Granfalloon (n) : “A proud and meaningless association of human beings.” A word coined by Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) in his book Cat’s Cradle. I was recalling the concept recently for some reason but couldn’t bring the term to mind. There it is: A granfalloon. The idea is illustrated in the book by a woman from Indiana who is just thrilled to meet Hoosiers everywhere she goes, a Hoosier being a name for people from the state of Indiana, but the shared qualities she recognizes in …

Tis a gift to be simple
Tis a gift to be free
Tis a gift to come down
Where we ought to be
And when we have come down
To the place just right
We will be in the valley
Of love and Delight
When the true
Simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend
We shan’t be ashamed
To turn, to turn
It will be our delight
Till by turning and turning
We come round right
An old Shaker hymn that my mother liked to sing when I was young. I sing it to my kids now. The Shakers were very Sufi I …

Duet with M. Nasir & Al-Jawaher (1982)

M. Nasir:
My affairs are not yet settled
Till I have found His Light
All I desire on this journey
Is that you send along the Fatihah for me

Masihkah Kau Ingat by Kopratasa,
a Malaysian popular music trio active in the late 1980s. This was perhaps their biggest hit, and still receives a lot of play on Malaysian radio.
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Give it a listen:
Kopratasa – Masihkah Kau Ingat
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English translation by
Bin Gregory Productions.
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Do you remember still
That single moment where
A blossom full in bloom
I placed within your hair
Do you remember still
Transformed into a dream
Longing to be with you
Do you remember still
Do you remember still
As we ran and ran
To the foot of the sky
The rainbows we chased
As the rain did come …

Cicak, Cicak, di dinding
Diam, diam, merayap
Datang seekor nyamuk
Hap! Hap! Lalu di tangkap!
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Translation and more after the jump.

Buah macang buah kuini,
Masak sebiji dalam daun;
Mengapa begini hatiku ini,
Habis bulan berganti tahun.
A pair of fruits, Machang and Kwini
Each one ripening under its leaves
Oh why does this poor heart of mine feel like this?
Each month of passing has turned into years

Sarawak is blessed with an abundance of fruit, but mangos are not one of them. The common mango, Mangifera indica, can grow here, but the lack of a significant dry period prevents it from fruiting well. (We have two seasons here: Wet and Very Wet.) …

One famous prayer of repentance, or dua taubat, could be roughly transliterated as follow:
Ilahi lestu lil-firdawsi a’la
wa la akhwa ala nar il-jaheemi
Allah fa habli tawbata wa-ghfir dhunubi
fa innaka ghaafiru dhanb il-adzimi
This doa has been put to song, together with a lovely malay translation, by Junied, a nasheed group from Singapore associated with the Madrasah Aljunied Al-Islamiah. Madrasah Aljunied is a famous madrasah, having produced many notable scholars over the course of its nearly one hundred years, including the present Mufti of Sarawak, if I’m not wrong. It is …

Awang Goneng’s book is finally out, and feted at the Royal Asiatic Society no less! The warm and colorful recollections of Growing Up in Trengganu started off online at Kecek-kecek, but were far too good to stay there forever. You may now pick up your copy in Malaysia from MPH Online, or from Monsoon Books if you’re outside the country.

As I’m sure is universal among muslim communities, Ramadan represents the high water mark of religious devotion, the time when the greatest number of people turn up for daily prayers. That’s followed by a Eid crash, when numbers plummet back down to, or even below, average levels, as everyone becomes distracted with the holidays. In a bid to remind the neighborhood that the musallah was still open for business, our musallah hosted a Majlis Silaturrahim or Hari Ramah-tamah, a glorified block party the week following Hari Raya. …

Shortly after Hari Raya Eid al-Fitr, I was given a lovely gift in the form of a rooster, hen, and four small chicks. The chickens are a small variety known locally as ayam katik. Although smaller and more tame, these chickens are not related to our modern poultry or egg laying machines, but are bred from semi-wild chickens similar to bantams. They are fairly self-reliant, semi-arboreal (they can nest in trees) and better flyers than the more heavily bred factory farm chickens.
The main reason I had wanted …

While wandering around the Jalan Masjid India area last December during my sisters’ brief visit, we stumbled on a live performance in a small plaza. The show was of traditional Malay song and dance. There was a large squad of men sitting crosslegged, some with drums, some clapping, some singing lead, some chorus. The dancers were men too, with a few playing female roles in full female attire. Whether they were real-life pondans or skilled actors I don’t know, but they were very convincing. …

Malaysia is constantly grappling with the role of English in the country and in the Malaysian language, Bahasa Malaysia. On the one hand, fluency in English is highly prized. The government’s latest initiative to improve English skills is that Math and Science courses will now be taught in English medium. On the other hand, English vocabulary is flooding into BM, which bothers many, especially when it displaces perfectly good BM equivalents. The newest Blog on my roll is MacVaysia, an English teacher in Rawang. He …