My grandfather is not well.


He suffered two strokes in three months. Prognosis is not happy.
Somehow I start to realise how much I've neglected him. I don't speak more than ten words of Teochew, he doesn't speak ten words of mandarin. We haven't had a single meaningful conversation, but somehow he always seems to be there, immutable and unchangable. Always healthy despite whatever nature could throw at him. Always smiling and nodding. My father says he looks forward to every single of our visits, but I know that already.


Now he's not the person I knew. Walks hunched, bent over a cane, instead of upright like he always did. But still smiling, like he always did.


He came from Guangzhou, like every other immigrant. He worked in a rice plantation in Kedah, alternating between odd jobs. The Japanese came, and he ran away for awhile, back to China. He met my grandmother there, and returned after the war. The Emergency was in full swing, with the MCP recruiting peasants for a rural revolution against the Tunku. He joined the Malayan Communist Party, along with the entire Lim clan, though he never did anything for it. The Malaysian police killed two of my granduncles for Communist activities. My grandfather was 'harmless'; the Tunku gave him a plot of land to farm and stop bothering them.


He's always been there, 500 km to the north. Now, I'm not so sure.


Somebody said that at 1:21 AM

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