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By Mihar Dias (C) Copyright January 2023
Jenny, the girl next door adores me to bits. She knew I love kuih kapit or love letters, kuih bangkit, ti kuih, putu kacang and peanut brittles that are in abundance during Chinese New Year holidays.
We knew each other for over five or six years starting when she first moved from Penang to Alor Setar to attend school at the Saint Nicholas Convent in town as a fifth grader at the all girls school.
We built a strong relationship, not puppy love or anything like that! But it was more than just true friendship but more like a platonic love that I have yet to find anything similar since. She felt likewise and declared from across the fence that separated us.
That was the first time I heard about Platonic love. I had to look it up in an antiquated Pears Encyclopedia that my father found thrown into a bin but eventually became my companion just like Jenny until the day I went to college.
Apparently, it is a type of love in which sexual desires or romantic features do not exist. But it means more than just mere simple friendship.
I learned that the term is originally based on the Greek philosopher Plato. However, the philosopher himself never used the term.
When I returned from school after lunch, she would be by the back gate waiting to chat. Next to the gate on my side of the fence there's a clump of banana trees that often bear fruit and ripened regularly. We would pick them and imagined we were like Adam and Eve in heaven sharing a forbidden banana.
She had no male Malay friends at all but me. I enjoyed talking to her because that was my second year in Special Malay class where we were required to speak English on a daily basis. Nobody in my family knew English except for the occasional, "Good morning and how are you?" to greet a lost mat saleh who wandered into our village. I swear it must have been Jenny who motivated me to want to speak the language so I could talk to her fluently all day long. That was when I learnt what adore meant.
She really did love teaching me, talking to me and telling everything that happened to her daily like I am her diary. I wrote volumes in my very own Gratitude Journal long before it became a trend promoted by Ophrah on her show.
Every Chinese New Year before she packed up for her home town we would sit in the shadows of our Adam-Eve banana tree, she on her side of the fence while I leaned against one of the massive trunks and finished a whole big Ovaltine tin can of love letters often time singing to the tune of "Love Letters" by Pat Boone.
At the end of sixth form we parted company and I went off to college in New York.
She continued writing to me one letter everyday and I would reply every single one of them using aerogrammes a favourite at the time because it was the cheapest form of communication.
It took seven days by snail mail to reach our little town of Alor Setar and vice versa.
On Chinese New Year day during my first year in college a big heavily taped Ovaltine tin can arrived. It was fully stuffed with all Chinese dry cookies that Jenny and I enjoyed including fan shaped love letters. Inside was a note, "from a Platonic lover to another", signed Jenny.
Unfortunately, all those cookies have lost their shapes and original look when I opened the can.
Every single love letter has turned into bits and pieces. The putu kacang and the kuit bangkit turned into just dried sweetened flour similar to a Malay snack of "sesagon". Very similar to what Pat Boone crooned in his song, "love letters in the sand."
The only way to eat the cookies was to scoop a handful and stuff them down your throat and quickly followed it with a big glass of water to avoid from being choked.
I wrote back thanking her for thinking of me on New Year's day that year. But unfortunately I told her they have all turned to shreds when they landed in New York City just before May of 1969.
Two weeks later her reply arrived carefully written in Convent styled penmanship, "My love for you too has turned to shreds!"
That was the last I heard from her. Until today I do not know why she stopped writing but I know for sure that you have to avoid sending Chinese New Year dry cookies by sea mail to New York unless you want to have sesagon instead of love letters.
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