a day in malaysian history............20th september 1998

20th september 1998 was  for all  malaysians, a day of infamy.
2 top leaders at loggerhead with each other for months on issues of how to tackle the east asian economic crisis came  to a head.

i came to know from a pdrm mounted 'police kaki' much later,that on that fateful night, numero uno, dr m was riding his favourite mount, going round and round the field in bukit kiara equestrian club, right smack around half kilometres away from anwar ibrahim's house, whom had to contend with a visit by armed special branch police, and arrested for corruption on account of him using his influence to disrupt police investigation on the  alledged homosexuality charge.

dr m could not have done better. he should know. horse riding is a panacea for great stress. it is a great de-stressor. i know this as well, just fresh from a rigorous endurance ride win at upm 2 months earlier and readying myself and my mount, boss, an ex-race thoroughbred on the same venue dr m was riding, for the world endurance championship scheduled to be in dubai that coming december.

it is akin to riding a superbike but with a brain of it's own. you think you are in control but you only remain on top as long as 'ms gedebe' think you are her guest and master....that is the endorphin high in horse riding. the uncertainties....like life itself.

but even riding could not contain my personal anger as an ordinary raayat then. anwar in jail was no love lost for me. i never liked him as an upstart finance minister, given  the cushy job on a silver plate by the senior politician and mentor, i found him too cocky. even then i have a soft spot for people like hadi and nik aziz and anwar was rather rude to both these chaps who were in politics not for 'the money' nor 'the  fame'.

i have  a chronic sensitivity to people with excessive power  and  and excessive wealth obtained rather unfairly via being umnoputra nominess.
and love the underdogs, always whatever their persuasions.
it become almost a character fault  in my life.
i can say on record i have never  voted the incumbent government in my life.

in my university days, and that  was in mid 70's ,and my  first voting in a general election, it was obvious the general election was just going to be an 'erection' of some sort. hussien onn then just created  the newly energised 'barisan national' after closing down 'parti perikatan' and all thinking citizen knew there was not going to be any creditable opposition apart from dap in the next parliement.
all politicians wanted to wanted to be ministers in the next government.
admittedly this was going to be the 1st general election after the national operation council governance post 1969 May 13th. 
so everyone were tip toeing very carefully.



i never like kit siang and his politics either. he was very disruptive then and even now.
asri  and hasan adli brought pas into the fold of the new 'bn'.
in kelantan there were an assortment of  independent candidate, coming under the banner of '.parti bas'.
some of them akin to the character of 'lord suuch' of the 'loony party' of britain.
elsewhere nation wide there were only dato bagindo kampo rajos' parti socialist raayat and lim kit siang's dap wanting to form the opposition. the young kassim ahmad was also there.

the idealist in me voted for for 'parti bas' in kelantan.
there was no creditable opposition.
almost all lost their deposits.!

'bn' won across the country hands down.
asri and hasan adli became ministers, a first and probably last time for 'pas'.
[  'pas' now is more a chicken without a head. 
'pan' its derivative are all 'heads' without a body.  ]
...and that was 1975/6 political history........


dr m, i never like his brand of politics as well. up to a point i thought he was doing well but in the mid 90's when his children were turning from being teenagers to becoming young adults, dr m's politics changed significantly. i may be wrong but that was how most people felt on the ground.

that was the beginning of his fall......

across the pacific, you have ronald reagan and nancy. their only son was a dancer and he remained a dancer. here back in malaysia, dr m's eldest son, in his 20's became genius in business all of a sudden.
abdul daim zainuddin and his boys became filthy rich!....and for most  of them filthy poor [ woth still millions of rm secreted in foreighn banks ...the likes of ahmad sebi, amin apakahnamadiadah etc etc and etc ]suddenly as well thanks to the bursting of the bubble during the east asian economic crisis!

from corporate wizards right to being corporate lizards, all disappearing in to the 'wood work', in their overseas homes
so many of them with private jets  and homes in london and new york etc and etc
that was also history.
some struggled back and make it . 
the rest disappeared into the sunset to enjoy their ill gotten cash deposit in foreign banks.
but this is another story worth writing another blog on.

i did the unthinkable the next day in my consultant suite at subang jaya medical. 
on an official sjmc letterhead with my own name screaming on it, i wrote direct in my usual ineligible, scribbled hand writing a short nasty letter to datin sri dr siti hasmah:

" marm.....i am very disapointed with your husband and with anwar. why can't both of them settle their issues in the proper correct manner!?....blah blah blah....blah blah blah

your husband is already well into his seventies now and about to meet his maker any day now. i hope your husband is right about anwar, because if he is wrong, how is he going to answer to his god?

and truly marm if anwar did what he did, i do not care what the rule of law in this country is, he deserved to be hanged by his balls!...."

i swear that my house phone sounded muffled for a good week. i was not using a hand set yet at that time, so any changes to my house phone i could perceptibly feel.

then out of the blue, i reserved a registered mail on the 6th day, coming from seri perdana.
a legibly handwritten letter from datin sri siti hasmah!

