Climbing Ferns

Do you remember the games you used to play when young?

We lived next to a Malay rubber garden which later was turned into a residential area. Thus we had a small clearing in the garden to play our games and we had a lot of fun playing hide and seek and even playing "thieves and soldiers". We built our own Aladdin's Cave and every now and then my father would send some one to make sure that we were safe. And any way boys and girls played well together in those days. The Malay rubber garden owner was Abang Koh and was a great friend of my father's. This piece of land in those days was between the Methodist Secondary School and my father's land in Brooke Drive.

I remember fondly that we played bride and bridegroom too. We played masak masak and of course we won and lost plenty of marbles. We played eagle and mother hen too. Rope skipping was even done on the mud surfaced road when in the evenings very few cars passed by.

This climbing fern was used for our make believe bride and bride groom and bridesmaids. We even played a version of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream with these ferns placed on our hair.

Later one of the aunties was arrested because the Police and CID officer said that she was a Communist sympathizer. Her relatives came to tell us about her unfortunate situation and warned us not to play in the rubber garden any more.

So we did stop playing with each other as curfew was from six in the evening until six in the morning. We sort of lost our precious childhood. Or was it because we outgrew friends and games?

In the jungles the twines would be very useful for making of baskets. In some villages in Sarawak the twines are even used to make handbags of fairly good quality!!