ lovingly called s.i.c ] is the best school in the whole wide world!'; ' the world famous zain building', a four storey mammoth building right smack in town, is the tallest building in the world', taller than empire state building; biaritz park sited on tengku li's father's huge land bank, is the best fun park in the world........etc and etc.

" awae!.....margi lah awae.....samah jah! " [ children , come lah, only fifty cent! ]
those middle aged  dance ladies in biaritz park, sitting by the veranda of  their makeshift small houses, grooming themselves, some looking for 'gutu' [ head lice ] for their friends, used to tease us small children wandering in the fun ground in late morning while waiting to go to our afternoon session school at s.i.c.

we all ran, helter skelter.
that was a long story deserving another write up!
'samah' or 50 sen , at that time in the early sixties is probably 5 rm now. big money for a morning of pleasure.

panggong rani showing cheap matinee john wyne and  the delectable marlyn monroe and sandra dee, was nearby.
cattle class, with pijat, coakroaches all thrown in, at 40 cent per viewing.

everything kota bharu was 'huge' to the seven year old.
we had two traffic lights then. one near the bata shop right in the middle of the town near the present tan sri mydin's father's sundry shop....somewhere near panggong odean.
we pride ourselves with these two traffic light because our elders told us terengganu have none!
'how can these poor teganung people live without a traffic light !!??', people of my age wondered, then.

my family, we lived at jalan teliput. this is equivalent to ttdi  now. senoir government officials of low grade like chief clerks, senior postal workers etc etc doted the road. jalan ferguson just a street away was kota bharu's damansara height. state engineer, magistrate,goverment doctors and ado's lived there.

some 400 metres from my house is sic with its famous rugby and football team. it's rugby team, i recall, was always champion of the world. however, in football, sic almost always lost to islah.
islah, to us young boys, belong to the domain of the infamy. only 'big boys who failed their standard six and form three exams go to islah!.... they cannot be good...only rascals go to islah!'.
that was drummed onto us by our parents on a daily basis.

they don't even have a rugby team! 
'what! no rugby team!..'

across my house there used to be a big agricultural research station. i did not have any notion what research they do at that time because that concept was beyond us. to us seven year olds, that huge place with big padi fields and huge chickens and oversized goats and sheep.....a fantastic playground for us. 
it was heaven on earth.

all year long, after mid morning 'mengaji qur'an' with tok ayoh long and mak long down the lane we had a gala time swimming in the parit and 'air gumber' located at the north end of the station. during fruiting season, we boys and girls had free rambutan.
i spent many happy evenings, with my elder brother hashim, prowling the ground picking brazilian seeds. very tasty, eaten raw.

needless to say the bigger kampong boys also frequent the place because pak ali, the caretaker had two good looking daughters.......at seven, my interest was still elsewhere.

in the center of the large station, there used to be a sombre looking building , very official looking with dark glass windows. 'wow! what goes on inside', i wondered to myself.
my elder brother hashim , by then must be around 10, and much wiser than us, opined that , 
' this is the government! '

" wow!.....this gomen must be the invisible god inside printing money to pay for wae's [ my dad ]salary and everybody's salary in kota bharu!...wow! no wonder they have dark glasses!..wow!...all day long printing money for the rest of people in kota bharu to live on...WOW ! ".

we children did no even dare to peep inside. 
gomen or god busy at work!....we did not want trouble.
we already have enough trouble been chased around by pak ali!


when we got tired of swimming at the air gumber' of the station, during heavy rain we swam in the parit near istana teliput, an former old british adviser's residence, currently the unofficial residence for sultan muhammad the 5th whenever he is back in kb, which is fairly rare nowadays. oftentimes we play, 'police and thieves' near the compound.

i used to catch big 'anak sepila' in the big well kept drains around the istana, during monsoon season. i remember a famous old teacher of my eldest brother , cik gu embi, an 'orang luar', lived neighbouring the southern border of the istana. cik gu embi was quite famous that they named a lane by the side of the istana  then, after him : lorong cik gu embi. 