" dear dr nik,

my husband and i are very sorry and can understand that you and many of your friends felt that way.
we are also very disappointed to say the least. to say we are disappointed is actually a gross understatement. we are heart broken.

it is not economic, dr nik.
if it is economic it would be easy for my husband to handle.
it is related to anwar's behaviour. my husband got feedback from special branch and he has to do what he did...My husband could not believe it when he was informed by the special branch people way back in 1995."

datin sri dr siti hasmah graciuosly ended her letter with , " only god knows, dr nik.."

yes , on the issue of dato anwar ibrahim, only the principal players know : dato anwar himself, probably datin sri azizah, dato zulkiflee the special branch boss of that time that went to see dr m along with his boss,  tun haniph omar....may be a couple of junior police officers on the round.

allahualam.

dato zul is a long time patient of mine.
a perfect gentleman.
a decade later i asked him, 'did you see it dato..'.
" no, doc, just a report from my boys! "....

in the now famous words of tun dr siti hasmah, " ..only god knows doc nik...".


if only the east asia economic meltdown did not occur.
if only anwar did not ruffled his boss that badly..
if only....
so many if............so many 'iblis' if's:
if all those did not happened, then we would not have a clown running the country now...anak pakjabapakahnamadiadah who squandered billions!!

all said and done, tun dr siti hasmah, in my humble estimation, is the best first lady malaysia had ever have.

i continued to write to her, oftentimes in anger, complaining of dr m's occasional excesses.
she never replied thereafter but i knew i was not exactly in her 'bad book' because i was invited to sri perdana a couple of years later, just sitting next to the main table. if i recall correctly during one of  the ramadan days , for berbuka puasa, when the 1st couple invited some gpms members for dinner in their house.
i was not a member. all these peole , cari makan type of characters , and amenu youth type  as well ,   least compared to ringgit malaysia.

at magrib, i prayed next to dr m, but my anger was still simmering. i could not bring myself to say hello or shake his hands! we remained silent.

but with dr siti hasmah it ws different.
later  in 2002, when i ran out of sponsorship for another world cup endurance championship in herez , spain she arm wrestled stingy  hasan merican to come up with 100k rm as a petronas sponsorship deal.

i was representing the nation anyway. i cannot be using my own money riding against the likes of shyakh maktoum on his million euro horses at world championship in spain.
stingy hasan could not refuse her even though he told me he was already up to his nose with formula one.

malaysia is currently in its dying throes in this current sand of time.
anwar ibrahim and dr m have both buried their many years of differences, political and personal, to overcome  that monumental inertia to change for the better.
otheriwse we all will 'rot' forever.
that is the choice on the other side.
.
it is a great shame on all of us malaysians  to burden this only on the frail shoulders of a 90 plus year old!
...and a decrepit old man nearing his seventies surviving on nasi kawah in sungai buluh for years .

shame on all you guys in the know for allowing anak  pak jab to plunder the nation's wealth for years when the signs were all there for years...

shame on you!!

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

The Rao of Malaysia

Seminar Melayu Rao Malaysia, 25th July 2009 at Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Tanjong Malim.

Some luminaries who attended, some admittedly, 'posthumously', some in spirit, some 'in body sans spirit':

Mat Kilau. Rashid Mydin. Tok Gajah. Ghazali Shafei. Tun Hamdan Sheihk Tahir. Tun Ahmad Sarji. Tun Ismail Mohamad Ali. Tan Sri Salehuddin Mohamad. Datuk Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin. Tan Sri Muhammad bin Muhammad Taib. Baharuddin'Anjang Akhi'.Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz. Datuk Siti Zaharah Sulaiman. Datuk Ahmad Razali Mohamad Ali. Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali. Dato' Mohamad Khalil. Dr Mujahid Haji Yusof Rawa. Dato' Nik Mohmad Nik Salleh.Haji Yusof Rawa.Datin Zam. Datin Maria. Jeneral Tan Sri Hashim Mohamad Ali. Dato' Hussamuddin Yaacob. U Wei Haji Shaari. Hajjah Ailington Isahak. Sarah Yaacob. Amy Mastura Shuhaimi. Mansoor Wan Abdullah. Ilani Isahak. Mazuin Hamzah. Akil Hayy. Salamiah Hassan. Tok Jeleha Raub......etc and etc.........558 in all.

Sutan Amir Kaharudin Budiman[17??-17??].Haji Jalaluddin Sutan Amir Kaharudin. Imam Haji Abdullah bin Hj Jalaluddin[1840-1905]. Hjh Wan Esah binti Abdullah. Wan Abdullah ibnu Hjh Wan Esah[1920-1961]. Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah..........

