Tales [not so tall] of "Timmy"
the not-so-very-polite Malaya Hall Cat
in London!  

The Un-doing of Whacky

f any of you are thinking what these 1959 elections brought me by way of perks or even accruements to my official status at the hall, just quickly forget it. The menu by some mysterious trick improved. The lads and lasses ate even more voraciously - and left me no extra fish bones. I was even beginning to regret the democratic change. Everything generally improved. Even the records that grated in the lounge radio-gram from certainly before the war years were replaced; by a strange trick of reasoning which surpasses the logic of my feline race, this only increased the gossip sessions on the first floor, and I found it difficult to find quiet corners for a peaceful snooze.

To cure myself of chronic insomnia, I used to lie in wait for the billiard-buffs “Mars Bar” Sahathevan [Victorian, class of 1949 or 50] and the bongos-playing Tunku Ibrahim, in the deep basement billiards room entrance which was always under lock and key, the two soft-spokenly taciturn and utterly sober lads of the Bryanston Square block. Saha was known as “Mars-Bar Saha” for he always carried a Mars bar in his pocket; one rightly wondered how many pockets he had, for he never failed to bring out a bar whenever you approached him and chewed on it (some said this was because he feared you might ask for a bite out of it yourself) like on a tobacco cud. Mars and Saha were so inseparable, his skin turned mars colour. Short, handsome with well-combed straight-hair invariably parted on the left and - you guessed it - on the plumpier side, he finally ended up in Brunei(I think the Sultan there, another Victorian, didn’t bar the Mars bar or put a levy on it) with his law practice and the English girl, the only girl he must have known who bred for him well and truly, I hear.

The only trouble was the click-click-clickety-click of the balls rolling smoothly on the green turf, which knocked in my brain thereafter, but I didn’t mind, being of a robust constitution myself, fed freely on government paid chow, since it was better than having to listen to Ponna’s interminable gravely voice or the other Bala’s monotonous punctured drawl. It might interest you to know that the Keeler girl offered me a cure in her bunker back of the hall, but I was averse to high cabinet-level political chat, and so I declined, preferring the endless knock-knock of billiard balls in my brain. If you want to know, that's the kind of ascetic I am!

To tell you the truth, I was almost half-wishing for the old days when nobody cared about what happened to the place. The tida-apa-titude feeling which reigned in there for half a dozen years now was gone for good. Even the never-ending tuning of the black upright piano on which Sothie Doraisamy (an ex-MGS 1951-52 post-school certificate Victorianne who married a Mumbai-ite and never returned and whose father was the eternal general secretary of the Ceylon Federation of Malaya) and the already acclaimed concert pianist Yu Chun Yee practised their sonatas and concertos in the “games room”, or improvised concert hall, was once and for all put to rights. The piano would have been alright if it had not been for the numerous two-finger Bar-student self-styled virtuoso “pianists” taking turns during dinner time (for how else could they command an audience) to thump-thump the poor “ebony-and-ivory” board, but this practice gave the Warden an opportunity to pick up an intimate relationship with the piano-tuner, and the latter made it a practice of becoming a regular visitor to the Hall.

I heard at one of Ponna’s sessions that with the tuning costs alone for a year a grand piano could have been easily installed at the hall, but I think this’s certainly an exaggeration, and I’m sure you realise by now I’m not given to exaggerating like the Hollywood Cartoon Cats unless you are one of those curious creatures better known as ailurophobes. Don’t blame me for using such big naughty words: “I aint guilty! I didn’t coin it.”

The toilets at last were frequentable: you could even look where you were doing what you were doing. The cuvets were no longer stopped up with rolls and rolls of toilet and fish-and-chips wrapping paper with the fish and chips still sticking to the oily paper, including cigarette stubs, and some kinds of sticky rolled-up rubber balloons which never really took off. The hot stuffy sweaty sauna atmosphere which had gathered in there for at least a decade or two was subject to a fresh thrashing by currents of fresh spring-perfumed air from Regents Park . The old musty stink chased by the fresh blast must have settled down back where Christine held her daily adult-education séances.

One fine day, Ponna came breezing into the dining-hall with the cutest damsel I ever laid a paw on. Her auburn hair collected in a jingling pony tail did things to me. I said to myself: “This chick’s sure an ailurophile!” And was I even remotely wrong? Next thing you know, she purred and gave me the come-hither look, her long sleek eyelashes flashing like a Singapore Prison cane on some soft unexposed patch.

