notes (in/on) a boat
This week we float in the humble boat manoeuvring the cosmic sea ferrying me through, backwards and forwards, across palimpsestuous spacetime.
(i) anak prahu
Taken from an old journal entry during my residency in Bandung
Date: 16 September 2015
After the meal, we went out to scavenge for good stuff. I found a quaint little shop at the start of Astana Ayar. The owner is Pak Haji Asip, a stocky man from Acheh who has the most mischievous eyes. He has been running the place for twenty years. He has dead clocks, chandeliers and mostly house decorations.
I told Pak Asip briefly about my project and mentioned that I was looking for old photographs. He took out a rusty copper tray with a mountain of old photographs. There were photos of old army generals, tourist shots and a large selection of photographs of children and children with their mothers. Some had writings on the back and I thought this would be perfect source material for developing these fictional narratives. Pak Asip asked me if I was from India, and I told him that my father is from Melaka and is part Javanese and maternal grandmother is Bugis to which he mentioned “oh kamu ini anak prahu” (child of the boat). Bugis were known as maritime traders or vikings. He asked me to trace my family tree and said that ancestral lineage is important. Akar kamu itu penting ya (knowing your roots in important). Its funny how a line (to know your roots) was one of the early inspiration of anak anak abdullah, here is the same line being spoken by a complete stranger several miles away.
We bid our rushed farewells as I hailed for a cab and I told him kalau panjang umur, jumpa lagi (if our lives are long, we might meet again)
I scoured the interweb looking for the first boat ever built. In my search, a fleet of traditional boats appeared in random order across my screen. My favourites were the bowl shaped coracles and the dugout canoes. The dugout canoe specifically is the first known boat archaeologists have found, dating back more than 8,000 years to the Neolithic Stone Age. Also known as the monoxylon. Monoxylon (μονόξυλον) (pl: monoxyla) is Greek – mono- (single) + ξύλον xylon (tree) – Einbaum in German ("one tree" in English). A hollowed out tree corpus carrying us across waters is pretty poetic tbh. A bit more on this later
So was the dugout the first boat ever made? Technically no. It was believed that the homo erectus, our proto-human ancestor, travelled on sea from Africa all the way to Indonesia. This theory was often contested as researchers claimed that Mx Erectus may have just hitch a ride on, get this, floating vegetation caught in some tsunamic wave and the finding of fossils and skulls in Indonesia and China suggested that the migration out of Africa was likely accidental rather than intentional. However with the recent finding of a fossilised rhino carcass in Luzon Philippines, ‘hunted’ in the same period when Mx Erectus was roaming free in the nearby regions of Java, the likelihood of intentional sea travel regained its seat at the the table
‘But Erectus needed language when they were sailing to the island of Flores. They couldn’t have simply caught a ride on a floating log because then they would have been washed out to sea when they hit the current,” said Everett, presenting his thesis at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Austin. “They needed to be able to paddle. And if they paddled they needed to be able to say ‘paddle there’ or ‘don’t paddle.’ You need communication with symbols not just grunts1.”
I can’t help but wonder which came first, language or craft (this speculated boat, a raft, a dugout, some pieces of random floating veggies, will we know, do we care, i still do even if you don’t) or did it all materialise together from desire, some primal urge to spread outwards and elsewhere?
Taken from MONEY, MAGIC AND FEAR:
IDENTITY AND EXCHANGE AMONGST THE ORANG SUKU LAUT (SEA NOMADS) AND OTHER GROUPS OF RIAU AND BATAM, Cynthia Chou, 1994
The Orang Suku Laut (OSL) piara, or adopt or care for things that are of importance to them. The OSL and Malays also use the word, "piara" when they refer to the adoption of persons. Therefore, in ways similar to adopting a person, the OSL explain that to adopt a thing entails taking care of, feeding, protecting, raising, maintaining, and guarding the thing. Such things range from their fishing equipment, kebuns (small plantations, gardens or farm plots) to houses. To adopt these things also entails having to jampi (bespell) them. This endows the thing with supernatural power below, In an example given below, Meen an OSL from Teluk Nipah explains why he must adopt his sampan (boat).
