Life has a knack of lulling you in a sense of stability and security, where all that is around you seems "normal". Normal is a weird concept though, isn't it? Between one digit and the next, on your Casio G-shock digital watch, what was one normal suddenly becomes abnormal, becomes the exception rather than the norm.
For the past few years, it's been the norm for me to get together with an old friend once a year. We drink too much while we talk about what's wrong in the world and the particular little part of it that we inhabit. The master plan is agreed and flesh put onto it's bone-white bones. Trouble is the skeleton stays just that and once the hangovers subside, normality rules again and life is reset. Ready to start again next year, we say..
I was coming back from a trip to Japan a couple of weeks ago, when I got a brief, almost curt, text message from my friend. No explanations, no detail, no flesh on the bones of the skeleton. Just the facts. His life had now changed irrevocably. The skeleton made flesh and was now running faster than anyone could imagine.
I'm not sure how I feel about this really but, these last few days has been filled with a sense of loss and nostalgia. I now realise that I am not immune to the passage of time and age and the loss that it brings with it.
I wrote a story about that time in life where I was still special and still had all my super-powers available to me and something like Life and Time and Pain had nothing on me..
This ones for you, buddy.
Games of Stone.
In all our lives, there comes a time where we all have to make a stand and fight for what we believe in, defend that which defines us. We stand firm and shout out our individuality to the world and bask in the awe-filled and jealous glances that our peers throw our way. That moment has yet to arrive for me and now that I’m about to die, I don’t suppose I’ll have any more chances but, somehow that’s not what I regret. I regret going out on my mountain bike to the Aston Hills without telling anyone. I regret that little devil voice in my head that whispered ‘you can do the black run, you’ve still got it in you’. Most of all though, I regret not finishing the stone game.
It’s not that I don’t have anything to shout about, there’s no doubt in my mind that I am special and gifted with super-powers. I was seven year old when I realised this. No, my problem is one of timing really. I was never one for the vulgar and gratuitous displays of the common showman. My moment would be understated and impeccably timed for maximum impact. The outcome I planned in my head would be one where people all over would be suddenly struck dumb about what they had witnessed a good hour or so later. They would be eating dinner or talking to their friends when all of a sudden, “Hang on a min... Did he just...?” and they would stop dead and devote the rest of their lives searching me out to bask in the reflected glory of my presence.
Looking back at my pre-teen self now, I realise that I had put too much stock into technology and not enough in my God-given talents and abilities. The Bionic dream was over. It died when the Bionic Boy movie came out. This was a Philippines’ produced movie that featured a ten year old Singapore boy, Johnson Yap, in the title role. The fact that Johnson Yap was a high achiever - a tae-kwan-do prodigy and a movie star – and a Singaporean meant that no self respecting Malaysian child could ever find the dream of bionic life alluring ever again. That night I had to say good-bye to Steve Austin and something died inside me.
Malaysia, in the mid to late 70’s, was a golden era for us kids. Granted that we only had two television channels to watch and they only broadcast programmes from late afternoon till just before midnight but, in the 70’s we had televisions in our homes. Programming was starting to embrace the west as well. No longer the strict diet of locally produced melodramas and 1950’s era musicals, the 70’s brought us television like Captain Scarlett in the afternoon. And one glorious evening in 1977, the whole nation tuned in and waited with bated breath to catch a glimpse of Lou Ferringo as the Incredible Hulk. Bill Bixby, playing mild mannered Dr Bruce Banner, had the best line ever with his “Don’t make me angry, Mr Magee. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” Playgrounds across the nation resounded with this for years to come.
We had other treats as well. The Gemini Man was a short lived television series about a secret agent that could turn invisible for 15 minutes a day by turning off his ‘DNA regulator’. This was a device that kept him visible as he was rendered invisible as a result of a deep sea diving accident. The ‘DNA regulator’ was in the guise of a digital wrist watch. The Invisible Man was about a scientist that turned invisible and got his mate, who happened to be a master make-up artist, to make him a series of life-like gloves and masks. It had the superb David McCallum in the starring role, fresh from his success in the Man from U.N.C.L.E. Some bright spark in programming decided to air these two series one after the other. The only thing the Gemini Man had going for him was that he used a common wrist watch, one that even a seven year old in Malaysia could get his hands on.