[   cikgu embi, like the marican brothers were 'orang  luar', people from outside kelantan , who form the inner  fabric of 'high' society in kota bharu. they are the elites.
cik gu embi, dr ezanee marican, mr siddique marican, mr bapoo hashim, mr yusuf , the late father of the delectable amenu lady of the 80's, marina yusuf, just to name a few. mr fernandez, mr and mrs john and mary cardosa, mr mukherji, mr durbara singh etc and etc.

oouch! there was one more , dr aziz, whose daughter rashidah, i fell in love with secretly at age 9....i wonder where she is  now.  people may not know it but children these age fell in love many times over .  i still recall in standard two in tanah merah, all the boys of the class fell in love with miss hasnah abu bakar, our form teacher! she got long flowing hairs and slender hands....during 'paying school fees' time , which is 2.50 rm per month, all the boys will crowd around miss hasnah, the girls of the class will be relegated to the back rows...some boys will be close enough to be able to touch cik gu's hands!, all fighting to be in the 1st row!.. a digression. ]

this vicinity around the istana  was also a good place to catch or 'lastic' [ biddah ] a bird or two , since the surrounding of the istana, especially the back part, that time was fairly thickly wooded.

i recall there were two famous characters in downtown kota bharu.
tok awae and tok wali sa'ad. 
tok awae must be in his late 40's or 50's and tok wali probably 60's.

tok awae, thickly mustachoid with that characteristic upward twist of his end-mustache, used to frequent the makan shops around the central market at jalan temenggong.
he cannot be a schiz because he was too bouyant and gregarious in his character and exhortations. could well be a chronic bipolar in persistent manic phase.

when he saw a young lady crossing crossing the busy street , for example, he would shout, in his well known guttural , coarse , voice:

" heh! demo mulut mergah tu! comel weh demo!...margi bining dengan kawae lah! "
[ heh! that young lady with the red gincu!...you are beautiful...come marry me!   ]

tok awae was a very popular figure to the point one of our famous poet of that time, moyhiddin, penned a sajak about him in his weekly column in the national newspaper, berita harian.

tok wali sa'ad. 
he is the chap that make me write this piece. 
always impeccably dressed in white. white serban  and white baju tok, very distinguished looking old man. loaded as well  since he traveled in and around kota bharu with a private rickshaw . apparently he come from melur, and more usually than not his rickshaw man will 'drive' him thru jalan teliput before he make his daily round in kota bharu.

the wird sent to me by dato yeh this early morning on my whats happ, reminded me of tok wali sa'ad actually. how can i forget him. he was just a 'janggut close' to me one fine morning. i was playing around the house compound at teliput oe fine late morning ,playing hotpscotch and marble with a couple of  girls and boys, our neighbour, while waiting to walk to school for the afternoon session school.
suddenly there was this booming voice, " ya latif , ya latif, ya latif, ya latif...", directly above me.
i looked up and there he was...tok wali sa'ad himself!

all of us ran for dear life.
tok wali sa'ad was actually very benign.

my life with respect to tok wali sa'ad actually come whole circle recently.
i had a small querrel with najib's lhdn recently who has become over-creative in looking for more fund to support their oneamgedebe. they are coming after us , poor doctors.

so i wrote to my sheikk, sheikh ninowy asking for a wirid or two.
he suggested , " ya latif, ya latif , ya latiff....", a total of a hundred 29 times following 2 rakaat of sunnat/ hajat prayer or whatever.
shaykh al yacoubi of syria also agrees on this.
it work insyaallah, alhamdullillah!!...but you need to be persistent. 
do it as a daily wirid for months or weeks .