Meen:
I adopt my sampan because I would not have enough to eat if I were to catch only Rp 1,000 worth of fish each day. Therefore, in order to travel further away safely and to catch as much as say, Rp 40,000 worth of fish, I need to adopt my sampan properly. I must feed and spellbind it to attain a good catch. To adopt my sampan, or as the Chinese would say, to "kong" it, I have to feed it with pulot (glutinous rice) and kachang (nuts) by placing them in front and at the back of the sampan.
The OSL adhere to the belief that to reap plentifully from one’s possession,
one has to adopt the thing well. More importantly, by adopting a thing, a bond is established between the owner and the thing. This is so because the owner by deciding to adopt a thing, is also making a decision to merge the thing with the owner’s identity which in its essence is the soul. If the owner is negligent, the thing may be pummelled, harmed or become polluted by the invasion of a spirit that would either “eat” or cause danger to the owner’s well being.
My mother is adopted. Her biological mother is second generation Bugis and her father is a ghost. In the accumulation of an absence, there can only be impaired desire to pursue some unmapped shape to fill the missing parts. Terra Nullius. Unwillingly I’ve inherited this absence, through my features which are hers but also his, and my propensity towards synchronous unfoldings, searching shapes and parts, casting nets to capture ghosts. Maybe one day it might be him that gets caught, who knows?
In 2019, on a humid afternoon, I documented myself opening a package containing a cylindrical container and a cotton swab. After reading the instructions, I took out the swab and roll it on the insides of my mouth. Carefully I placed it in a container. Bismillah I muttered, sealed it up and sent it off through their paid postage. Results ready within 18 business days.
In that same week I encountered a tree behind the Hang Jebat mosque while I was out walking. Uprooted yet majestic, she lies across the space of a clearing facing a pond. Some residents of the area had turned her into a little rest stop with deck chairs. I came upon this clearing by mistake and yet it truly felt serendipitous. I traced my hand on the bark of the tree, technically dead but still very much alive with several fungi, growing all over its body. Several birds perched on a line running across the clearing as the sun slowly set, their calls to come home pierce the air. Half an hour felt like a much needed forever. I was in love.
The following week I brought a friend along and this time around, we scoured the area several times but could not find the tree. I’d chalked it up to my bad directions but on another return with another friend, it took me less than three minutes to locate her. Anyway, on Google map, there are 119 shared images of this tree. Some folks call it the deck, others the Lost Ark. I went there several times after, just sitting there in the hollow of the tree, in the quiet. Pretending I’m on a ship or a boat across the seas in search of ghosts.
(ii) we have always been here. we will always be here.
Taken from The Orang Laut of the Singapore River and the Sampan Panjang, Gibson Hill C.A, 1952:
Findlayson, who passed through Singapore in 1821, seems to have found Orang Laut plentiful in the neighbourhood at that time, though he may have over-estimated their numbers to some extent. He says of them (in Findlayson & Baffles. 1826).
"The condition of the lower class of Malays in these parts is wretched beyond what we should conceive to be the lot of humanity in an intertropical climate, almost the whole of their life being spent upon the water in a wretched little canoe in which» they can scarce stretch themselves for repose. A man and his wife and one or two children are
usually to be found in these miserable sampans; for subsistence they depend on their success in fishing. Their tackling is so rude and scanty that they are often reduced to the most urgent want, when they have made a meal they lie basking in the sun or repose under the dense shade of the mangrove till hunger again calls them into action. The women are not less dexterous than the men in managing their boats. Their only furniture consists of one or two cooking pots, an earthen jar and a mat made of the leaves of the Pandanus which serves to protect them from the rain. In the numerous bays, inlets and creeks that surround Singapore an inconceivable n families live in this wretched manner who have never posses nor any sort of abode on land. They are constantly roving about from place to place in pursuit of fish. What they have succeeded in taking more than is required for their immediate use, they dispose of to the fixed inhabitants, taking rice, sago, betel and cloth in return.”
