How to make money in Malaysia

AUG 6 — Ini cerita pasal saka.

She wept copious tears. Writing that sentence makes the whole scenario sound very clichéd, but that was the truth.

She did not cry because she had repented. She cried because it had been so hard for her, this life she had. Her late father worked for the DO’s office, so her family wasn’t just from the kampung. They had education!

Her sister went to ITM to learn secretarial skills! Communications! She herself worked abroad, for the embassy. They may not have been rich, but they came from rural stock which rose from the ranks of farmers and labourers, to small-time government servants.

They had arrived in their small town society, so to speak.

I was working on how Malaysians earned and lived on their incomes, but this one, this one  came with a story. She does not know I am writing this, and I feel it is wrong to do so, but I am a mistress, a slave to my diary, my pen and computer. You want the The Real Malaysia, I give you her.

Apakah saka?

It is a spiritual inheritance. An old Malay custom which must have originated thousands of years ago. You see, once upon a time, before we became who we are now, before faith took over our lives, we relied on spirits to guard over us.

Not everyone was a prince, who had warriors to protect them, so it is to the Earth and Wind, Fire and Water, Evil and Good, and the Black and White that our ancestors turned to for protection.

A saka can be anything. It can be an ancestor who has passed on but lived with the coming generations. It could be a Bajang, a Hantu Raya, a pelesit, the spirit of a tiger or monkey that is kept within the family.

It does many things for you. The only thing is, when you own it and you are about to die, or when it wants to leave, it has to be passed down to your family or a willing master.

My father was brought up in Kelantan, and he told us of a strange tale once, of a woman, who was pronounced dead by the doctor at a small hospital. This was in the late 50s, early 60s.

Her body was brought home for burial, but every evening for a week, when the bilal cried out the Azan to announce Maghrib, she would get up from her bed and vomit blood by a tree.

The doctor, the DO, the tok imam, the village could only look in fear from the safety of their homes. It took a Siamese bomoh to come down from Songkhla to make the woman die, and cast her saka into the sea.

And so with this woman I was interviewing. She was not a shaman. She just had this ability to see. And she had a dampingan — a faerie spirit who took care of her. When the woman dies, her friend will follow her too, to the other world. It was not the usual saka we are accustomed to.

Because of this gift, young women, old ladies, even mak nyahs came to see her to see if they will be loved, will be rich. She never asks for payment. But people give her — RM30. RM50.

And because of this gift, too, it would seem that her rezeki is tersekat. Have you ever met a rich fortune teller before? A well-to-do bomoh?

She wept, asking me why it was so damned difficult to find money. How could she, the daughter of a government officer, end up selling three boxes of kuih raya for anak yatim at RM70 with a RM10 commission?

I did not know what to say.

She asked again.

I ventured haltingly. Erm, you know what they say in ugama, if you mendua-kan Tuhan, you dabble in the syirk, rezeki tersekat, tak cium syurga...?

She screamed at me. You don’t get it do you? If I don’t have this gift, I would be penniless! As it is I’m selling stupid cakes! And why am I selling them when I have the gift?

She stared very hard at me.

“It is not syirk. It is a gift from God, and it gives me an allowance to live.”

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.