Before my father passed away, there were plans afoot for us to shift from KL to PJ. My father had wanted us to shift to a better neighbourhood, now that my younger brother had been born and I was about to start my formal education.
But my father died just 3 months before I started primary school and we were still living in KL. Would our plans be scuttled with this change in events?
Not if my mother had any say in it.
My father had earlier bought a double-storey bungalow for us in PJ in preparation for our move. We had in fact visited the almost-complete bungalow some time back and my younger sister and I had even earmarked one of the upstairs bedrooms as ours. The bedroom that we had chosen faced the front lawn and had a balcony – we had planned that space to be our play area. In the spacious living room downstairs, I had privately visualized the space that would be reserved for my piano – for at that time, I already knew I wanted to learn to play the piano.
Unfortunately, when my father died, the bungalow was still incomplete and not fully paid-for. My mother most certainly did not have the means to continue with the final instalments now. Our dream house was going to evaporate into thin air.
Fortunately, though, the title to the property was in my mother’s name. She managed to find a buyer, sold the house and invested the money in a completed shop house which she reckoned might give a good rental yield and provide a stable source of income for us.
Given the changed circumstances, it might have been easier if we had just continued living in KL and attended school there. But my mother was not one to take the easy way out. She was determined that our lives would continue the way she and my father had planned and so, she did all she could within her powers to stick to the plan.
The main stumbling block then was that we had no home to shift to and school was starting soon. As a desperate temporary measure, we shifted to a 3-bedroom house that was about 5 km from my school. The house was not ideal as it faced a sewerage facility and every night, a foul stench would drift towards our house.
Soon after though, we moved to our permanent home about 1 km from my school. This single-storey end-terrace house No 136 would be our home for the next six years.
We were now ready to start our new lives in PJ.
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2 comments:
i had forgotten abt the smelly place until you wrote abt it! Once again, thanks for jotting down our childhood memories. Some bits i don't really remember but as you know, the power of the written word means that yours is the Official Version of events past!
I like that - the power of the written word! I acknowledge some of this could be my interpretation of events... and others may have differing accounts. But that's ok. That's natural.
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