Ledang... the beginning

Through time, how often we get subdued to the madness that was once part & parcel of our everyday existence. Such was the tides which brought our bodies to the most rediculous and yet most unusually enchanting surroundings. As for the mind, it was torment glossed in bliss.

So here I was, the year stood vaguely between the beginning and the middle of 2004. A year had passed since the enrollment into poly and all passion for the sea had seized to exist. One wonders where did the love dissipate too, and what winds were to carry my dimentia.

Thus beleive was under a spell of an unreachable oasis, such was the days which pass with the only indulgence of energy being wastefully burnt through tabacco and drowned in sinful spirit. (Nothing has changed) Like a child, waiting to explode to a place that brought forth no comprehension and little memory.


Bukit Panjang was home, and here brewed the residency of vices. As much as we climbed, and yet we found our feet deeply rooted or rather roting in the vicious decay of enjoyment... What drunken slobs??!! With too much tickling with our pickled livers, a menacing goblin in our minds soon hatched a plan. Shore leave brought Kenny home, in addition, the burnt bridges with Manipal had been some what amended. Where were we to go? We had long forgotten our pilgramage to Mount Ledang, and there it was, like a spark in a heap of dry leaves..., the burning hunger to scale the coarse and yet mystical contures of Mount Ledang, was just another reason to make time the tenants to our cockeyed perceptions. Perhaps just another episode of amusement in our drunkened banter.

Rendeavour point, where else but home, Malacca... I was to neglect the attention for classes in the Island and find all available means to forcefully tramp with impulse up north. Sure enough, with the dwindling coffers, there was just enough to furnish the bus ticket from Larkin & a satisfying pack of Dunhills.

Commuting by bus has an uncanny resemblance to that of a ship.
The huge chunk of metal farting valiantly along the intended route. The steady droning of the engine, accompanied by the occasional humps and bumps gave sound reason to employ the mind into an abrupt meditation. Why did I leave the heavens alone? Silently I asked and the boggling thoughts morphs in a realm of absolutely fogged clarity.

Here came the dementia of realization, the many travels and the neglected dedication seem to be the song which I so habitually dance to. You could almost feel the cool breeze careesing the cheeks through the caged windows, and with the lights turned off, the first guest arrives from the starry nights.

The stars have come out from the raised twilight curtains, and almost immediately one drama after another unfolds in the skies. Orion the Hunter fashioned through his flashy loud belt caught in the infinite pose taking aim his heartless arrow to my dear Taurus, & he who grazed the land stands knowingly in valour but in arrogance of its dying outcome. Beneath the feet of Orion, his two best friends crouched in a prancing, pounching position, ever ready to haul in the bounty with the might of the their jagged jaws. On some nights, this silent sketch on the darkened canvas is interestingly brightened by the rays of the Gods. The love of Venus who tries in vain to make amends of this hopeless crossfire and the red rogue of Mars adding a slight pinch of brilliant radiance to the ballads in the sky.

I would breathe in the convulsive confusion of the present despair and I wonder endless where art thou? Hours went by and the eyes stared blindly into the skies, my temperaments were left in bewilderment as the usual story of being drunk in the sea of thoughts. As I blinked and there it remained the remanding shadows of lights which refused to budge from the corner of the eye ; & again I blinked the nights turned to an eclipsed that swallowed all acquaintance with darkness only to create bolder colours.

How do we comprehend this pretense of the mind? hence the boundless blurred beauty of Ledang....


" From all I've done and all I've said
let them not seek to find who I've been.
An obstacle stood & transformed
my acts & way of my life.
An obstacle stood & stopped me
many a time as I was going to speak.
My most unobserved acts,
and my writings the most covered...
thence only they will feel me.
But mayhaps it is not worth to spend
this much care and this much effort to know me.
For in the more perfect society
someone else like me created
will certainly appear & freely act
.....CPC 1908