tok wali sa'ad has got a system in his madness.
the kelantanese call this 'iseng'.
i remember my sis  in law some years ago warned me,
" howk, tok leh belajar tafseer baco hamka, nanti jadi iseng! "
[ howk, dont learn the ugama reading hamka's tafseer..you can go mad ]
that is the typical advisory one get when trying to learn the ugama just a wee bit deeper than the usual , occassional  tazkirah one use to get from the madrasah, which is usually non structured.

try learning the ugama from just one ustaz or tok guru, and then one occasionally get slotted into the unnecessary groups with unnecessary leanings...wahabbis, the mad sufi's, the kampong ustaz, the liberals etc etc.

the safest bet is actually, in my humble opinion, to get some modicum of ugama knowledge from one's madrasah or masjid by attending regular magrib or subuh congregational prayers and the tazkirah that follows, and from there  build on it by reading voraciously books on ugama and start your journey from . these provide the necessary check and balances, ie safety in numbers.

with due respect to  people like ustaz abdullah yasin , ustaz azhar idrus, rasul dahari, maulana asri or that mufti from wang kelian, of whom are all good ustazs and have good intentions, don't  just be limited by one tok guru only, lest one become too myopic.  the best is to have several or many,.....one has to move on from there, and finally choose which schools or leaning one is comfortable with.

dont let one tok guru or one ustaz 'straight jacket' you into his own narrow understanding of islam. islam is a wide spectrum.

read, read, read and read........and think.
with the proviso , you have some basic  in the ugama of course.
this is way madrasah attendance is important because it opens one to a variety of tok gurus initially.


dont worry you would not end up being 'iseng'.
and even if one become 'iseng' like tok wali sa'ad, i would like to reassure my sister in-law, if she is reading this, .....it is still ok.


we who want and dare to take this journey call  this, 'essence'.
then , you can choose to be a sufi, a wahabbi, hanafi, maliki, shafei, a salafi  or just muslim........you will be ok, insyaallah!

ya fattah, ya razak, ya wahab, ya ghaniy , ya mughni;
ya qodim, ya daim , ya ahad , ya wahid, ya samad;
ya allah, ya rahman, ya rahim , ya hayyu , ya qayyum, ya rabb, ya zaljalalilwal ikram;
ya ghaniy, ya hameed, ya mubdiu , ya mu'id, rahim ya wadud;

ya latif , ya latif, ya latif , ya latif.............

Just Visiting.........[ part 2 ]

friends, dato and tansri,

in a well known tradition our nabi stated that one way to ensuring a good ending [ husnul khatimah ] is to remember and ponder about death  a lot and to read the qur'an on a daily basis. i am a relative ignoramus with respect to understanding and living the qur'an, let alone reading it on a daily basis or 'qataming' it even on a monthly basis. i read the qur'an like a ' new mualaf' even at this fairly advance age of 3 score plus five and my understanding of arabic is limited to just ' min aina anta? '.

but i can count myself lucky and blessed 'married' to a proffesion that reminds me of death most of the day. every patients that passed my door daily , i have trained myself to analyse 'mentally', ' what is the chance of this chap dying a sudden cardiac death!?' , a bad habit of mine borne out through 32 years of cardiological practice. a bad one no doubt to the unschooled mind, but a good one to me since somehow that state of mind emits 'echoes' that somehow got reflected back on myself, and at the end of the day, this help to keep me firmly grounded on a daily basis.

' allah hummaya mukalibal qulub thabit qalbi ala din nik...'
allah hummaya mukalibal qulub thabit qalbi ala ta'atik ...'

just last month while attending a cardiological seminar in london organized by the british cardiovascular interventional society, i visited , fred, a fellow registrar with me at st mary's hospital, praed street during those wild dizzying  london  days in the early eighties, just post flower power of the 70's and the paul raymond revue bar fame in soho etc and etc.

dr fred had terminal advance colo rectal cancer, that has metastasized to all over his bedridden body. he lay breathless in a palliative ward at royal marsden hospital, at fulham road. 

i noticed an unopened abdullah yusuf ali's translation of the holy qur'an on the side table. 
" omg! great!!..', i thought to myself loudly, " after all these years of of 'relative monologue' from me via 'pearls and gem' and 'the tafseerkoran.blogspot.com..', he has somehow succumbed  ".