At the closing end of the seminar many issues had to be left in limbo for next year's deliberation, as we finally had to "agree to disagree".Notably Mat Kilau of Pahang supported by Tok Gajah were getting too hot under the collar, with Rashid Mydin on the other side of the argument mainly, always playing the 'Devil's advocate' role, almost going berserk. Tun Ismail, unexpectedly was philosophical and pensive, especially when the issue of the failure of NEP was brought up. Probably because his brother in law [ you know who ]was the chap in power most of that time. Hj Yusof Rawa, true to his ulama upbringing, was in his element, always quoting the Quran and relevant hadiths off the cuff, giving an Islamic overview of the impasse. King Ghaz was the saviour of the day, and it was due to his consumate skill as a diplomate that the robust, almost physical, discussion finally 'melted' down to the motion of 'agreeing to disagree' ,at least for the time being. Otherwise it could have gone very physical. Mat Kilau was seen to raised his keris several time. Sutan Amir Kaharudin Budiman, in his Sumatran-Kelantanese linggo, brandishing his 'kapok kecik'...........

The motion that caused the most dissension was " that this House view the current political and economic climate in Malaysia as critical to the Ummah and that the current government or future government must take effective measures immediately, judicial or extra judicial, in 'secret' or openly, to remedy this impasse". The commotion that followed was beyond the expectation of the organisers.

I was just there as an observer amongst all these giants of their time. 'Too small' to contribute.From my 'small man' viewpoint though, it warmed the heart to see that some, if not all, still subscribed to the age old motto of our ancestors:

"Bio mati di terkam harimo dari hidop di kejo anjing".

Reminiscent of more than two centuries of Dutch atrocities and inhuman plunder in Kepulawan Melayu Sumatera and Jawa. The 'bloody' Spanish, in Kepulawan Melayu Mindanoa. The Siamese in Patani, past and present.The British was no better: at the height of their collective plunder of Malaya and the Malay island of Singapura, they were bringing in around 50,000 immigrant labourers daily from China and India.

That could have been the meeting that was.................

No my friends, Back in 2009 Malaysia, we can no longer blame the 'British' nor 'Dutch' neither the 'Portugese' for our present predicaments.Blame ourselves.We have been too 'soft' despite being 60 %. Too 'gentlemen' to people who could not appreciate our hospitality. Too tolerant. Fifty years post merdeka we still subject our young people to 'three school system' running parallel..... Just the other day I met a young lady. aproduct of our school system or lack of system, not able to comprehend the lingua franca of this Nusantara.... Sixty percent owning less than 10 per cent.......We are 'beggars' and apologists in our own country....infact we are getting too much softer by the days!

There you are , the rallying cry of the Rao under the Dutch, "Bio mati di terkam harimo dari hidop di kejo anjing" seem to be more pertinent now than ever before.

[ Related topics:]
The Rao of Kelantan, Tuesday 17th February, 2009, under 'Personalities section'.
The Malay Dilemma, Sunday 30th November, 2008, under 'Politics/Current Affairs'
Vernacular Schools, December 4th, 2008, under 'Politics/Current Affairs'.

Pearls & Gem : The Rao's of Kelantan

What do Mat Kilau, Rashid Mydin, Tun Ghazali Shafei,Tun Dr Siti Hasmah ,Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad [ the prolific and brilliant Principal Private Secretary to Tun Razak who irritated King Guz so much in the 70's that the later finally got his revenge during Tun Hussien's tenure and managed to send this not so distant cousin of mine ,then a juniour cabinet minister , to jail for being a 'communist'!!!!! . So much for the use of ISA ! ] ,Dato' Hussamuddin of Karangkraf fame ,the late Tuan Haji Yusoff Rawa and the lowly Dr Hj Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah ,all share in common ?

We all share the same 'gene pool'.Our ancestors mostly related by intermarriage amongst same clans and 'ibus' in the 'Minangkabau ways' were 'originally' from a small sub district called Rao [ pronounced as Rawo ] somewhere near Bukit Tinggi ,in West Sumatra ,that time under the jurisdiction of the all powerful Pagar Ruyong Malay Sultanate .That must be early 18th hundred when our fore-fathers [ around 40 or so hulubalangs full of 'ilmu' and fired by fervent loyalty to 'King' and country ]crossed over the treacherous Malacca Strait in their long sampan to quell a rebellion in Sri Menanti .The Yang Di Pertuan had just died and the 'warlords' of that time could not receive well the dictate of the Monarch in Pagar Ruyong that his young prince 'imported' from across the sea ,take over the vacant throne .My great great great great grandfather ,young Sutan Amir Kaharudin Budiman was one of the 40 warriors on the long boat , to effect the 'royal dictate' ..

