Makcik Puteh & Belangkas

Makcik Puteh came from southern Thai. I am not sure whether she was Thai, Chinese or Malay though she had a very fair complexion. Her daughter Min (derived from 'Yasmin', I suppose) was also very fair and looked more Chinese than Malay or Thai.

Makcik Puteh was around 50 or so. Note the spelling of her name as Puteh instead of Putih as that was what her IC told us. Obviously she hailed from a time prior to the spelling reform and standardisation of the Indonesian-Malay languages.

The story of Makcik Puteh has been one of a few minor tragedies and heroic saga. I knew her very well for a number of reasons. For a start she was my neighbour, with her house just 50 metres from my place; secondly as (originally) a Thai she felt a very close kinship with my great grandma who like Makcik Puteh came from Yala in southern Thailand.


Whenever Makcik Puteh came to my house, which was often, she would always pay respect first to my great grandma with a "Sawutdee ka mair", where ‘mair’ means ‘mother’. Then they would both chitchat in Thai all the way. I wonder whether they talked about the Thai hunks of their days in their respective village wakakaka.

Pakcik Daud was her hubby – a gentle, kind and very quiet man in his 60’s who was always seen pushing his bike rather than riding it – well, that’s my memory of him. He looked very dignified, perhaps because he was always quiet, not blabbering or bragging away like some other men. He also possessed a dignified smile.

As one of two Malay families living for years in my sector of the Ayer Itam village (at one time deemed the largest Chinese village in Malaysia) he and his family were naturally fluent in Penang Hokkien. The kids in the neighbourhood addressed him as either Ah Chek (uncle who's younger than father) or Ah Peh (uncle who's elder to father), depending on their age. He would smile benignly and respond "Ah bah cheen chnea kuai" (laddie, you are well mannered).


The only time I remember hearing him speak in Malay was with a young Malay constable who was just posted to my village. Bloke was a bachelor and thus not entitled to official quarters in the village police station complex. He was looking for a room to rent and sought out Pakcik Daud for help.

The story of how Pakcik Daud and Makcik Puteh came together could be written up as a romantic novel full of dramatic turns, of sufferings, tragedy, despair, redemption, and a happy ending … well, almost.

Makcik Puteh was originally married to a bastard in Yala. The man was a violent drunk who used to thrash the hell out of her whenever he felt like it. Her sufferings were so great and unbearable that she decided the only way to stop her misery was to end her own life.

Kismet, nasib, karma, mialee, thnee choo tnea, destiny. As Fate decreed, her husband brought her to Penang on a business trip, probably for her to continue serving him like a personal servant. Realizing that she was now in a foreign land, and that killing herself here would not bring shame on her own family in Yala, she made the ultimate decision to commit suicide in Penang.

Thus when her husband left her alone in a hotel room, she plucked up enough courage to run away to a nearby deserted pier that she spied upon earlier. She intended to die by drowning.

In those days, poor women committed suicide by mainly two means, hanging or drowning. Poison was hard to come by while cutting one’s wrists requires a wee understanding of biological functions or one would end up with messy painful cuts but no death. Any other methods would be too complex, expensively unattainable or demanded the unwitting participation of innocents, like walking in front of a truck, to the horror of the poor unsuspecting driver.

Of the two most convenient means, hanging also demanded some equipment and technical improvisation – rope into a noose, overhanging house beam or branch of a tree of the right height, stool, chair or crate to stand off while preparing for the hanging.

Thus drowning was by far the simplest, unless of course you were living in the middle of the Sahara where there wouldn't also be any overhanging beam or tree with convenient branches around. Maybe that could explain why in ancient times there were more suicides among Chinese women than Arab ones, as evident by the many Chinese stories on the watery type of unhappy ghost who wanted to drag any unfortunate passerby down into the water to drown.

Drowning requires the wannabe suicide to just jump into deep water! But she mustn’t be a good swimmer – alamak, obviously it was not easy to commit suicide. Some piers around Penang harbour provided easy access to the required deep water, preferably in the late night without busybody do-gooders around to interfere.

So there was Makcik Puteh (or whatever she was then called in Thai) standing at the edge of the secluded pier, reciting her last prayer, when in the nick of time, along came our hero, Pakcik Daud – I cannot but help visualizing him then pushing his trusty bike along as well wakakaka.

Chancing upon the forlorn woman and realizing what she was about to do, Pakcik Daud ‘slow talked’ (gently coaxed) her into abandoning her drastic decision. The kind gentleman that he was, he took her home to recover from that traumatic experience. To cut the story short, he and Makcik eventually became an item, a de facto happy couple who lived reasonably happy lives together for perhaps the next 30 to 40 years.

