Love is blue and Duke street

8.3.2010
Love is blue…

The instrumental rendition of the song “Love is Blue” by the Paul Mauriat Orchestra always sends shivers down my spine, not of the chilling type but one of nostalgia! It reminds me of the carefree and stress free days in 70’s when I was playing around the compounds of Dewan Sri Pinang and the City Council car park area of No. 2, Duke Street. It also in a way brings me the thoughts of the financial tsunami that hit the Sham family.
In the early months of 1970 when I was in Std 1 at Hutchings School, I used to spend a lot of time at my paternal great grandmother’s house in the City Council quarters of 2, Duke Street adjacent to Dewan Sri Pinang. In fact that was the address used for me to gain entrance to Hutchings School with the hope one day I would go to Penang Free School. This, my mother did after failing to register me at St Xavier’s Institution. History has not changed much, now we are using the same tactic (clinic address) to get our kids to SM Taman Connaught. I remember playing hide and seek as well as cops and robbers amongst the cars in the car park there. We used to collect crimson red beads which dropped off the large angsana trees there and we created our own games from it. I used to see trishaw riders and vagabonds who used to doze to the sedating seaside breeze that was found there. Life was almost at a standstill and quiet.
The living quarters was shared with another family – Wahab, Habibu, Rashid, Khatijah (mentally challenged) and Maimunah. There used to be a tall dark gentleman who used to stop by at their house daily for a tall glass of neem leave juice to control his diabetes. He gulped the whole concoction at one go!

Attah’s (we called her) specialty was fried Chencharu fish stuffed and tied with spicy grated coconut. She used to love food generally, in spite of ill general health (diabetes, hypertension, obesity and asthma among others), especially vadai! I remember her pounding her betel leaves and lime in a metal canister as she was almost toothless and spitting in a coconut shell which she used as a receptacles for oral refuse! She had bad eczema. She lived with her moody hearing impaired son who was happy staying single after separating from his wife only a few months of marriage. Attah’s husband was housed with his daughter, my paternal grandmother.
I remember watching the Chingay procession which was held in conjunction with the Pesta Pulau Pinang. Those days the Pesta Pulau Pinang was an annual affair and was held around the Esplanade. Bank Negara was later built nearby. They even placed sandbags once along the roads to hold their street F1 Grand Prix. In its heydays, Penang was on the world map as one of the venues for a F1 meet!
And the taukwa rendang and pasembor from Esplanade with its unique thick and rich gravy is simply out of this world.
Just like Fred Savage enjoying his childhood in “The Wonder Years”, I was playing without a care in the world to the music of “Love is Blue” playing somewhere in the background.
Deep in the quarters of City Council, the adults were having fierce discussions about financial crisis, debts, missing jewelry and bankruptcy!
And the Beatles have gone separate ways. Blame it on Yoko.