'how are you fred?', was my preamble.
'shit nik , shit'.....i am breathless even on O2...'

' no fred...you are very ok... i see you have islam, how long now...what is her name if i may ask?'
'just two years nik.......no i am still single.....the last job at hammersmith, i nearly found someone,  a belgium fellow in hematology, one of my post grad student, then i got seriously infected with islam.....she left me. she said she was allergic to sleeping with terrorist!'

' it is the best infection in the world fred......i hope i am partly instrumental in your reversion..she lost a good man there...'

after a few minutes of niceties, i went straight to the 'jugular', which was the purpose of my visit anyway.

'fred...you are very ok. death is frightening for all our patients. even for us doctors. but we have to look from another perspective....when you have islam, especially for you, new revert, you have made it. for guys like me born into the 'ugama', i have a lot of excess baggage to answer to. for guys like you, it is as if you are travelling on ryan-air, just you and your hand luggage.
death is just a change of address. you are going to a better address, and i say this with all seriousness...it is not a cliche. insyaallah.....i am serious! you , of all people are the lucky selected ones.... you could have gone on being a kuffar and that is not difficult in uk or europe, even in malaysia. but you have chosen islam at the eleventh hour...and that is not an accident of it is a gift....a special invitation!.'

i did not leave fred empty handed that night.
he is a new muslim, a new 'mualaf '.
two years in islam is not a long time.
i needed to make sure he get 'educated'

we talk about tahajjud, about being in continous zikrullah; about zikr using asma al husna and ismu ul azam; about taubat and taubat prayer and about tasbeeh, especially tasbeeh prayer, an excellent 'sin expiation' prayer; and about selawat to the nabi.

' fred, visit me at ' pearls and gem ', when they think you are fit enough for discharge. 
i am sure you remember doc sabri, that elderly gentleman i introduced to you in KL 5 years ago when you visited me at my hospital...well he has gone to meet with his lord.....i missed him dearly..a great friend and mentor.'

[  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2014/12/a-long-prescription-for-friend.html   ]


'you know nik, this haj season, if i can, i want to do haj....i know i may die there.'
i knew, in his current state, his chances of making it beyond july, the haj season this year, is just about 50 : 50 and i knew that he knows that i know, but this was better left unspoken.

'it is a great priveledge to die in makkah during haj season. that is my ambition as well fred...imagine 2 million souls and a couple of million angels praying for you. i pray , insyaallah , you will get to do your haj'.


as i walked to the underground tube station at fulham road, i cannot helped but remember a short conversation i had with a lady professor back home in kuala lumpur, also a cancer patient, a year ago.

[  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2015/10/truncated-lives.html  ]


life is a series of goodbyes.
first you say goodbye to your parents, oftentimes , brothers and sisters rather prematurely.
then to a series of friends and relatives.
then to your acute faculties, slowly, slowly.
then, it is time for you yourself to go.
that is the freudian, schopenhaurs and hegelian perspectives.
your whole universe revolves around you and when you are not there , the universe disappears.
rather depressing.

the true muslim perspective is brighter with the proviso you do your prior 'homework' here in this duniya..... it is a change of address, and if you want a 'damansara height' address in the next world, you have to work harder in this world. 
it is as simple as that.

you have to know who , the ceo of the universe is.
it is not obama, donald trump, najib tun razak or the agong! 
it is HE and HE alone.
it is HE alone you worship and HE alone you ask for help. fullstop.

i was exposed to death early. 
my dad died when i was nine. 
my sister, 4 years younger than me left us when she just turned 22. a brilliant and artistic young lady , an economics graduate.

