“Tu, belakang sana, tapi sekarang dah tutup (It’s behind there, but now it’s closed),” the boy said as, pointing his fingers at an old, dilapidated football field and community hall that seemed no more in use. The gate was rusty and was overgrown by leaves. It was like entering a memory lane.
We rolled up our pants a little, and labourisly armed by a camera, walked past the bushes towards the hall. And I starred at what the boy was pointing out all along. The hall was perched at the foot of a massive mountain. My sense of curiosity heightened, as much as my sense of discovering a story left untold. It is the kind of feeling you get when you know you are about to time travel. No, most of you wouldn’t know what feeling I’m describing here, because understandably you don’t get to be on the brink of time travelling all that often.
A cave mountain, it stood tall and all alone with no neighbors around it. The scorching heat was obliterating my sight. It must have the diameter of half a kilometers, at least. And within this area, we were told, we can find a stairs. Yes, a stairs.
We literally scrawled through bushes which were just as tall as I was, taking giant leaps, and negotiating the uncomfortable feeling you get when tips of lalang tend to unceremoniously enter your mouth- all the while looking for a semblance of the stairs.
“Here,” one of my travel partners said, exhaustingly starring at what looked more like an entrance to a jungle.
Slowly, he parted the bushes, and there appeared to be a shabby stone carving stacked atop each other.
“There!” another voice proclaimed. This was not your typical stairs. In fact, it hardly looked like stairs. They were not measured in equal length. And they did not incline in a particular direction. They were all over the place. It will suddenly take a drastic right turn, and suddenly a left one. We left on our all fours at occasions, having to shove the tripods through branches like a baton to those who have reached equal ground.
This was as unkempt as any stairs got. Bushes was all over the place. “Wouldn’t there be like, snakes and all?” one of us nonchalantly asked. We were already halfway through to the peak at that point.
“Of course, there will be. Maybe not so early though.”
Most of us stopped in our tracks. I could sense a bristle of fear illuminating the air around us. Then, a sheepish smile at each other- we have come too far to go back now- so we continued.
We were scaling a mountain that has been left unexplored for maybe five or six decades. At every nook we saw new evidences that this mountain used to be the lair for some religious activities. But no matter how busy and unkempt it was, full of raw earth and prickly insects, there have been forefathers and ancestors who have left behind tracks to guide us. Probably they knew these tracks will come in handy some day.
After half an hour of scaling, we reached an eerie cave, which illuminated no light whatsoever. On the facades of the cave, another mark of a story undiscovered. The name of two lovers etched in red to the wall. My imagination flickered. Whether they were as adventurous as we were, or had decided to make this their last sanctuary, we’d never know. The nature held within itself a plethora of stories, and I wanted to know all of it. I stood up on that unequal plain and looked forth- as the entire Titiwangsa mountain range stood majestically before my eyes, not forgetting that I was standing near the peak of one of the mountains that belongs in that range.
We did not find anything in the cave except for a small light that managed to sneak through the closed peak and illuminated a small place. But there were remnants of railings inside the cave- a clear sign of human activity in the past. It was like seeing Batu Caves some 200 years after it has been destroyed and left to ruins.
There was a small opening in the middle, an opening that seemed to lead to a whole different place. The sound of water running, and the hollow sound of chilled air travelling through it made it even more mysterious. It was inviting and warning at the same time. “Do we have ropes?”
We looked at each other. No we didn’t. There were no ropes, no torchlight, no kits whatsoever. All we had was a tripod and a camera- a very small one at that.
“Better not, we will come back again sometime. With equipments.”
After tip-toeing past a couple of unguarded houses where the dogs were allowed to openly roam to man a vast dry land at the foot of the mountains, we returned back home- having come ever so close yet so far.
We never returned, at least I never did. Months later, when mulling the idea, I was told that the village head where the mountain is located doesn’t want the mountain to be explored anymore. There were political sensitivities. So myth remains- that a historic Hindu cave temple that preceded Batu Caves was located in this very mountain. I knew the mountain had stories to tell. But we were not allowed to listen.
As I recall these memories again, I’m reminded again how this has been the core of all our problems in this country. A staunch refusal to discover; an alarming fear of change and the new. And we have the audacity to ask why art has stalled like time-rusted locomotive, still on its tracks. No matter how much money is pumped into it, a locomotive doesn’t run without fire to burn. And stories that lay hidden on that mountain are our burning fire.
Malaysia has forgotten its history, in fact it wishes not to discover. And with such an ignorant attitude towards history, literature is forgotten, left on the pavement. Literature is that homeless guy who walks around at the foot of the tallest buildings and biggest shopping malls here.
Tomorrow, KLCC will be gone. So will Pavillion, and everything else. Stories will live on- passed on generations. Stories that resemble the lives of a generation. But the problem is we are not writing down stories today. Without them, what story will we have in our hands tomorrow? What tales will we sing to the distant future, without all this economy and buildings?
By failing to tell its stories- we are committing our greatest betrayal to this land, which homed us.
Our apocalypse is not then, but now.
(Note: The mountain in this story has not been named for certain reasons and will remain so. For those who know its name, please do not name it in public domain.)
