I am reduced to this

Warning : The UN Convention Against Torture signatories could not protect me from the peine forte et dure that Uja is capable of if I didn't write about this. So consider yourselves forewarned that this update contains explicit details about food items. Sorry I had to break my promise.

Baya, my younger sister and I used to share a room back in Subang Jaya. Hence the constant bickering and a tarik rambut relationship between us when we were younger. I used to terrorize her so much so that she has grown up a little traumatized, if I dare say so myself. But we are both much older now, she turned out to be such a sweet lady that if you have any goodness in you even if you are in your baddest, meanest moods, you can't help but be nice to her. She had better not know I said this.

Anyway, one night some 15 years ago, I was woken up by her screams, saying that a cockroach had entered one of her ears. Panicking, I quickly ran to our parents' room and knocked frantically to alert them. I remember Mak asking me if I'd like to come along to the doctor's. I would normally jump at any opportunity to get out of the house in the middle of the night. While the rest of my younger siblings were in deep slumber, under Makcik Rose's guard, the four of us drove into the night, looking for a 24 hr clinic. We found one, so Mak and Baya went inside. Ayah and I were left alone with nothing much to say to each other, so he brought me to a roadside stall where he ordered what soon became my most favourite pre-dawn meal and one of the nicest memories I have of my Ayah. A hot bowl of spicy sup kambing, or mutton soup.

I remember the yellowish broth, fragrant with the smell of some exotic spices, and that almost creamy texture of the soup sliding down my throat like a warm blanket enveloping my easophagus and settling the Symphony No 5 in my stomach like gripe water to a colicky baby , sipped in between dunks of toasted bread, under the stars while the rest of the neighbourhood slept. Soon the little squirt joined us with Mak, explaining that it was not a cockroach that had got stuck in her ear but a large boil. The throbbing made it feel like something was gnawing the insides of her ear. She was somewhat pacified, the good doc must have given her a shot. Mak ordered something other than mutton soup, she's health conscious even then. After cleaning bowlfuls of soup, as I was the designated tong sampah who finished up what others could not, we went home, back to bed happily counting kambing to sleep.

I rekindled with childhood memories of mutton soup, at Upper Boon Keng some 30 minutes from where I live. M.Razack's plays host to large cauldrons of boiling meat, innards and genitalia, also where old goats and mangkuks savour mangkuk after mangkuk of goats' coo coo birds thinking their own coo coo birds would soar to heavens above or at least rise to the occassion for the minimum required time after chewing muddled fat and protein in the soup. It must have done them a lot of good as not very many ladies stand in queue to buy this soup in fear of the gawking, hawking eyes of revitalised coo coo birds at the tables in front of this famous offal galore stall.

So in between running errands all over the city from one end to the other yesterday, I squeezed in a pitstop at Upper Boon Keng to drop off some Kopi Kacip Fatimah for Noreez and to grab a couple of packets of soup for Iftar at the inlaws'. In the span of a few weeks, this is the second time I found my way there. First to meet my long lost friend from MRSM, Mrs Omaq a few days before Ramadhan.And last night sinking my teeth into succulent meat and spicy broth was a welcomed treat for supper after a dinner of dhal lemak and sambal sotong.

So sentimental I got that I gave my Ayah a call. He sounded chirpier than his usual patriarchal, "Apa hal?". He is Bugis after all. That, my friend, was the bawang goreng and daun sup on my bowlful of heaven.

Okay, Uja. You can loosen the strappado. Medieval Inquisition style does not become you. All you needed to do was ask.

Heh. Heh.

My apologies my friends. Mohon ampun Mak Nenek Rupawan...

Of course you know I am kidding about Uja.