“Timmy! Timmy!” she called with that soothing tongue of hers, her fluffy eyelashes flick-flamed around her carved almond eyes. “Hey, Timmy Baby, come hither Baby!” she called. You must be naturally wondering how she knew my name, as if this’s a ninth-day wonder of a mystery. Everybody knew my name by then, even up at Scotland Yard HQ they were talking about this cat who got the rats up and running! So don’t be envious, just read on…

The hall came to a halt. All eyes were fixed on her and the target of her solicitations. To be quite frank, I was feeling rather put out. All this attention was a bit too much for my heart which ticked away like the American NIT cesium-powered clock running amuck among the Swiss cheeses.

I didn’t realise she had dropped a bomb, pronounced the unmentionable word. Ponna, his close curly black wig of a crop gripping his always-perspiring skull on a head stuck deep in an-open-bracket convex body, came round to her and whispered something in her ear, very cosy like. That kind of chumminess I didn’t much go for right then, but I heard later on this sort of familiarity was permissible, for her businessman father was a partner to Ponna, and she was entrusted as a ward to him while in London. She even lived up Finchley Road with him and a few others, I heard. That just goes to show how business partners can take enormous risks with their family property.

“Oh!” she said and looked at me in a gonadectomized way. "Come kitty kitty, come baby!” she cooed. And repeated herself several times. Everybody relaxed and resumed dining and raising the usual knife-and-fork Chinese wayang din. I was furious. I don’t go for that sloppy “kitty-kitty” stuff so common among ailurophobes in the hall. This gorgeous gal picked me up…[ Censored: Okay, lads and lassies under eighteen, lay off reading and come back after a glass of milk.] I spent the rest of dinner-time on you-know-whose belly while I was fed choice morsels of curried meat, roasted prawns, and …and... (anyway I don’t see why I should be telling you lot about my new-found joys and privileges!)

To cut the story down to the bare hints, no-one ever dared mention my name any more lest this Whacky fella turned up to crank up another revolution. Anyway, we saw less and less of him. His cooking job kept him away from the hall, well, let’s say it out loud: from this Hon’rable Society of the “Malaya Inn” (no doubt you’ll understand by this the fifth column of the Inns of Court - the other four bastions of the law being Lincoln’s Inn, Grays’ Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple - the trouble is I could never quite make out if it really wasn’t a temple at that what with the Mason’s Arms and Lodge close by, in other words: Hon’rable Society of the Malaya Temple).

Whacky shared a double-room with E. Balasubramaniam at 48, Upper Berkeley Street. The two got to know each other at Whacky’s siblings’ place up in Manchester where Bala was struggling to qualify as a B.Sc. civil engineer on a government scholarship right from the days he passed out from King George the Vth School in Seremban in 1953. In London, he was doing his one-year compulsory apprenticeship in a firm. Bala grew up in Kuala Pilah where his father toiled in the P.W.D. So Bala too was aiming to follow in the father’s plodding steps, only he became the Deputy Director General of the big-money contracts joint. If it was not for his rather slight build, fine short nose, not too pronounced lips, and overly bushy body, he would have had a hard time convincing anyone he wasn’t an African or an Australian aborigine: he was totally black-skinned,covered with a crown of uncombable black curly hair. German women would stop in the streets just to dig their fingers in his hair! I can’t say what they did with the loads of Bryl-cream they brought up in their hands! Not that Africans were not fine-nosed and thin-lipped too, but just that Bala was a mélange of Aryan features and his (ours as well) Dark Continent throwbacks. What however made him stand out was his switch-on/switch-off dance-floor smile. He would lightup at any moment as though someone accidentally knocked the power-switch on - especially at awkward moments - and the smile would iron out all frictions. Since he was from the ULU, Whacky thought it wasn’t such a bad idea to get him into the MSU-committee. Only he didn’t realise to what an extent!

Whacky got his chow at the Catholic hostel in which he was the chef, cooking as it were for himself as well. Now and then he would pop in for a curried dinner on his day off. Until one week day, he turned up right in the middle of dinner time. Ponna later wagged about this. He chucked up the cooking post - at the point of a long meat fork and chopping knife wielded by the Spaniard assistant cook on parole for good behaviour.

Zain was the first to greet him. A surprise to some but not to those who knew the man. Zain Azraai, the impeccably dressed gentleman, was just as correct in his manners: no grudges, no loss of face. He was his usual self. It was almost as if he felt relieved by the ousting he got, and he seemed not to mind it at all. In fact, both Whacky and Zain, the old Victorians, behaved as though nothing had happened with the elections. Whacky appeared to appreciate the man even more after that. Curiously, I heard Bala holding forth on Whacky one day. He seemed to know a lot about his room-mate. Later on, this kind of knowledge stood him in good stead in his meteoric career in government service. He said Whacky was offered the scholarship to Oxford first, and when he turned it down, Zain got it. Whacky apparently had something against returning to serve the colonial administration for five years after coming down from Oxford. Zain must have been aware of Whacky’s position and must have sympathised. The unwritten code of honour of Old Victorians, eh?