I had become convinced that I could use my watch to give myself a degree of invisibility. I was sure that if I held two of the three small, hard metal buttons on the side of the watch down for some time I would become invisible. The trick was how long the buttons needed to be held down for. I decided that pain was the key and one day I managed to hold the buttons down until the pain in my finger felt like I had cut it open. This was the moment, I unlocked the power of invisibility. I was sure of it.
The next day, I would lose the watch and learn about a whole new level of trouble with my parents. My heart would crack a little and I would find a new friend that I would spend the rest of my life trying to lose.
It had just gone past one in the afternoon. The sun was at its highest in the sky and the heat it beat down on the earth was ferocious. I was sat under one of the three Flame of the Forest trees that were on the school boundary, next to the main gates. Under the book tree is where all the book kids sat before school. It was the place to be, in large part because of Gunasegaram. Guna was an only child and his parents doted on him. Guna’s father ran the magazine shop in Old Town and as a result, Guna had access to all the latest comics from his father’s stall and he would bring a daily stash of comics to share around. Titles like Captain America, with its focus on virtue and the American way would lie alongside counter-culture titles like Howard the Duck and the Silver Surfer. This irony was lost on me at the time. All I knew was that for hour before school, under the shade of the tree, I could escape back into the world that I knew I belonged to.
A world where people like Edward Chong and Sivanathan didn’t exist to plague and torment me.
‘What are you all doing here?’ a voice drawled out from outside the school fence. ‘Kenneth, eh Ken look, what do you think these idiots are doing out here in the hot sun?’ Peter just grunted as he smiled gormlessly through the chain-link fence.
He did that a lot. Never really spoke much. He just smiled a lot and did whatever Siva told him to. Once when Siva was off school on some excuse or another, Kenneth came over to the book tree and asked to borrow a comic. He sat there the whole time flicking through a Green Lantern and then when the assembly bell rang he got up, smiled and left. A couple of days later, Guna and Siva had some argument about something or the other. Kenneth would pull the same Green Lantern issue out of Guna’s hands and tear each page out in front of him, the same fixed smile on his face the whole time.
‘Go away man!’ Guna shouted. ‘We’re just reading and minding our own business lah! Nothing to do with you. Just go away man!’
‘Just reading is it?’ Siva said. ‘But, why just reading here in the hot sun? Why not in the library, where it’s nice and cool?’
The rest of the boys had crowded protectively around Guna and were shouting warnings and taunts at Siva and Kenneth as the two of them sauntered towards the main school gates and made their way to the book tree. I sat very still and with the certainty of belief that comes only with the truly innocent, I knew that this was why I was granted my special gifts. I took a deep breath, lifted my left hand up and pressed the two magic buttons as hard as I could. I would become invisible and teach them a lesson about respect.
‘Eh, what you doing?’ Siva’s voice suddenly said. ‘You praying or what? Kenneth, look at Changman. He so scared, he’s praying is it?’
I’m ashamed to admit it but, I lost my self control at this point. How could this fool mistake my use of the DNA stabiliser with the act of praying?
‘I’m using my watch to be like the Invisible Man stupid!’ I shout at him. ‘Then when you can’t see me, I’ll come and kick your backside all the way to class lah, idiot!’
‘Watch is Gemini Man lah!’ Siva says in the low voice of his that’s so very dangerous. ‘Invisible Man means you got some mask on. I think we should see if you got a mask or not huh.’
The next part happens so fast I can’t recall how it happened. All I remember is being face down with Kenneth sitting his sizable fat bulk on my back while Siva had his foot on my head. He was wiping the hard rubber thread of his school shoes across my head and ear – looking for where the mask starts I’m told later by the rest of the boys. I couldn’t hear anything he said at this point. Yes, my ears were blocked up by soft loamy soil and a bully’s shoe but, I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my head. It was the sound of frustration, of yet another dream broken and dashed, of the unfairness of it all. And as suddenly as it arrived, it was removed.
