It's that time of year again, when songs like 'Dendang Perantau' and 'Satu Hari Di Hari Raya' bring back feelings of nostalgia to distant relatives and friends, every house is putting on it's best face and hordes of young children 'attack' homes to retrieve the sacred green packet. The month auspacious month of Ramadhan is behind us and Aidilfitri, bulan kemenangan, the month of victory and joy is here.
My Hari Raya ritual has been the same since I was a child. It starts with the morning prayers followed by a special breakfast. The latter was a tradition of my grandmother's family in Indonesia and when my mum moved to Brunei twenty years ago she carried on the practice. The menu hasn't changed since my mum's Jakarta days with the only difference being the drinks served.
Other than that, the other activity I look forward to is entertaining the many little pirates who take advantage of this time to fill their pockets with cash. 2007 being my first year celebrating Raya in Lumut, seeing these kids gave me a good idea of how enterprising the youngsters here are. When I was living in KB, most of the green packets were still intact at the end of raya.....but last year, all ran out by week two!
The unit, resting in uniform
The night atmosphere is very lively in every sense of the word. Firecrackers will go off until twelve and I normally have fun watching hundreds of dollars go up in a spectacular display of colours and smoke. In contrast, low quality homemade 'bedils' have a tendency to blow up with unexpected results:
The remnants of a home made bedil
Anyway, I'll see if I can post more articles during this time and until then Selamat Hari Raya/ Eid Mubarak.