I was already wishing after watching these two that the next time round - don’t get me wrong, I don’t go for all that crap about reincarnation - I mean if some hon’rable member of the Malaya Inn or Temple would take me back with him, I would certainly like to have become - since I would enjoy the status of a “London-return”- Head Pet-Cat of the VI! What's this school that produces geniuses by the dozens every year? Perhaps it's all due to the rojak they serve in the tuck-shop for a mere five cents! Besides, the proximity to the Thai border regions might have earned me the favours of a bevy of the Siamese breed instead of the badly crossed-up one-and-only Siamese She-Cat in these here parts.

Did I say things began to pick up at the Inn? Well, perhaps, I was exaggerating a bit. That would be underestimating somewhat the boys back in the capital. Give or take a few weeks, June was already at hand, lectures were over, and the summer heat stealthily climbed up one’s thighs, and with nothing so much as exams to worry about all this sort of slowed down the initial burst of revolutionary activity. Besides, every lad after chow headed for the British Council to get first knock at the au pair girls from the Continent, for that was the period when trainloads of them landed at Victoria Station. Then after dinner, the place simply emptied out, except for some local girls eating their hearts out in the dining room. If you wanted to speak to a Malaysian or Singaporean, you would have to waylay him, as for instance E.Bala, right in front of a nightclub in Swiss Cottage. I say “in front” not without proper cause. Once they crossed the main door, their legs and arms and torsos would jerk, jitter, and jive tout azimuth and when they would have sweated buckets even barrels of brandy and whisky by closing time, they would have to be lugged half-dead by their hefty and beefy girls from the Continent home for the night. And where do you think they all ended up?

You guessed right. Only the Warden had stuck up a "dos" and "don'ts" rule-sheet on the notice-board, and the one that interested all the boys was: "All visitors must vacate the premises before eleven!" The question is, What is it you can't do before eleven that you can do after eleven! The always-reeking Hungarian caretaker cleaning the basement and kitchen from that hour on was gatekeeper and Spanish serano until dawn. If you rang the bell after eleven for the first time, and he opened it to let you in, you might more than likely take to your heels, for he looked like - Bless his Soul! - a Dvarapala, the terrifying guardians of Hindu or Buddhist temples: dishevelled from stooping under dining tables to pick up what I only knew was there, his hirsute and Gargantuan physiotherapist's stubby blubbery fingers and Popeye forearms, his wobbly flabby all-round belly outsizing Asterix's, he literally breathed out ammoniac detergents at that hour. But if you could spare a few half-crowns or were on good terms with the turbanless substitute meals ticket-seller who was reputedly fiancé-ed to the caretaker's frail anaemic-looking daughter, you could gain entrance to the place even if you brought along the band of hard-drinking and raving Russian komsomol and Kosack light opera dancers with you. Only trouble was that from about two or so, the insomniac Warden would be prowling around with his ear to walls and doors, and you might find yourself being hauled up and having to declare intermission time in the middle of the act.

For me, the problem of having to find a long moment of shut-eye became a chimère. After eleven, the entire place heaved and hopped, creaking weazing noises like old-time fire engines belching the steam-powered brakes and shunting to and fro as in the Kuala Lumpur Brickfields marshalling yard kept me up. It was then that I'd take a walk in the sidewalk, just when the Siamese-Cross She Cat was returning from her walkabout tour of Hyde Park.

"What's going on in there?" she wanted to know one night. "Every time I pass by at this hour, the hall block sounds like an army of Swiss yodelers trilling their vocal chords!" If you're wondering about this chick's lingo, stop heating up your brain. Remember the Siamese learnt their English from "Anna", and bear in mind that I'm not likely to keep low-class company: she plies her trade, mind you, in the Empire's Metropolis of Parks, the Hyde Park (the reason why Robert Louis Stevenson also chose Mr. Hyde to represent the better half of man) and not just in any cheap dingy East End dump!

"Oh, that," I said, as though it was already in the morning papers, and you can also see how my tongue also gets affected while in her company. "Just some Swiss chicks practising the art of falsetto singing for their Federal (Inter-Cantons) Annual Chinese Wayang Falsetto-Yodeling Championships."

"Odd thing, they'd want to rehearse just when everybody's gone to sleep," she said. She was swaying her hind chops, and she popped the question that most concerned her. "Who pays them to rehearse so late?"

"Oh that, that's no sweat," I said. "They get what's known as retarded payment. The Swiss chicks leave behind numbers, very special numbers. In fact, these numbers are secret, only known to the gals and their beaux. The boys go back, rise in government service, and then send back to these numbers millions ... of dollars US, of course."