It’s so telling and not at all surprising that these sustainable modes of living; the lack of possessions, taking only what’s needed, barter trading excess of “taking more than is required for their immediate use” with some other sundry items such as rice or cloth, is seen as wretched and abysmal by the British when surveying pre-colonised Singapore. Whypipo not getting it then, and seem to not get it now.
*more notes here
Taken from A Fluid Borderless Past, a photo essay I wrote in 2019 for Singapore Unbound:
Pak Ramlan, his two sons, and I were out at sea one day, trying to find any signs of the chemical waste that were frequently dumped at sea by some of the commercial ships. Pak Ramlan told me that these ships would weigh the waste down with rocks or other heavy objects so that once it floated back to the surface of the sea, the ships would have been long gone. I held on tightly to the side of the boat, nervously looking back at Tanjung Uma growing smaller in the distance.
"What's wrong?"
"I can't swim."
"Have you learnt before?"
"Yes, Pak, when I was a teenager but I never got the hang of it."
Pak Ramlan, who was pretty reserved most of the time, started laughing at the irony. "You live on an island too but you can't swim?"
"Have you been to Singapore, Pak?"
"Yes. I went to Singapore on a boat in the 1960s. It took me almost an entire day and my boat did not have a motor back then, so I rowed over instead and stopped at Pasir Panjang Terminal."
"What brought you to Singapore?"
"No reason, just wanted to see if it was possible to do so in a day. You can't do such a thing now. The Coast Guard will arrest you and imprison you in Singapore and your boat will be destroyed."
"What happens if you go to Malaysia from here, Pak?"
"They will just beat you up and take all your money as a warning, so you won't do it again."
"How do you know where the borders are? Are they marked?"
"Yes, in the coordinates."
"Does your boat show these coordinates, Pak?"
"No, but my body remembers it for me."
Additional notes that was not included in the essay:
I returned several times more to Tanjung Uma. Pak Ramlan would bring me out at sea. Gradually, my hands did not find the sides of the boat. The waters were never choppy because Pak Ramlan knew the favourable times to head out. In between low and high tide, not too late in the day and not too close to dusk. Once he brought me to a fishing pond that the community of fishermen from Tanjung Uma had erected in the middle of the sea.
It’s the only way for us to get more fish since we’ve lost our fishing spots due to these big ships. And over here, there’s no need to pay rent. As he anchored the boat to the side of the stilts holding up these makeshift shelters, I peered inside one of them and saw a musty looking arm-chair and some cooking utensils. Do people stay here? Pak Ramlan laughed and said you can if you like being drenched by the waves as you sleep at night.
I heaved to stand up from the boat as I feel the heaviness of my pregnant body. Be careful Pak Ramlan said and then raised his voice in panic when he realised I was stepping on a stretched net instead of the wooden steps. He shouted as he fumbled towards me, protective surrogate, temporary father and pushed my body gently to towards stable ground. In my belly, giddy, hungry fishes swam excitedly.
During my last visit, he did not want to take me out at sea. Dah dekat, he said, unless you are considering giving birth on the boat. I was eight months pregnant by then. His sweet wife, warned me not to come back until after. Nanti bunting tua she said, a delayed birth. You travelling across water will confuse the baby on to which are the tides of the sea and which are the tides of your body. There’s only slightly differences between the two, sama ajer, she added.
Kalau nakhoda kuranglah paham (kuranglah paham)
Alamatlah kapal akan tenggelam
— Lancang Kuning
Feb, 2024
F pointed to his boat, bobbing among the others anchored near the shore. That’s one mine, I just got it recently. I was tasked as a camera operator for hire to document as many shots of the compound. The global warming sun and the heat was draining my energy even before the work really began. But then the stories began to come, conjured simply by us gathering and I felt rejuvenated somewhat. F is around my age. He tells me so much as the morning sun crawled right above us and we sat waiting for the earlier footages to be uploaded and emptied from the memory card. I asked him about the making of the bubu, fish traps that are meticulously weaved from wire mesh, . The measurements have to be accurate, if not the bubu will come apart underwater.