[   http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2009/01/pearls-gem-redza.html   ]


i took some 20 years to recover from that loss, due to my relative lack of my 'ugama', my state of non redha lingered.


i must admit frankly that most doctors are quite bad at handling 'death' and 'near death' in our patients.
our training, at least during my time is 100 % secular and i dont think there has been any change in the curriculum with respect to this important issue.

we are supposed to 'educate' our patients and their anxious relative when death are impending, but oftentimes than most, the younger consultants and specialists will not discussed the issue to the point even when someone already had their body riddled with cancer, some even went on to do major brain surgery, to remove a spread.....that , i find ridiculous.

but having said that, there are instances when close relative can be a pain in the neck. when we throw in the towel, they accuse us of 'euthanasia'!

i had the unfortunate experience some 15 years ago of managing an elderly woman in her late 60's who had been in coma for over 5 years, and admitted to our hospital for severe fulminating pneumonia.
i broached the sensitive subject of letting her go without aggressive treatment anymore and was summarily sacked on the spot.

in another incidence,  a corporate top gun came in with massive heart attack and haemorrhagic stroke at the same time. he was obviously on his death throes. i called the family to do their 'yasin' bit in the ccu. he died shortly after. everything went well i thought until i got a lawyer's letter on my desk 4 days after, asking me to explain why i use 'inappropriate language' to the datin.

i observe some muslim families behave badly around the death of their love ones, and this bad behavior is directly proportional to the pay check they bring home each month when they are alive.



[  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2008/11/death-eternal-life-after-death.html  ]

[   http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2011/02/unto-him-is-journeying.html  ]


on the other hand, the down and out, when it is time for them to go , there is no excessive fanfare.
i have one bizzare experience with an indonesian immigrant several years back which i like to share with you guys here.

[  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2013/11/just-visiting.html  ]



and lastly if any of you guys have the delusion or rather the illusion of being able to say the shahadah easily during your death throes, you can forget it.... in my statistic which i collect over 40 years of attending to the dead and near dead, statiscally it is less than 0.2 %!!!

http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2008/05/some-more-random-thots-on-death.html

except with the proviso you start right now practising in earnest the art of trying to be in continous zikrullah!
la ila haillallah muhammada rasullallah,... and really meaning it in your hearts of heart.
no reverence to HIS other creations, just reverence to HIM.

it is not too late to start , my dear friends, dato and tansri.......



ps :

i received from friends in the uk my good friend fred passed away at royal marsden hospital, london, just about 2 weeks after my visit.

may his soul be accepted amongst the accepted, amen.

'the sanctuary' tales .....from crocodile dundee to exorcist

that was the week that was!

i was fresh from umrah the evening before but had to take the early morning firefly flight to kuala trengganu, taking advantage of the long weekend following new year. i was looking forward to nursing my makkah flu back in 'the sanctuary', pantai telaga papan....the fresh air and the raging sea could perhaps soften the body ache and general lousiness of a makkan flu.
beside that, my boys back there would be penniless by now and waiting for their 'gaji'.

by mid morning, myself, and hamzah went canoeing to check on his 'bubu' and fish net he laid upstream, the previous night, some 100 yards from our pondok. it was almost 11 months now since our encounter with a full grown estuarine crocodile probably 8 to 10 feet in length by gross estimation, and the 'croc fear' that we had earlier has now abetted somewhat. 

we are back canoeing, but no longer going the full distance. 
[     http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2016/02/a-close-encounter.html    ]
certainly avoiding the deeper part of sungai telaga papan, especially near the now abandoned , unfinished clubhouse. we just limit our forays to our own backyard and the lubuk up stream, even then, with caution, looking at tell-tale signs of the big croc.

but even then we do not have to venture very far.
just a 100 feet beyond our pondok,
lo and behold, we found a three foot baby croc stucked into our net!
very aggressive despite its small size.