"That sounds like a very lucrative deal," she said as though she was making a remark about the Mona Lisa's leer at the Louvre.

"You're telling me? The monthly interests from those sums themselves would be enough to feed the destitute of Africa, Asia, and Central & South America for three centuries."

The Siamese-Cross Cat appeared to be turning things over in her mind for a while and then she said: "You know, Timmy, I got a good voice too. Can I join the troupe?"

"Naaa...aa," I said and looked at her pitifully askance.

"Do you want to sample an aria of my voice right now?" She insisted so much I was afraid she might at any moment start caterwauling, and the police would be down on me thinking I was violating her virtuous-virtuoso gifts.

"Oh, no, that wouldn't be really necessary, I believe you," I said. "I'm sure your gifts in this domain are stupendously legendary." I was only trying to reassure her.

"Then, you can at least put me on the chorus. You have an official position in this residence. I'm sure your word carries a lot of weight with the hierarchy in there."

"I'm afraid you got the whole thing upside down. It's a question of pigment. Your fur has got to be blonde white. The boys in the high-up back there are colour-blind! The only colour or rather non-colour they can see is white."

"Look, Timmy! I got some white hairs right here on my under-belly! Won't these suffice?"

I took a good look from my lowly position and shook my head thrice. She must have taken my silent disaffected head movements as a personal slight for her bushy brown tail all of a sudden stopped whisking.

After that night, she didn't even stop by the hall for the usual chummy-chat with me. I should have accepted Christine's offer of a soothing cure!

In the meantime, the tax clerk’s gibberish reports must have reached the head of the pile through the so-called law student boss at the MSD. The latter’s warped interpretations of what took place in the months leading up to the elections based on the bitter-infused telephone calls from the Mason’s Arms must have collided with the accounts in Zain’s English, upsetting as it were normal comprehension since none in power ever understood or spoke the Christian tongue with any recognisable facility, a curse - if there was one - which hounds all in the hierarchy since then..

The result of these hectic gathering of reports was that Whacky came under severe surveillance. A couple of sullen-looking and brooding dusky Tamils, one from the island and the other from the peninsula, suddenly broke upon the scene. They followed Whacky around the hall, even into the lavatories. And whenever they found Whacky all by himself - which was rare - they tried to provoke him, but somehow the encounters never developed into chargeable brawls, for right at the crucial moments when voices and arms were raised, someone or other would inadvertently step into the scene and foil things for the boys.

Whacky was lucky enough to find himself a white-collar job soon after he lost his chief cook's post and that kept him away from the hall; but when he turned up now and then for a curry, the arthritic Indian Muslim woman, assistant to the bouncy blonde and once-well-shaped Housekeeper Mrs. Trotter at the place would take great care to serve him from the plates at the bottom of the trays in the specially heated trolley behind the counter, with the result he would be knocked out for two weeks at a time after that! So more and more he had to stay away from the place for his own good. The truth is, he needn't have bothered, for the assistant housekeeper found it more and more difficult to stoop down to pick up the loaded plates!

“Hands off your c---s and on your socks!” rapped Dave, the American painter from Chicago, now on a G.I. bill and down from the Berlin’s Hochschule for Art.

Both Whacky and Bala startled out of their wet dreams peered into the dimly filtering dawning light athwart drawn thick burgundy-coloured curtains.

David Rodriguez’s stocky but not muscular figure in a dark green services T-shirt and dull white pyjama longs outlined itself sketchily. He was swilling down half a pint of milk at each longheld breath. Three bottles of golden-top half-pints were arrayed on the dressing table. One was empty, the second half-full. Dave taught art in a school in Chicago before deciding to profit from the postwar American Marshall Plan. In fact, it wasn’t art which tugged at him; it was Krishnamurthy, the Theosophical Society’s roving mystic preacher. Dave was looking for a Guru for spiritual guidance, and decided Whacky would be a good substitute since Krishnamurthy went into hiding somewhere in Switzerland. So he turned up à l’improviste and berthed himself down in a sleeping bag in the double-room.

“What the hell!” yelled Bala, and his smile took over before he burst out in a gaggle of geese gurgling peel of laughter.

Dave whose father was Columbian and mother Norwegian looked like a non-Indian Mexican with his walrus moustache and unshaven three-day perpetual growth. A happy-go lucky character, he hit it out well with Bala. In tune with his spiritual leanings, he never drank coffee or tea, and adamantly refused a smoke or any hard stuff. He was one of the early bio-diet boys.

“Where the hell you bought that at this hour?” croaked Bala and pointed to the fast-diminishing milk in the bottles. Dave took his time to gulp down the creamy milk and said:

“Not bad at all these British cows! Gives a good wake-up fillip to the ol’ yen!”