They ,with the help of local loyalists ,managed to quell the budding rebellion and installed the young prince from Pagar Ruyong as the Yang Di Pertuan .Words had it that their reputation of 'ilmu' and fighting prowess travelled so fast and so wide that the then Sultan of Pahang , who himself was also having some form of minor 'derhaka here and there' with a group of 'recalcitrant' chieftains managed to convince the Yang Di Pertuan of Sri Menanti to lend his efficient fighting machine ,young men from Rao for Pahang's need .

When you were in the business of 'kill or being killed' in the early 18th hundred fighting with just' keris and lembings 'nothing would be more demoralizing to your enemies than your reputation of 'ilmu' and previous success .The young men of Rao again were successful in routing the rebellious chieftains and brought some semblance of 'peace' [ depending on which side of the 'takhta' you were looking at ] to Pahang .The Sultan was happy with these 'imported' mercenaries but being a chap full of worldly wisdom [ oh God ,did I say in an earlier blog that this is what we need most now in Perak and which is sadly lacking ! ]'hesitated to let them all settle near the Royal Capital.Instead he dispersed them a safe distance away and gave big parcels of jungle tracts to these warriors in what is now known as present day Raub [.?? Rawoob ].

Most of the young men became domesticated and settled 'happily ever after'there and had families and grandchildren .But one must remember these young people were not ordinary guys like Pak Mat Nyadap and Ali of Pahang :they were fearless ,wanderlust ,adventurous 'gedebes' who cannot be 100 % domesticated by wives ,however young or beautiful .Some sampaned up the Pahang river and landed in Kedah ,Selangor and Perak .

Sutan Amir Kaharudin settled down for awhile in Raub ,marrying a local there and had two beautiful daughters ,Siti Zaleha aka Tok Jeleha [ who later married into Pahang Royalty ,a Tengku Khairul Alam ] ,and Siti Hajar .

Much later in his life , his wanderlust and adventuring spirit lead him up the Sungei Pahang ,through Nenggiri tributaries and moved down with the current into the mighty Sungei Kelantan .A very brave and lonely thing to do almost 2 centuries back :I was white water rafting along the Nenggiri 10 years back with my son trying to retrace back the 'solitude and resolve ' of my illustrious ancestor and I could recall not being able to sleep a wink at night as we camped by the river bank ,as everywhere we stopped we could smell tiger urine ! .This is still tiger infested country even now in 2009 .

The 'river route' taken by Sutan Amir Kaharudin Budiman is my theory anyway otherwise I cannot explain how he finally managed to start a family in a small village called Kampong Chetok ,Pasir Mas ,Kelantan ,which is by coincidence along the Sungei Kelantan .There was no road nor super highways then from Raoob to Kampong Chetok ,Pasir Mas ,Kelantan except via the rivers and their myriad tributaries.

One can assume that Sutan Amir Kaharudin must have travelled back and forth from Kampong Chetok ,Pasir Mas to Rawoob ,Pahang using the Sungai Pahang-Nenggiri- Sungai Kelantan Super Highway to 'oversee' both branches of his now expended family .By that time he must have aged a bit because in Kampong Chetok he no longer was known by the 'foreign' royal honorific 'Sutan' but rather as a 'Lebai' :Lebai Diman or Mandor Diman .

Sutan Amir Kaharudin Budiman : That was my great great great great grandfather from my father's side,a great warrior from Sumatra .A man who crossed the high seas and was willing to give his life for three sultans .

I got my 'Nik' from my mother's side ,whose pedigree was of more 'godly' persuasion .Her direct ancestor was a much talkabout and revered ulama' of that time , schooled in Mecca and Medina for decades ,a rare qualification in the mid eighteen hundred by the name of To' Konok .Some older relatives of mine thought very highly of him and regarded him having attributes of being almost a 'wali' .Stories and folklore had it that the monarch then who was staying in the Royal Capital at Kampong Laut [about 5 kilometres down the Sungei Kelantan opposite present KB ]came to know that To' Kono and his household were still observing the fast privately when the whole of Kampong Laut were celebrating the Aidil Fitri .

To' Konok was sentenced to death by hanging for high treason by the young monarch ,no doubt on the insistence of much lesser ulamaks of that time .On the day when the sentence was to be carried out ,as the oft repeated story went ,the young sultan 'mangkat' suddenly .

Oftentimes when I woke up in the middle of the night thinking from where I got this mad 'streak' of 'gedebeness ' which occasionally borders on the insane ,mixed on rare occasions only [ very rare indeed ]with 'sublimity' ,it make me wonder whether those 'warrior' genes or was it the 'ulama' genes that were playing the dominant role .

Daulat Tuanku .

Dr Nik Howk


Related article elsewhere : click here