only probably six month old according to the perhilitan officer, but already bronze in discolouration.
for every small croc, there must be at least an 8 to 10 foot parent or parents prowling around!
the mother or dad that playfully grazed my canoe 10 months ago near the muara of sungai merang are very much alive and well....... take care when you fish  or canoe in any teganung river!

aggressive plus plus...i would have love to rear this chap in our small pond but the 'noise' it make is respectable. we do not wish her 10 foot mother prowling near our kitchen.

ready to go to hulu terengganu....

hamzah suggested we just sell it to a chinaman  he knows who would have him for dinner perhaps. 400 rm could exchange hands easily i was told, and that is a hefty sum for hamzah!

lan, my younger brother suggested we give him to dato yeh, my good friend in kota bharu who might be interested to rear it in his 'moat' surrounding his kb holiday pondok. he has a huge estate cum private holiday resort near penkalan chepa in kb.

'no hamzah, i have to dissapoint you. we cannot sell to your chinaman friend  because your boss is not that quite low profile. if the kampong people come to know we will be in trouble. lan, dato yeh is not contactable, i think he is still in makkah and i think he will also not agree to the plan. we can of course rear it here in the back yard if you guys love it very much ,but that would be asking it's mother to come for you guys!....let me call perhilitan. my kl friend knows the pengarah, encik hasdi, and has provided his hp number.',..... that was my considered opinion after one day of serious deliberation.



that night i thought to myself i could have some peace and quiet and settle down to some serious zikr and night prayer. remember, this was just two days post umrah in makkah. body and spirit , both were still in the mood! despite the bad flu and generalised body ache. 

don't underestimate shallowness of the alur, this is 'croc territory......setiu basin reforestation has worked!!

suddenly, in the wee hours of the morning around 4 am, a loud shrill shout outside the house from hamzah's wife,

' abe lan! abe lan!, dakto! dakto! mari cepat , mari cepat! fatehah kena rasuk hantu!'.

'omg!...., i said to myself, 'apa pula? i have been here the last two year. even camping alone on the beach during the initial construction phase of 'the sanctuary'....and no hantu!
now with all the prayers...got hantu! i have done my 1000 ayat kursi , going round and round the compound a year back ....all hantus and jembalangs must have kept their distance from  'the sanctuary'...especially with the boss around!'

fatehah and her husband just arrived three days earlier to 'the sanctuary' from rantau panjang. her husband lost his odd job in kb and was jobless for 6 months. hamzah asked them to come over, to give him a helping hand. 

unknown to me then, the two , husband and wife had joined hamzah upstream some 800 yards away from 'the sanctuary' towards lawyer dato hisham's beach house at 10 pm. hamzah still back to his fishing activities. they stayed too long there and fatehah decided on her own to walk back alone to 'the sanctuary'......brave girl!! [ also careless ]. 

that place, midway between al qalwa and lawyer hisham's bungalow, is well known to be a wee bit 'keras' amongst the local, but despite that quite popular with young couples at night. also popular with the local 'pencegah maksiat' as well....and also the occasional drug addicts and the occasional police patrol
so the 'keras' aspect is pretty relative. the more 'keras' the place is, the more the attraction i can guess with courting couples.

by 12 midnight she started to behave 'unnaturally' moving her hands in a semi-purposive manner and complaining of feelingg extremely cold., according to hamzah. i was not told of this until later the next day. hamzah and her husband tried to pacify her in their ways until her 'problem' got worse, then they decided to call the boss at 4 am!

i have always been called at this wee hours of the morning to salvage people in heart failure and more often than not , to open people's blocked coronary arteries.....these are no sweat! it come with the territory of being the substantive senior consultant cardiologist at sjmc, after some thirty two  years of cardiological  practice.

this one.....a girl moving her upper limbs in odd fashion and grimacing away with eyes darting from one corner to another is a different kettle of fish!
this is not heart failure nor blocked arteries.

