THE fairy tale ‘Beauty and the Beast’ wasn’t a favourite of mine in primary school back in the 1960s, even though it had all the ingredients of a magical story: enchanted beings, a cursed prince, and a young woman whose kindness and love broke the curse. While some stories seemed
‘In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, cultural critic, poet and philologist. MY village, Kampung Ta-ee in Serian District in the 1950s and 1960s, was typical of rural villages
The Path Through the Fields IN a land where the hills rolled gently as a mother’s lullaby and the streams whispered secrets to the paddy fields, there lived a young fellow named Raham – though most folks just called him Ham. Ham was a stout-hearted lad, the kind who worked
Past the edge of our narrow wetland, with its paddy fields stretching as far as the eye could see, I often caught sight of a curious figure named Dawa. If not for his hair, it would have been easy to mistake him for someone else. The distance made him rather
THE first time I saw and touched a rose flower was in 1960 when I was seven and had just started Primary 1 in our village’s mission school. The solitary bush that introduced me to the beauty of roses was tucked in the corner of a house compound that belonged
Every few months in the second half of the 1960s, a young man named Juwa would journey from his family’s farm to the bus stop at Mile 27 along the winding old Kuching-Serian Road, now replaced by the Pan Borneo Highway.. The bus would take him to Kuching town, about
Dirik was a quiet sort of fellow, the kind you’d likely pass on the road without giving much thought to who he was or where he was bound. He was lean and sunburned, with a face that looked like it had seen too much sun and too little laughter. Folks
The story I’m about to share has been passed down my family line for generations. It traces back four lifetimes before mine, first told by my great-great-grandmother. Assuming each generation spans roughly thirty years, this places the tale’s origins around 1833 — when the world was on the cusp of
“The strongest woman in the world is the one who stands alone.” Anonymous NOW, you wouldn’t think there’d be much to gossip about in a little paddy-farming community like ours in the 1950s and 1960s, tucked away in the heart of the jungle in Serian District, about forty miles from
‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ – Maya Angelou (1928–2014), an acclaimed American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. Simu grew up in a household where love was not spoken aloud