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By Mihar Dias (C) Copyright January 2023
Here's another Chinese New Year tradition that I enjoyed when growing up in Alor Setar during 1950s and 1960s - the sound of all night "party" coming from the neighbours and their boom boom pyrotechnics.
I share Harith Iskandar's view that we embrace one another's culture in this multicultural society of ours, no matter how noisy it may be. More noisy in 1950s and 1960s when parties lasted all night long with intermittent firing of some hand-held pyrotechnics.
Our Chinese neighbours burned them to drive away evil spirits during lunar new year celebrations, and it is one of those practices we tolerated. So were all night parties and the sounds of mahjong tiles being shuffled.
But when they were lighted up at 330 in the morning, you would have to cover your head under the pillows wishing it would stop soon.
It would crackle and die off soon enough. Quietness would prevail in our neighbourhood once again and we could sleep further till dawn. But as soon as you take your head out from under the pillows, another neighbour would light up his own set of hand-held boom boom pyrotechnics.
"They have money to burn," said my late dad who was also up at 3:30 in the morning for his early morning prayers, the tahajjud. We'll wait until they died down while he carried on with his early morning prayers.
It was contagious, this idea of lighting up these approved hand-held boom boom in the early morning hours. Other distant neighbours would set off theirs when our immediate ones quietened down. The sound would be more bearable by then and we continued our morning slumber till dawn.
When you are about to fall into deep sleep you are awakened by the azan from a nearby mosque. My neighbours used to tell us that they too would be awakened by that call to prayer daily and they never complained because they have been conditioned to sleep through it. They told me like sounds of hand-held happy boom boom pyrotechnics, the call to azan would die off soon enough.
While I would have to get up and follow my dad to the mosque, Ah Kow, my immediate neighbour and school mate, would continue his sleep till it was time to go to school.
We do enbrace our each other's culture in this multicultural society of ours sometimes with a little discomfort but it's alright until some politicians from both sides of the divide make an issue out of it.