from the little that i still know of neurology, this is not seizure or epilepsy.
certainly not temporal lobe epilepsy.
could this well be histrionic behavior of a kampong girl under stress?.....highly probable in the list of all possibilities. this is her first time leaving home and having to interact with others as adults.....the 'internal' pressure for a kampong girl like her must be tremendous.

could this be a schizoid reaction to 'stress' from a kampong girl with a schizoid predisposition and tendency?....possible but remain to be seen and would need a full history from husband.
but 20 years of age, this could well be her 1st episode, so history is not effective here to exclude this.

these differential diagnoses raced through my mind.
uppermost in my mind was histrionic personality with acute conversion reaction, remembering my psychiatric training under prof teoh of university hospital in my fourth year medical school some forty something years back!

this being the case, given that fatehah, just turned 20 and coming from the backwater of rantau panjang, with its inherrent socio-cultural belief and back ground steeped in 'bageh' [  a kampong ceremony in the 60's in back water places like bachok and tumpat , kelantan involving neighbours and main actor the magic man , the bomoh with his ensemble, with the intention of driving away evil spirit supposedly truobling a member of the family. this was usually a community affair ], 'rasuk hantu' [ devil possession ]and 'bommo', i am ready to dance to her tune and play the 'game'.

my initial game plan was to play around with her belief and play along to the point towards the end i can offer her some semblance of 'save waterface' outlet.
tomorrow , insyaallah, all will be ok.
the husband and her new friends will be gentle with her and cajole her along for a week or so until she get reorriented to the new 'stressfull' environment, of being fully adult.

that is the 'gameplan' with most histrionics as far as my little understanding of clinical psychiatry goes. 

my gameplan is to 'play the game' with her and offer her a 'soft landing'.

so i jumped in and start working.

'demo sapo. demo margi mano weh!? ', i bravely asked. [ damn it! who are you. where are you from ]

'.....mari sanno..', she answered, cheekily, pointing to the beach, in the direction towards lawyer dato hisham's beach house, some half kilometre away. [ ..i am from there... ]

that 'cheekily' part unsettled me a wee bit.
'am i on the right tract?', i asked myself.

' apo pasa  demo gedebe sangat demo mari kaca rumoh  kawae..mari kachau anok buoh kawae...tepat sining orghe semaye, orge bezikir!...guano ya demo gedebe sangat nih! '
[ why do you come and disturb my place and people. this is a place for prayer and rememberance..]

' sejuk sanno', it says , pointing in the general direction of the beach. it was raining outside.
' ambo nok tupe jah..' it said [  it is cold outside...just want to stay awhile.. ]

'that voice does not sound like fatehah'..., hamzah's wife, her half sister, echoed from behind me. hamzah and zaki [ her husband ] were there some distance away. lan, my brother, obviously did not like this encounter. he 'cabuted' back to our pondok.
lan and i, had in our childhood days seen the film,' the exorcist ', and i can read what went on his mind.

he had a choice. for me the bucks stopped here!

i did not waste time i started with a series of 'kul a'uzubirabbinnnas', followed by ' kul a'uuzubirabbil 'kul falak', finishing off with  a long series of 'ayat kursi'. even forgot to read al fatihah. i would already be on shaky ground, if this really is not hysterical conversion reaction, but a 'real rasuk hantu' case, i thought to myself, if i missed al fatihah.

after 30 long minutes of doing the series, there seemed to be no improvement. in fact i get a wee bit of palpitation when she asked,

'demo baca gapo weh!!?? ', glaring at me. [ what are you mumbling about my friend....]
now it is nik howk the 'bomoh's time to  get cold sweat in between his sarong!
she is now turning into an 'it'.

fatehah, given her age and back ground, i reckoned, would not have that  mental dexterity and nuance to understand that she is dealing with a pure amateur in front of her, and even joking about it!!

i was pretty sure at this juncture, it is no longer a 'mind game' i can play.
is this 'exorcism, fullstop?.

