With A Little Help From My Friends

Sometimes, when a person is down and out due to an ailment, the last thing they need is for a visitor to give give their unqualified medical opinion on the matter. It seems every other visitor has a cure - either newly found or passed down for generations - for the ailment. Er, before I ramble on, this is, with due respect to Doc Tokasid and other similarly qualified professionals.

Yesterday, on the 2nd day of Syawal, I made a long delayed trip up north to Pekan Sungai Besar, somewhere near the Selangor-Perak border. I brought emak along as I could not bear the thought of her having to serve Raya guests all by herself. As I have not traveled up the coastal road for a very long time, I mistakenly took the wrong route via Bukit Raja instead of Sungai Buloh, which is so very near my house.

We made this trip especially to visit Pakngah, whose story I logged an entry last September, and to give him a small token of RM500 from Kelab Kami Perihatin, to help ease his financial burden. Admittedly it is a small sum, but KP is not a rich organisation.

I've seen it happen many time and have even been on the receiving end of well-intended advices. No offence meant to anyone, but if the patient is in already on his way to recovery, he may just suffer a relapse. All the poor fella need is some peace and quite assuredly, and not to be rested in peace.

Though the distance from my house to Sungai Besar is longer than it is to Melaka, we surprisingly did not feel it as such. Perhaps, due to the now wider road and the change in scenery of drab city life. Another possibility is that the absence of large traffic; we left before zohor and was back home by 6pm.

Along the way, we made a short stop by Bukit Melawati; one of the best place to stop and rest on this coastal road. A majestic hill it may not be, but amid the largely flat terrain of this route, it makes a great vista point for the coastline, the Kuala Selangor river, and the surrounding land area, which makes it an attraction for photographers from near and afar. Bukit Melawati too, has its own interesting history, one perhaps I'll write at another time.

Then there's another kind of visitor, maybe some every other 3, who, out of sheer curiousity, would barrage the patient and/or his family, on how such an ailment or tragedy happened! And the poor patient and his family would have to - repeatedly - answer the questions until, as the Malays would put it "sampai kering tekak". But somehow, those well intended visitors do not understand this. Er...admittedly, I fell into this category yesterday.

Irrespective, I guess when we are down, we could use a little help from friends.



* For those well-wishers, pakngah's real name is Abdul Malek, and he can be contacted at 019-3463065

Pakngah too, has his own blog at Pak Ngah e-Book Centre and Koleksi Artikel.