“Hey, how did you get hold of those bottles?” Whacky joined in, half-suspecting the response.

“Was up early ye lazy louts. Wanted to fill the old juice bag with some good clean nectar after that fart-full curries you gave me at the hostel. Opened the front door and what d’ya know? found these bottles just sitting there on the steps. Some guy must have abandoned them, so I thought I’d…”

“Hey, come on, those are the housekeeper’s daily ration. She’ll be ranting and railing all day about thieving WOGS,” cried Whacky.

“Big deal! How much’s a bottle?”

“Better go down and put that un-opened bottle back where you found it.” Dave took another gulp and finished the second half-pinter. “If you want a free bottle or two every morn, just go across the road to the Lodge entrance and pick any number you’d like,” urged Whacky. “They wouldn’t miss a thing over there.”

“No sweat! Hey, brother, can I put this coat on. It’s a bit nippy down there,” said Dave, playfully fondling the lapels and creases of the suit hanging on the almeirah door.

“By no means,” yelled Bala and jumped out of bed with the eiderdown trailing all over the floor and reached for his Hector Power suit that had only the evening come in from the dry-cleaner’s.

“He’s chairing a meeting tonight,” said Whacky, “a commission, an inquiry commission at the hall into why and how and who showed films from the Chinese embassy at the place.” He turned to Bala and asked: “Who asked you to chair the inquiry?” Bala was all smiles again, once he managed to put the suit away in the almeirah.

“Zain,” he said. Zain Azraai - no more the president - was still the foreign serviceman he was while being president.

The games room-cum-concert hall was packed with chairs. Behind the table on the platform sat to one side of Bala, Zain the ex-president, and on the other an American journalist, correspondent in London for the Singapore Tiger Standard [in which Victorian old boy S. Rajaratnam made good with his column: "I Write as I Please"] , the same man who had once interviewed and published a favourable account of Whacky’s studies in Germany.

For an hour after dinner, questions were raised and explanations were given while the American took everything down in longhand. No-one quite understood why he was appointed to the commission. He was quite obviously preparing a report for someone or some authority. He never asked any questions though, unless it was to ask the spelling of a name from Chairman Balasubramaniam in the centre. Bala in his dry-cleaned suit, sparkling white shirt and Manchester University tie with a gold broach stuck in it even outshone Zain. The American by contrast had only a dull pink shirt and white longs on. Bala’s role simply boiled down to catching hands raised and giving permission to speak from the floor. Zain took over the role of interrogator. To his repeated question: “Who obtained the films from the Chinese Embassy?” nobody answered.

Finally, Whacky who was seated at the back, just behind Dude and his girl, stood up and asked permission to voice himself. Right at that moment, the American who was stooped over his notepad looked up and straightened himself.

“Let’s face it, so far everybody who has been involved in this debate has had nothing whatsoever to do with the showing of the films. Only one person obtained and showed the films, and that person is I,” said Whacky in a cool inoffensive tone which was contrary to his normal temperament, I thought. Dude later complimented him on his calm.

“So you admit it,” said the American journalist. “You obtained the films and showed them here, right here in this hall.”

“Of course, I did. I don’t see why I shouldn’t?” He took a short breather and continued. “We here are a multi-racial community composed principally of Malays, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Ceylonese, Eurasians, and Indonesians. It was I who organized the multi-cultural festivities during Deepavali the previous two years, and to represent our different cultures and to give Malayans and Singaporeans a deeper understanding of their roots, I went to the various embassies over here and procured all sorts of films. Yes, these films I showed in this hall to packed audiences. Our boys and girls also brought along their European friends to sample our culture. Now, what’s wrong with that?”

“The question is, you showed films from the Republic of China. That’s what’s wrong with it,” said the American.

“Where else can I go to get films on the Chinese if it wasn’t to the Chinese Embassy?” queried Whacky with aplomb. He was not his usual self. “If there were two Chinese embassies, one for the Nationalist Chinese in Formosa, and the other for the Popular Republic of China, then you might ask: Why I chose the Communist embassy.”

All heads by now were turned and fixed on Whacky.

“As you all know, Britain does not recognise Formosa, and there is only one Chinese embassy here in the United Kingdom.”

The American’s eyes brightened into a glow while he took a long look at Whacky. He then leaned over to Zain and said something out-of-reach of the audience. Zain said something to Bala, and Bala stood up and pronounced the meeting closed.