If JAIPP had existed in those days with its current imprimatur to hunt down and seek out 'sinners', what would its officers have said or done with the loving couple’s de facto relationship ;-)

Now, I wonder whether it was a coincidence that just another 50 metres away from Pakcik Daud’s house there lived a family with almost exactly the same 'hero-rescue-damsel-from-drowning' drama. The only difference was the couple were Chinese. Ah Ee (Auntie) was married to a brute of a farmer who too abused her in the most horrific manner.

Just as an inkling of that bastard’s horrendous brutality, one day Ah Ee had just given birth to a child (his child) when the brute rushed into the bedroom to beat her up for not immediately going out to hoe the field – yes that's right, just immediately after she delivered their baby all by herself. He was the ultimate bastard.

To stop the horrific beatings and kicking, she was forced to immediately crawl out with her newborn baby wrapped in a sarong tied to her, to till her husband’s field.

Following the same script she went to the pier to drown herself but was rescued by another hero, Ah Chek (Uncle), who happened upon the almost-tragic scene when he was cruising around in his taxi looking for passengers. He certainly picked up one that late night who became his life partner. They lived together in de facto but very happy life. Ah Ee also was eventually joined by two of her daughters from the previous unhappy union.

Looks like my village was full of such compassionate and wonderful heroes.

Back to the main story - Pakcik Daud was married before he met Makcik Puteh, though I didn't know anything about his wife, whether she passed away or was separated from him. I would find it hard to believe the latter. He had a son by that wife. And he had one more with Makcik Puteh which unfortunately turned out to be a tragic case. Their son died in his teens.

Makcik Puteh had some children in Thailand and was subsequently reunited with only a daughter, Min or as we call her Min Chee Chee (sister). She looked more Chinese than Thai and turned out to be one of the two tale tattlers in our corner of the village. I was caned on numerous occasions by my mum because of Min Chee Chee’s tattling about my naughtiness. Bitch! ;-)

But Min Chee Chee had one sole redeeming feature - she has a very sweet beautiful daughter Aminah wakakaka. Fortunately, Aminah was not like her KPC (kay poh chnee or busybody) mum but more like Pakcik Daud although she wasn’t his biological granddaughter.

Though I know Aminah's family like my own, the strange thing is I had neither seen nor knew (still don't) who was Aminah's father, and of course as a young kid in those days, didn't bother to find out who he was.

During the days when we were kampung playmates we knew nothing of boyfriend-girlfriend stuff despite Pakcik Daud teasing us mercilessly whenever he (pushing his bicycle) passed by us gambolling in the village. But we soon grew up and became conscious that we had evolved into more than just innocent playmates. As the sad situation in such cases, we gradually drifted apart though we were still friends.

For years, whenever I returned to Penang from Kuala Lumpur I looked forward to seeing her, and I believe she me too, but alas, there was already a very distinct religious barrier between us – obviously she wasn’t someone I could invite out for a date, though I knew her family would not have objected. But I was mindful that had I dated a Muslim sweetie like Aminah, her family would expect ‘commitment’ from me gulp [kaytee squeezing thighs tightly together wakakaka]!

Thus we would only meet in a very respectable non-khalwat-ish manner in our respective homes, just to update each other on our lives. Mind you, when we did so we couldn't help telegraphing each other with eye messages that only young people could do effortlessly ;-)

I haven’t been back to that part of the village for many many years and thus haven’t seen her for eons, and wonder whether she has married. I would be very surprised if a lovely sweetheart like her wasn’t.

Anyway back to Makcik Puteh - Ah Ee was an ace in making kuih (Malay cakes) which she sold in our village 3 or 4 times a week. As a kid Aminah would accompany her ‘Tuk (granny) on their rounds. Each would carry a bamboo basket containing around 200 kuih’s each. At around 10 sens each they earned RM40 of which the profit would be about 40%, a solid RM16 or so.


One of their stops would be at my house where Makcik was more interested in gossiping with my great granny, mum and the neighbouring womenfolk. Incidentally Makcik Puteh suffered from what Malays call latah, which the dictionary has it as ‘a nervous paroxysmal disease aroused by suggestions and often taking the form of hysterical mimicry’ – huh?

There are of course many forms or degrees of latah. In Makcik Puteh’s case, to make her ‘melatah’ all you need to do is merely to startle her or even tickle her, and she would go slightly hysterical and let loose a string of #&^%$#*@^ (profanities) in the Malay, Chinese and Thai languages. Unfortunately the village women thought it was fun to see Makcik let loose so they would startle her at least once whenever she came by.