F showed me the opening of the house shaped bubu behind him. This is the door for the fishes to come in, Once they go in here they cannot come out. This part is the hardest part. Each bubu only last up to 2 to 3 weeks before the rust sets in. He told me that the bubu comes in many shapes and sizes. Midway into our conversation, we heard a rhythmic scrapping sound coming from somewhere nearby. A man was under his boat scrapping the barnacles and washing it off with a bucket filled with seawater that he refills immediately after emptying it out. Muscle memory almost. F told me that if the barnacles and other sea life build-up are not cleared, then the wood will rot and damage the boat.
Maintaining a boat is necessary but also rather expensive but that’s just how it is. I think of piara or adoption; this soul tie one may have with their boat, sustained through offerings, gestures of care in exchange for safe passage and sustenance. I think about the expensive yachts at the club just a few kilometres away from the compound and wonder if these owners cultivate the same kind of relationship with their boats, feel the same kind of bond?
F told me that sometime in the future, their boats will not be allowed to be parked out here as renewing, transferring or issuing new mooring licenses are no longer an option. In other words, the state is just slowly phasing out these communities elsewhere, although the only available option is the gunky catch-all term: PoWeReD PLeAsUrE CraFt sitting shiny in their hella expensive clubs. </3
There is a subtle warning in the famous Riau folk song Lancang Kuning, that a ship may sink if a captain does not know it enough. F knows for sure, from boats to bubu nets, to where there are placed underwater and how to find the locations even though the sea is not marked in the same ways as land, F knows what we can never even fathom.
(iii) kura-kura dalam perahu, pura-pura tidak tahu*
*old idiom that describes asking questions you may already have answers to or someone who conceals a lot more than they let on.
My genetic test results came in directly through an app. I was slightly expecting some kind of fanfare on the inside, some tears of relief but everything was rather anti-climatic and a little bit flat. In my Southeast Asian breakdown, I had a lot more Viet ancestry rather than from any of the other regions no percentage under Arabic. This was surprising because my mother, who is fairer, was always asked if she had Arab blood.
Other than that, there was nothing much to go with. What were you expecting ila? A map to your grandfather’s house or something like that? In the report there were other things too based on one’s genetic code; suggestions for diet, sleep, stress management and even talents. Scam much, maybe, I don’t know but it led to more questions than answers for sure.
The first time stumbled upon hints of my mother’s adoption was seeing an /@ in her name sitting between my grandfather’s name and some stranger whose name was Tahir. Who is Tahir? I asked And what is this, pointing to the symbol. She said it’s nothing important and distracted me from probing further. It was not until I was much older and because she kept a close relationship with her biological mother and her children, she’d reminded me constantly that air dincincang tidak akan putus*, not blood but water makes a family, where we came and who we settled for.
In the Makassar creation epic, Sureq La Galigo, there is a chapter in which the male protagonist hero figure Sawarigadeng attempts to cut a sacred tree to build a ship so he could travel from Luwu to China to wed his future bride. I would call this a proto-patriarchal fairy tale in which the hero is allowed to do whatever it takes to get whatever he wants. The focus here is not on him, the ruling father and neither it is on Walenreng, a colossal tree2 “with the width of three hundreds fathoms and height of seven thousands fathoms, with five hundreds big branches and seventy branches, rising high almost touching the sky, home to a variety of animals and divine spirits.
No, the focus here is on Sawarigadeng twin sister, We Tenriabeng, believed to be a bissu and possess the ability to channel and negotiate with the divine spirits. When her brother failed, after trying for nine days and nights of performing sacred rituals, to chop down the tree, We Tenriabeng prayed to the Gods and was blessed with a sacred golden ax of Manurung and more importantly granted permission. What followed was the lamentations of all the tree’s non human inhabitants3.
As instructed, before the cutting commenced, the tree was marked with the blood of animals, also known as dicera. Although it wasn’t stated, I am making a guess that it is from these same animals that have lamented against the destruction of their homes. Finally Walenreng fell after three days and nights and a ship was build from its fallen body.