Whacky kept more and more to himself, reading and listening to the stack of Peggy Lee and Rachmaninoff records on Bala's old His Master's Voice gramophone. The Peggy Lee records Whacky inherited when Michael Joseph had to scat from one flat to another. One great thing about Bala was his love of classical music. He once paid US\\$200 for a ticket - the very last ticket - in Vienna for an opera performance, and if that isn't love, what is? Since Bala was away every evening at the Swiss Cottage night club, Whacky had the room all to himself. I once sneaked into the landing just to spy on the guy since his visits to the hall grew scarce. There he was, playing the Rachmaninov concerto or overture (sorry, I can't tell the difference! Can you?) over and over again till his arm must have flagged, aching from the yanking the record player got. His new white-collar job made him quite a stranger: suede shoes, creased brown pants, blazer, and ready-made black-velvet tie. He even got himself a new hair-cut and was putting on weight. In the weekends, he was away playing cricket and hockey for his workplace team. In short, he became a regular guy and looked like any one of the law students at Malaya Temple. Next thing, I even thought he would become a regular visitor to Mason's Arms and who knows? the Lodge, but that was never to be, thanks to what was going to happen.

The summer drew to a stiff curtain close for the boys. Now the exams came back into view. And so did the pea-souper fog. The summer harvest from the British Council and Swiss Cottage forays meant that twice a week, the boys were obliged to bring in their girls for the subsidised chow at the hall. The new MSU-committee, headed by Hwang Peng Huan, approached Whacky (since he had organized the shows for the previous two years) to get the preparations going for the annual Deepavali Celebrations which was to include a special dinner, concert-cum-cultural show of classical and popular dance and music, film show, and the soirée was to end by the conversion of the place into a disco joint. To top it all, for the first time at the hall, Whacky decided to produce a play.

All over the place, Ponna and his Rumour Gang began to voice doubts about staging a play. And this affected the committee as well, but President Hwang put his foot down and gave Whacky his go-ahead signal for the celebrations to take place on October 31, 1959, while promising to help out in any and every way possible. The gossipers carped quite rightly about the lack of a stage and trained actors. Whacky refused to be discouraged, so he went on a hunt for boys and girls with histrionic talents. The news got around quick enough, for as soon as everybody saw Whacky approach the hall, they all took to their books pretending to study for the exams in December.

Whacky hit on a sure-fire draw. He spread the word that he was going to produce a play by the only Asian Nobel Prize Winner in Literature. And sure enough, instead of running away from him, he had a hard time keeping the boys and girls from pestering him and waylaying him every day on his way to work and back. Some even said he was offered hefty bribes (others held that the potential actresses were even willing to pay generously in kind) for the protagonists' roles, but, in all sincerity [cross my chaste cat's ninth soul], I cannot vouch for this kind of rumour even if I had my ear rather closely tuned to the rumour-mongers' megacycles. Result, the programme as follows:

Reception and Address of Welcome by M.S.U. President HWANG Peng Huan

Guests of Honour: His Excellency the High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya

I -THE MALAYAN STUDENTS' UNION AMATEUR DRAMATIC SOCIETY

CAST (in order of appearance)

GUNAVATI (Queen)..............Pamela Dimney [an ex-Oriental at Harrods]
RAGHUPATI (Priest)..............Leow Siak Fah [an insurance course student]
GOVINDA (King)....................Lal Chand Vohrah [law student: Bar & London U.]
JAISING (Servant to the Prince)..............Chooi Mun Sou [no idea at all]
APARNA (Beggar Girl).......................Jennifer Bulkley [a professional actress]
NAKSHATRA (Brother to the King)...........Roger Meyer [medical student]
MINISTER (Courtier).....................Manoharan Coomarasamy [schoolboy]
NAYAN RAI (General].........................Robert Abraham [Bar student]
CHANDPAL (Second in Command of the Army).. Jamshid Medora [haven't a clue]
ATTENDANT (to the Queen)..................Theresa Ee [Theresa who???]
DRUVA (the Heir to the Throne)............Chandran Coomarasamy [schoolboy]
CITIZENS and OTHERS

(from the left) Lal Chand Vohrah, Leow Siak Fah, Chandran Coomarasamy and Roger Meyer

You'll gather from the above programme that the times were only meant to be relative. No attempt was made to hurry things up since the guests of honour arrived only fifteen minutes late.

Multi-ethnic audience in sarees and tuxedoes, led by the Natchatiram girls from Seremban

Rehearsing for the above programme proved to be quite a messy challenge. Imagine the multi-ethnic players mouthing English written by an Indian who created the better part of his work in a non-Christian tongue, or who habitually only wrote in Bengali while Tengku Razaleigh's group sang out of tune to Yu's flexions on the pianoforte which bounced back and forth Hooi's baritone voice, all strung up on Apel's wailing-ranting violin and the Woody-Woodpecker nail-hammering by the decor artists, and you'll get a fair idea of the cacophonous strains that circulated in the acoustics-less games room.

