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‘Just half today. Setengah saja…’ The Roti Man had come by our house, blowing his air horn and I’d gone out to get our order of bread. The rotund Indian man swung his leg over his motorbike, and lifted the lid of the large metal box bolted onto a frame that sat atop the rear half of his seat. He pulled out a loaf of Sunshine bread, wrapped in pristine waxed paper adorned with that bright yellow sunburst logo, placed it on a wooden chopping board at the back of the box, then with a swift draw of a long knife, sliced through the waxed paper, cleaving the loaf into two symmetrical halves.
Handing it to me, he took the coins I was holding out in exchange, pocketed them then asked me ‘Mana abang kamu? Where’s your brother?’
‘Abang yang mana? Which brother?’ I asked.
‘Yang gemuk tu… The fat one…’
‘Dia sudah pergi England. He’s gone to England.’, I replied.
‘Oh…’
‘Belajar. Universiti. Study. University.’
‘Ah… baik… Ah… Good…’
‘OK Thank you’ I said then went back up the driveway and into the house. He hitched up the left leg of his pants, swung his leg over the frame of the bike, kick-started it back into life with his right and in a a few moments was tooting his airhorn a hundred metres down the road.
Some months later, a younger, leaner man on a second motorcycle sans metal box, tailed our usual Roti Man on his rounds for a couple of days. The chubbier gentleman disappeared after a couple of days of this, and the younger man now had the metal box on his bike, and tooted his own airhorn.
‘Mana yang dulu tu? Where is the other guy?’ I asked him one day.
‘Siapa? Who?’
‘Yang gemuk tu… The fat one…’
‘Oh. Dia balik India. 6 bulan. Oh he’s gone back to India for 6 months.’
‘Ah… Baik…’ and I went back up the driveway and into the house.
Six months later, almost to the day, the round figure was back, smiling at us as he familiarised himself with the rounds, tailing the younger, leaner guy.
-
La Salle School. Where I spent 13 years from the age of 7 right through to 19. I was a thoroughbred Lasallian, a term reserved for those who went through every grade at this fiercely proud institution.
It was a hot afternoon as we trundled out of school one day. I was with my cousin and for some reason that day we were headed out the front gate rather than the back gate which was a shorter walk home.
The familiar toot of an airhorn signalled that the Soya Bean and Leong Fun man was eagerly waiting for customers just outside the gate. Hot Bean Curd, cold Soya Bean Drink and cold Grass Jelly or Leong Fun Drink was always very welcome at a little past 1 in the afternoon. This time, as I sometimes did, I chose to delay my gratification and told the hawker through the throng of thirsty schoolmates ‘Later come to my house OK?.
OK, he nodded, and my cousin and I wandered off.
An hour later, I heard the familiar tooting of his airhorn outside our gate and rushed to the kitchen to grab a few enamelware jugs. I proffered them to him and instructed in my very poor Cantonese ‘This one Tau Fu Fa, this one Tau Cheong Soi and this one Leong Fun’, indicating I wanted all three of his offerings in 3 separate containers.
My parents were not the traditional ones who insisted it was harmful to our health to consume cold drinks or food so I happily stuffed the Hot Bean Curd into the fridge alongside the cold drinks. Cold Bean Curd (as it became), blended with an adequate quantity of syrup is delicious consumed later that day when the fridge had had time to do its work.
I loved Leong Fun then and still do to this day. Some even have a mix of Soya Bean and Leong Fun but I much preferred it as it was, slightly sweetened and properly iced.
The Leong Fun man would ride around our neighbourhood on his rounds and so if we wanted some on a weekend or much later in the day after returning from school, we’d lay out the enamelware jugs in anticipation and listen out for the tooting of his airhorn. He’d hear our shout from inside our house as he went past, swing into our lane and stop outside our gate to wait for us to rush down the driveway.
-
There was a line of single-story shops near our school, comprising two blocks of linked units. In between the two blocks was a little lane and in that lane, in the afternoons would be a man by his sidecar-equipped motorbike. The sidecar was his mobile stall form which he sold a dish that KL people loved - our version of Yong Tau Fu.
His was a simple stall offering simple fare - the usual rolls of rice noodle ’Chee Cheong Fun’ (loosely translated as Pig Intestine Noodles not because of their ingredients but of their resemblance to that part of the pig’s anatomy) accompanied by meat balls, pig skin, bean curd sheets and more. We almost always had it with a mix of sweet bean sauce and chilli sauce and we would pick what we wanted from the steel bins where they sat in boiling soup, then pass him the plate with our choice for him to fill with our order of Chee Cheong Fun and whatever sauce we wanted. A sprinkle of sesame seeds on top and he would pass the plate back to us and we would wolf the dish down, standing right there by his bike.
That bike would appear between the morning and afternoon sessions at our school and early arrivals for the afternoon session would enjoy it as much as the much larger and older lunch crowd from the morning session.
His was a captive crowd and he didn’t have to ride far and wide looking for customers. In fact, I don’t even recall him blowing his airhorn.
We all knew where he would be and he knew when we would turn up.
-
I sometimes wonder about these hawkers of old. Did the Roti Man return to India for good? Did he have a family and did he tell them stories of the family with the larger son who’d gone off to England to study? And did the Leong Fun man bemoan the poor standard of Cantonese of the younger generation when he sat and chatted with his friends about that boy whose house he would go to to fill 3 enamelware jugs with his dessert and drink offerings? And Yong Tau Fu… although I was not a frequent customer of his, I loved it whenever I had it and the very thought of this dish brings me right back to that lane between the two blocks of shops along Jalan Chantek, and of us standing in a group beside the dhoby shop, eating from plastic plates next to a motorbike.
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