'am i reading it wrong? my reading may be all over the place', self doubt began to creep in.

from there i changed my 'gameplan',for good measure i added the last three ayat of surah albaqarah to my armamentarium and restart in full gear with the six small surah al 'khidr and strengthened further by 7 readings of the last three ayat of surah al baqarah.
i was sweating in my sarong despite the rain outside.
my hairs stood on ends!

after another very long 20 minutes, it began to work, the limb movement lessened and IT's glare become less fierce.

'..ambo nok kecing..', it said.   [ .. .i want to go and pee..]
' sapo dio ambo nih ', i asked.  [  who is this who want to pee..]
'ambo lah '  [ me ]
' ambo, ambo ni sapo dia?, i asked harshly. [ me , me  me, who is me!!?? ]
'ibleh ko jinn nih?', i asked, gaining in confidence. 

' yo lah, ambo fatehah.....', IT smiled cheekily, then added, abruptly, ' ambo iblis!.... '

my hairs stood on ends but i maintained my composure.

we asked the husband to follow her to an outside toilet, some 15 yards away from the workers quarter. the husband reluctantly followed her , in fear, accompanied by hamzah's wife. both in fear.

when they came back, fatehah regained her composure.
she told us ,
' i am  very tired. i want to go to sleep..'
the movement in the fingers had stopped by then.

myself, lan and hamzah left the couple to themselves and went outside the quarter to have coffee while waiting for the azan subuh, while zaki and hamzah's wife attended to fatehah.


shortly after that the husband, zaki, came out to join us for coffee.
'dakto, ambo takut tadi dekat bilek air.....bining ambo lambai tangan kat sapo dio ambo tok tahu, dio kata 'bye...bye..'
[ dr, i was fearful at the outside toilet just now...my wife waved bye bye to some object in the dark.........]

now it was time for dr nik howk to have cold sweat!!
what a weekend!

the morals of the story are:

1. dr nik howk can say good bye to his plan to canoe in all the great rivers of terengganu....especially in the setiu basin. 
crocs are endemic here in terengganu, full stop!

2. girls! if you have to walk in the wee hours of the morning or at night on the beach far away from any beach house or motel, walk in company. please, please, never do it alone. there can be unwarranted 'encounter of the third kind'. or even 'encounters of the first kind' can be dangerous. one do not know what lurks in the minds of men at these places at such time.

3. if ever i have to face this kind of situation again i will put my 'scientific', analytic thoughts and scepticism away on the back burner, and right on from the first word go, proceed full steam ahead with my usual gambit of the 'six khidr' plus my favourite last three ayat of surah al baqarah. no more 'mental game'. assume it is exorcism right from the word go.
even if it is not, it will work for histrionic conversion reaction, most time.

7 x fatihah
7  x an nas
7  x al falak
7  x kul huwallah
7  x kulya
7  x ayatul kursi

and add my favourite, 
7  x last three ayat of al baqarah.

.....and if this does not work, i will get someone to call the local imam.....whatever the time. frankly, i would rather do primary infarct emergency angioplasty than this kind of work!!
it is damn scary because you do not know what kind of 'devil'  and 'demon' you are dealing with!

and if the 'demon' turned out to be a benign  'internal demon of the histrionic ' kind, even in this situation, the serious right on approach will work.

mr gedebe, the stud, a cross between pure arabian and a brazilian breed, mangalarga machador; pedro, ex-polo; mek bunga,  pure arabian but 'tak comel, thus the name; and salsabil, ex-race, now heavily pregnant.

'the sanctuary' is a small piece of heaven on earth but don't stray too far away from it at night on the beach, especially alone!

other articles on haj and umrah in the blog:

1. http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2010/06/tan-sri-ibrahim-promet-in-memory.html

2.  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2016/12/umrahour-time-for-renewal_8.html


3.  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2016/12/umrahto-next-level.html