The ex-Indian Army officer Warden was having his revenge alright. When Whacky approached him to reserve the hall for the play rehearsals, he would cock his head slightly from his six-feet or so military erectness, well-swathed in a double-breasted light-chocolate blazer with knobbly brassy buttons, and say:

" Of course! The hall's yours."

"Shall I come in to work out the times?"

"Don't bother, I've already noted it up here," he'd say pointing his index finger to his head.

But, when the players turn up for the rehearsals, the place would be swarming with some indigenous group singing and swaying about the place. Then, there would ensue an inter-ethnic debate about rights. Only when Whacky told them all: "Just think, we have all to live together back home. What the Warden does here for his own reasons shouldn't affect us back there!" that the group accepted to let the players go ahead with the production of the play.

In the meantime, a new threat surfaced. Victorian Robert Abraham (Class of 52 or 53), though at first a willing participant, suddenly became less and less cooperative. He would turn up late and by refusing to blend in with the rest in the action, posed a real problem. Lest some of you get the idea he was/is a European on account of his Arabo-Jewish-Christian name, let me assure you his origins are Sri Lankan Tamil, the Jaffnese variety. On the night itself, when Whacky had required all players to be dressed and ready by a quarter to eight, he remained in his suit and tie in implacable indifference.

"Okay, you," I saw Whacky fume. "I'm giving you five minutes and not a second more. If you're not in your general's costume by then, I'll play your role. I know your part by heart." Of course he couldn't have, but I could see Whacky dared him to call his bluff. Whacky looked daggers at the sullen character who refused to budge his bottom stuck on a dining table. The eye-balling continued for another few seconds. The general relented.

Five minutes later, Whacky was back after introducing the play to the audience. The "general" was in his uniform, though his head was cowed.

Tunku Ya'acob was especially pleased with the performance and said what he felt about it to Whacky. So did Victorian K.T.Ratnam, the Information Officer at the High Commission. Unfortunately, the audience at the back could hardly hear a word through all the murmurings of the boys and girls going in and out for dinner in the adjoining hall.

So, as far as Whacky was concerned, it was a flop!

Robert Abraham changed colour after the play. He became friendly. Something he had planned did not work out as he or someone else wanted it. The next day he was back and wanted to know what had to be done to get the play going, you know, such as, where to get copyright permission for the play, where to go for the costumes and how much it would all cost and so on and so forth. The unsuspecting Whacky naturally gave him answers to all his questions since the lad used to follow him around in those innocent school days and tried to ape whatever Whacky did.

A fortnight later, Soosai Pillay, Whacky's neighbour living next door to the Vias's in Brickfields, came looking for him at the hall. He was also very friendly. They had lunch together. Something about him, his smooth light-complexioned skin, fine features, straight black hair parted in the middle and rising and falling on either temple like inverted bust-cups, his sharp high-pitched tingling melodious voice, made Whacky, it seems, forget that they were not really very close in their youthful days, though they never quarreled.

"What are you doing now? Let's take a walk in the park," he said and managed to draw Whacky into taking a stroll in Hyde Park. Once they were on the other side, on the Hyde Park Corner end, he insisted on his coming to the British Council hostel in Knightsbridge for a coffee. Whacky hadn't seen much of him anyway over the years, and for the sake of old times, accepted to go along.

Once at the hostel, he insisted they go into the hall. It was just en face at the main entrance.

"Come, come, I'm going to show you something," he said. Whacky felt there was something wrong, but he followed his teenage-days friend into the hall equipped with a wide semi-circular curtained stage though without a proscenium. "You see that," Soosai - who was studying to become a librarian on a government grant and who returned after qualifying to become the librarian at the Rubber Research Institute and the proud owner of the first SAAB car (according to him) in the peninsula - pointed at the freshly painted decor on the stage. Whacky recognised the scene as that of the play he had just produced.

"Has a play been staged here?" he wanted to know.

"Not yet. Tonight, yes." They looked at each other, and one of them felt like he was being framed.

"That's...that's the...play I just produced?"

"Yes, it's the play you produced alright," said Soosai, a leer helplessly creeping into place.

"With different actors then?"

"No, the same troupe!" came the straightfaced answer.

"How come, nobody told me?"

"That's because you're not supposed to know!"

"Who's staging the play here?"

"Can't tell, lah!"

"Why?"

He shook his head as though he was afraid of some sort of retribution. Then he produced a sheet of coloured paper announcing the performance for the night.

The producer of the play was given as: Noel Moonerasinghe.