Mind you, she’s a bit of a joker herself. If she arrived when my mum was cooking she would loudly proclaim that she wanted lunch and demanded “Lai, toobah hair tee wah ay bincheng” (C’mon, put the pork dish right in front of me). Of course she was only joking. And sweet Aminah would giggle at her 'Tuk's witty pretend-demand.

Only on one rare occasion did she eat in my house. One day, after her cakes were all sold out, she came back to my house just to sembang (gossip) with my mum when there was suddenly a heavy and quite prolonged downpour which prevented her from going home.


As she and Aminah was rather famished my mum insisted that they ate at our place, and provided them with plain rice, terung panggang (grilled brinjal or egg plant) with soya sauce and chilli padi (birdeye chilli, or as we Penangites call it, chabai burung), exactly what mum and I had that day. ;-) yes, in those days I did live a Spartan life, mind you, not by choice but because we were very poor and rarely could afford meat or seafood.



Apart from the tragedy of her son’s early death, Makcik Puteh had another tragedy in her life, or rather, a tragic habit – which has been why I wrote that she and Pakcik Daud lived almost but not a completely happy life together.

Her tragic habit was her gambling addiction, but only for the game of belangkas. Unfortunately for her, the game of belangkas was quite popular in Ayer Itam village and thus provided her with plenty of opportunities to participate. And as she was a devotee of belangkas, she knew where to go in the village during her kuih-selling rounds to ‘stumble’ upon an ongoing game.


Belangkas is a game of chance determined by the toss or rather, spin of a die (singular of ‘dice’).

There are at least two versions of this game – the more common one is a kind of Chinese die which has a wooden pick through two of its 6 faces to serve as a spinning axis for the cube, or to put it simply, a four-sided top.

Each of the four remaining faces is decorated respectively with the image of a belangkas (horseshoe crab), prawn, fish and (to break up the marine pattern?) a flower - on the other hand, it could of course be a marine flower; sometimes a star is shown instead of the flower (starfish?).

The other less known version uses 3 dice with 6 faces each, showing respectively a belangkas, prawn, fish, flower (or star), butterfly and a beautiful lady (now, that’s more like it for kaytee wakakaka).

According to the Malaysian Act 289 (Common Gaming House) of 1953 describing illegal public gambling gulp, the second version (with 3 dice) is called ‘hoo hey how’ which translates into ‘fish, prawn & horseshoe crab’. It’s exactly the same description that could be given to the 4-sided top version or belangkas, but that’s how the law technically differentiates between the two versions.

Both would have a staking board. I am only familiar with the belangkas version where the board would be marked out in four rectangles to correspond with the four images of the top. Punters place their bets on the symbol they favour. The top is spun in a saucer or small dish, following which a small bowl is placed over the spinning top. The concealment provided by the small bowl enables betting to continue even after the spinning has stop.

I wonder how the staking board for the second version ‘hoo hey haw’ would be like, considering there are almost 200 possible combinations which could eventuate.

Anyway, the chances for the simpler belangkas version are obviously in the banker’s favour, as all games would be, as he* would enjoy 75% advantage (despite the payout of 3 to 1) while the gambler has only 1 in 4 chances of winning.

* haven’t seen a woman belangkas banker yet

Poor Makcik Puteh frequently lost her entire kuih revenue on belangkas. After her loss she would come to my house to sob out the sad news to my mum on how foolish she had been, but alas, she couldn't but help continuing to punt as she was a belangkas addict. When my mum had a few ringgit to spare she would give Makcik Puteh those; as Makcik was very well liked, other neighbours would also chip in to ameliorate her financial predicament.

Aminah would confide to me that her grandpa was very sweet and tolerant, never scolding the errant wife but only advising her gently against gambling her earnings away – indeed he was the fine soft-spoken gentleman I had always considered him to be. But the tragedy of Makcik Puteh was that she was hooked on the game of belangkas, throwing caution to the wind to stake on the hoo, hey, how or hwa (flower).

I think by today, both Pakcik and Makcik would have long left us, unless they are still living to the ripe old age of 90-ish and 80-ish respectively. Other than their lost boy and Makcik’s problem with belangkas, both had a wonderful de facto relationship.

Perhaps in that iffy place called ‘heaven’ some immortal would probably be mischievously startling Makcik to set off her latah-ing where she would then enliven the place with her #&^%$#*@^ wakakaka, while Pakcik Daud would smile on benignly as he pushes his bike around ;-).

I have no doubt at all that both would make 'heaven' a far better and more lively place with their presence.