Those were the words my father used when I refused to put on a hat out in the afternoon sun while doing 'hard labour' in my father's 'orchard' back in our home at number 27 Woon Estate, Tampin almost 35 years ago.
My father, in his standard attire of white singlet over a hitched-up checked sarong, was trying to direct me to dig 5 holes in the ground using a hoe and a 'cangkul' so that he could plant 5 durian saplings. The saplings had been lovingly nursed and nurtured from the seeds of his favorite varieties through the years. He had them grown in black plastic bags filled with earth and now they are ready to be transplanted in the ground. The ground was a strip of land at the back of our house just outside the fence sloping down about 12 feet to a drain that connect all the houses on my row channeling household waste water out and down to a creek in sleepy valley beyond.
Already I was grungy being forced outdoors to do menial labour. As I slogged and sweated in the heat, I think to myself; growing durian trees from saplings? How long will we have to wait? What a daft idea...I thought as I blurted out;
"Pa, we would never even live to see the fruits, if indeed they could bear fruit, let alone get to even taste them".
My father refused to budge and just urged me on and I still had those holes to dig. It was not without more drama and heated exchange of words between my father and I as the afternoon wore on until the holes were all finally dug. Still, I was not a happy person that afternoon.
"Now, before we lower the saplings into those holes, put that first into the bottom of the holes", he pointed to a large mound of black earth in our garden. So I did as I was told, I took a big bucket filled it up with black earth and lumbered up and down the slope lining the 5 holes with rich, nutritious black earth.
Then I watched my father tear up the black plastic bags exposing the cylindrical earthy base of the young plants and laying the sapling into each of the holes I had dug. With the loving dexterity of a heart surgeon, he moved each sapling into position, filled it with more earth, adjusted each until he is pleased with it then he directed me to fill up what's remaining of the hole until the soil formed a mound around the stems of the saplings. Much like the chief surgeon telling his assistant to close up on successful surgery.
My father then appeared with a large pail of water and proceeded to water each newly transplanted sapling with a plastic bowl. He did it ever so tenderly, he scooped up water and then let it run through his cupped hand through his fingers down to the base of the stems of each of the 5 saplings. The earth mounds settling further down the stem as he did that, compacting the soil further reinforcing the planting.
My father looked pleased as he stood looking over the backyard fence down at the slope where we just finished an entire afternoon's work of planting. I'm a bloody planter's son I thought and
"I still don't think we would harvest the fruits of our labour Pa" I said to him. He just smiled and said;
"You just wait, you just wait"
15 years later, we sold our house after my mother passed away, the trees have grown somewhat substantially but still yielded no fruit. I told myself that we were not meant to get anything from those trees we planted but still it would be nice to know if they could yield. I took my father and left Tampin to resettle in KL. It was the nineties.
Now fast forward to present day Hari Raya 2010. Four and a half years after my father passed away, I finally meet up with my old neighbours the Balasingams in Seremban, my childhood friends, Willie and Gabriel. Gabriel the elder brother told me he visited our old hometown regularly to tend to their unoccupied house just next door to ours. Gabriel had news I had waited 35 years for.
The durian trees that I had planted with my father actually bore fruit, and they bore abundant fruits with bountiful harvest. And they tasted very good, Gabriel testified. The current owner of my old house an Encik Mazlan is indeed a good man to enjoy the abundance that my father initiated. So much that went into those saplings we planted in the ground that hot afternoon.
I now know and I think my papa knew all along. I know he is happy because when I drove back to KL late that Hari Raya night, I felt a nice warm feeling come over me knowing we shared more than planting durian trees and that my father left me with these lessons;
- To do things properly, diligently with loving tender care.
- To have faith that in whatever I do, that it will surely bear fruit, and bountifully.
- To wear a hat when out in the sun.
Thanks Papa.
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