Whacky recalled being introduced to the broad-bodied pale brown man with chubby cheeks and wavy black hair, around five feet nine in height. An ex-Penang Free School boy, then doing engineering there. He also remembered clearly how every Malayan student residing in either hostel in Bryanston Square or Knightsbridge suddenly at the mention of his name often hushed up in fear and/or in respect. He was of Sinhalese origin and only much later, years later, Whacky guessed the real reason for his position of authority among Malayans. The kind of fear he instilled in Malayans, it seemed to Whacky, was only accorded to heads of secret societies.

Think of the likes of these two together, and little wonder they are flying at each others' throats out there in the Emerald Isle!

"...until great Bryanston Square to high Knightsbridge shall come against Whacky!"

So Whacky chucked up his job, the only worthwhile job he had had up to then. He was leaving the place, this Users' Paradise! As if you didn't know, this world's divided up into Users and the Used. I leave you to guess who gets the bigger slice of the cake. What Use have Users of the Used? Only if they could be Used again. But if the Usable Used refuse to be Used, what then? Users in Using the Usable Used attain to great heights! Apart from that, they have only what they don't have, that is, principles and ideals! In other words: NADA! You'll say, the Used however have their cold-comfort integrity, merits and qualities. Of course , you're right. So what? Well, just try eating it/them. Or try feeding your starving children with it/them?

Okay, stop trying to make head or tail of this sort of reasoning. That's a cat's logical privilege. Cat's have their form of reasoning that has not been thought of even in human dreams! This's what humans call philosophising. If you can't think things out clearly, put them down in mystifying mystagogy and don't spare any opportunity to coin your own words or give ill-defined extra meanings to perfectly ordinary words. And don't forget, any Philosophy or Theology when put down in clear unambiguous language becomes nothing but common sense minus the mush. So what's the point in not philosophising?

Sample this piece of cat's logic: Wherever Users of this Kingdom have been forcibly put out - United States, China, Israel, Ireland, Kenya - life more or less flourishes; wherever they have been tolerated - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Nigeria, South Africa, Palestine, Afghanistan - life deteriorates.

Moral lesson of this tale: USE the USERS! but don't go on the dole, that's infra-dig. Then, what? Then you'll also become a USER. And then you can eat USERS while they are eating you all raw and bleeding! At last, we're back to the dog-eat-dog world, from which it all started up in the very first place anyway. Only - in the meantime - watch your back, they are stealing a march up on you!

I only got a view of the back of his raincoat and just managed to catch the low-key lackadaisical whistling. I followed Whacky up the winding stairs from the games room. If it wasn’t for the air he was desperately trying to keep up with, I wouldn’t have even noticed it was Whacky. I was feeling rather down and in the blues. I know what you’re thinking: What? a cat got the blues! Well, what’s wrong with that? Hasn’t a cat, too, a right to feel downcast? After all, times were changing, and I wasn’t exactly the pet around the joint anymore. You fail to realise, I live alone in this mansion. No mate, no missus! So why shouldn’t I feel like I got the blues too? And this despite the Siamese-Cross She-Cat’s cat-walk down Bryanston Square at the witching hour! That sort of thing is not for keeps, as you know only too well!

What struck me most was that Whacky was whistling my favourite air: Blossom Dearie’s “Hold Me, Hold Me, Hold Me!” I can’t guarantee whether Whacky got the words right, but I distinctly heard him whispering …[with apologies to Comden & Green]:

I must say I was a bit annoyed at the way he massacred the darlingest tune I’ve ever laid ears on, but the words O! Zapata Forbid! were garrotted and guillotined like only what a post-colonial Indian poet can have managed! I could only give thousand thanks the word “paradigm” didn’t ring out in any of the lines, Ah! Me poor tarnished tongue! Mercifully Spared! Anyway, what’s this “hell” doing in the fourth line? Can’t really blame him. This place was going to the dogs the Jerry-kind, and me, I didn’t much care any more either.

As I saw him turn the Square’s corner and head for Hyde Park, I knew in my bones I’d not see him again for a while, maybe really for years (I heard at a Ponna tongue-wagging session that Whacky had already been well-and-truly lassoed by a Hun-girl and that he was only going to the Continent to face the ham-fisted beer-and-leg-stomping trombone music), but I didn’t really mind, for dear Blossom’s cosy, cuddly tones filled my insides and tickled me in the wrong places, and I myself began to rock from side to side. Some of the guys in the Malaya Lodge said:

“Look, Tim’s drunk; he can’t even walk straight!” To which somebody else retorted:

“Naaauhh! He stoned, lah, donno his front right from his left hind paw!”

Guess I got to be after Blossom’s melancholically seductive voice caressed the infundibulum in my head!

End of First Series of the afore-laid “Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes” being the incomplete, auto-censored but horrendous peripeteia of an errant Victorian in Europe, up to about November 1959.