diary

Grandma's funeral (a draft, or perhaps just a sketch)

Grandmother passed away one night.

That morning, I left college early, and returned home and did an expressive self-portrait in oils. By afternoon, I was in Uncle’s place in Johor.

The house was a two-storeyed house along a crackly and sandy tar road. It faced a dingy coffee shop and an abandoned construction shed, where a lonesome thin tree, leafless and bare, quietly waved a faltering branch. Behind the main entrance was a small porch where Uncle and Cousin had parked their motorbikes and van. The family dog, Boxy or Brownie as I used to call him, was lazing in the sweltering heat with half-opened eyes, oblivious to the flies buzzing around him while two ghostly white lanterns swayed lightly above the doorway. A narrow walkway surrounded the house. To the right of the porch, dripping wet laundry hung from thin bamboo poles supported by unsteady rusty stands. An old stone well, damp and overgrown with moss and fungi, rested behind the laundry area. To the left, Uncle had piled up his dusty gunny sacks, junk metal, rubber hoses, and deflated tyres, while the back of the house was crammed with broken buckets and tubs, wooden boxes, old woks, and crates of used glass bottles. The drain was crawling with centipedes and black ants. An old dying fence separated our house from the neighbours’, as creepers and vines sprawled all over, strangling and entangling it, causing it to lean and bend. As I slowly entered the house, pigeons and crows scattered themselves on the weathered roof. They were cooing and crowing to dilapidation and death, as a feeling of dread and impending despair filled the air.

For a moment, as I stepped into the hall, the world suddenly hushed to a deathly silence. The hall was dark and gloomy, and filled with the unearthly smell of smoke and incense. The wooden coffin was placed in the center of the hall, right in front of the altar, which was then covered with large pieces of stiff red papers.

(... ...)

posted by sin @ 9:11 PM