More notes on dicera/maccera can be found in this paper.
When one is adopted into another ethnicity/race, their descendants inherit difference and are bounded by it; marked by physical appearance (skin, hair, facial features), culture and religion, and a rootlessness. We easily forget as descendants of migrants, we have been forced to cut off our ties to our asal (origins) and for that we may never return (usul) completely.
My mother spend a big chunk of her life obsessing over this missing part of her, chalking up every difference she possess to this absence. When she probed and begged both of her mothers for the truth, they refused to give it to her. Why? Maybe they believe that cutting an ancestral cord, some sordid past, this illegitimate birth, might protect her from more pain. But instead this rejection brought her nothing but pain.
Scattered notes for Children of Men’s Boat Scene
Taken from Children of Men: The Shot and the Sea by Vanessa Graniello
The end of the film. Theo, Kee, and the newborn are led to a dingy floating in a water tunnel that leads to the sea. There is a halo of light within the otherwise dark tunnel which illuminates them and follows them out until they reach the exit. Once they are out in open water, the atmosphere feels strangely claustrophobic. Although they have escaped the imminent menace of the shore, they are encircled by thick, white fog and endless ocean on all sides. At this moment, the threesome is most vulnerable. Smothered by fog and endless ocean, they sway precariously in the swells, waiting.
Suddenly, Kee sees the rescue vessel, “The Tomorrow” as it approaches, and attempts, unsuccessfully, to rouse Theo from his stupor. Man, woman, and child await the ship amidst the trembling undulations of the sea…. I found myself dwelling on this last image; the bleakness and solitude of the sea, and the three souls, alone, their last hopes lying with naught but a rusty ship. Then I remembered the child’s name. Dylan. Yes, Dylan is a girl’s name, and it is also the name of Theo’s dead son. Translated from its Gaelic origins, Dylan means “of the sea.” I remembered that in the film, Theo taught his son, Dylan, how to swim when he was two months old….
…I thought about the human race as it is presented in the film; a species approaching extinction, on its last legs; a populace that is alarmingly similar to our own. I thought about how the child’s name signifies one of the few places left on earth that humans are unable to inhabit, due to lack of fins and gills. And yet here she is, in the middle of the sea. Dylan. And in this moment, there is not a body around to corrupt her spirit, save her teenage mother and a man who is still holding onto his own dead child, either in his dreams or in another life. This scene is important because it is simultaneously hopeless and hopeful. It presents us with ourselves, dying, and then being born again in a place where, until now, human life has yet to thrive: the sea
Taken from 6-minute commentary by Slavoj Zizek’s. This is how he describes the last scene:
(Rootlessness)
What I like is that the solution is the boat. It doesn’t have roots. It’s rootless. It floats around. This is, for me, the meaning of this wonderful metaphor, boat. The condition of the renewal means you cut your roots.
I end this piece with this scene I caught on my phone camera as a group of us circumnavigate around Pulau Tekong on a rainy day. Three people anchored somewhere between and beyond borders, fishing on a small boat sheltering themselves from the storm with flimsy umbrellas. There is always hope on a boat, and cut roots do grow again and again and again.
Thank you for travelling with me on these many, many boats across the vast sea. Till next time bbs. Ressociate, hydrate and stay in love.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/20/homo-erectus-may-have-been-a-sailor-and-able-to-speak
possibility of it being a trembesi tree (albizia saman/samanea saman)
These animals are: marempoba bird then punai from Apung, alobiraja from Mancapai, samparanu from Tanete, gerda bird, enggang mancapai bird, sikko warani, birds from Senrijawa, field snake, laksa snake, huge caterpilar, laioda bird, kowajang, tangkang fish, stripped field snake, husband and wife of boar king, king of rusang, mattangki luwu from Wadeng, meleri snake, monkey, clam, king of buffalo, kepodang, bayan, arak karung from Ulio, manyar manikam, Chinese parrot, la dunrung sereng bird, samparanu from Samang, and dekdu snake.