I heard shouting and then Kenneth’s weight off my back. Arms pulled me roughly up and pushed me against the broad tree trunk. I blinked and saw in front of me an older boy, this one with the pale blue tie that school prefects wear. I’d been saved from further beatings by a prefect on his way to do Gate duty. This usually involved standing by the main gates and stopping any students from entering once the assembly bell had rung. Stopped students were supposed to have their names taken and passed on to the Discipline Master for punishment. What usually happened is that for the price of a bottle of Green Spot orange or a hot pastry from the canteen, some prefects would be happy to let you go without writing your name in their book. This prefect was not one I recognised and after Siva tried to bribe him, we all ended up booked and sent up to the Head’s office. I should have been grateful for being rescued but, I did end up with my comics confiscated and a letter from the Head’s office to take home to my parents.
I saw that prefect the next day. Our eyes met and the briefest of nods were exchanged. I soon got to know his name, Simon, and after he told me that I was mad, he knew my name. Simon thought I was mad because he caught me one day playing the stone game. This was a game I’d made up to test and hone my new found Jedi powers. Star Wars fever had hit Malaysia and it was a life defining moment for me. At last, I knew what it was that I was meant to be. A Jedi.
The Stone game was simple really. All I had to do was move a stone with my Jedi powers from the school gates all the way home. A twenty six mile journey that involved walking for two miles past the Girls school to Old Town, catching the number seventeen minibus to State Interchange then taking the Sri Jaya bus number fifty and finishing off with a mile or so walk back home. I modified the rules a bit after the first day and decided that as long as I didn’t use my hands, this would be fine.
I’d miscalculated that day and kicked the stone into a gravely patch. I was trying to nudge and kick the stone back out onto the hard tarmac when a voice behind me made me jump.
‘Oi! What the hell are you doing huh?’ I turned around and Simon was stood right behind me. I considered lying but, something in the way he looked at me made me trust him at the last. I told him everything. When I got to the part about being a Jedi he laughed, bent down and picked the stone up and put in down on the tarmac in front of me.
‘OK, Jedi boy. Let’s go’ he said. A few seconds later, he turned to me and said ‘So, what is a Jedi really then?’
We played the stone game every day for a few years. We even got quite good at it. We never got the stone all the way home though. We tried to kick it onto the bus but, it hit the conductor and we decided that we would give the stone game a rest. Other games followed though. We came from two different worlds and backgrounds. I was from a comfortable middle class Chinese family and he was the oldest of five brothers living in a two room subsidised government house and a missing father. We discovered life and new games together and somehow always stayed in each other’s hearts. Even when it got time to leave and make new lives for ourselves, we somehow found each other. I remember sitting in a bed-sit in South Kensington twenty years ago and answering the door to find Simon stood there with all his possession in a cardboard suitcase. We lived through marriage, children, infidelities and drama and divorce together and now I was about to die without somehow finishing our last game together. That game where we tally up our score and make our amends and peace with each other.
‘You are such a dick, do you know’ a voice floats through my hazy consciousness.
‘You’re a fat, old Chinaman not some fucking Jedi on a mountain bike. I’m the one with the shit life and death wish man. What the hell were you thinking?’ the voice drags me out of the nice warm cocoon I was in and dumps me in a bright room filled with pain. I open my eyes.
‘Glad to see you back with us man’ Simon says as he smiles.
‘Wh..Where.. where am I?’ I managed to croak. He walks over and gets me a glass of water.
‘Stoke Mandeville. Some kids found you in some bushes. After they found your bike wrapped around a tree. Nic and the kids are here but, they’ve gone to get some food. You’ve been here a night. You are really a dick, you know?’ he says as he sits on the side of my bed.
‘Anyway, you’re awake so that’s good. Your family’ll be happy to see you. She’s going to kill you, or at least sell your bikes. You know that right?’ he says. ‘I’m off home. See you later.’
My family come piling in at that point and I nod briefly at Simon as he walks out the door. Later that day when visiting time is over and they’re leaving, my wife hands me a gift-wrapped box.
‘It’s from Simon. He said to give it to you when you woke up.’ she says. ‘Oh and he also said to tell you that you talk in your sleep.’ she laughes.
When they all leave, I open the carefully wrapped box and inside, nestling on a bed of pure white cotton wool is a single, beautiful stone.
