When the Alleycats Took Us Back to Yesterday

When the Alleycats Took Us Back to Yesterday

By Mihar Dias September 2026

There are songs that you hear.

And then there are songs that evoke memories.

One such song takes me back to Georgetown in the 1970s, when I first arrived in Penang with more hope than money, more dreams than possessions, and an age when the future still seemed to be waiting patiently around the corner.

The song was by the Alleycats.

And somehow, whenever I hear those old melodies, I am no longer sitting where I am today. I am back in Penang.

Back in Georgetown.

Back at the Merlin Hotel discotheque, where the Alleycats could turn an ordinary evening into something resembling a promise.

The 1970s were different.

Perhaps it was because we were younger. Or perhaps because the world had not yet discovered how complicated everything could become.

There was something wonderfully innocent about those days.

Love was still allowed to be sentimental.

A young man could dream of building a palace for his beloved even if he could barely afford the bus fare home. He could write a letter, however clumsy the language, and believe that sincerity counted for something.

The Alleycats understood that language of the heart.

Their songs spoke of longing, devotion, wounded pride and impossible romance. There were no algorithms deciding what we should listen to. No streaming platforms offering us 47 versions of the same song before we had finished the first.

There was simply music.

And people.

And evenings.

And perhaps somebody across the room whom you hoped would notice you.

The Merlin Hotel had its own magic then.

You could walk into the discotheque and almost feel that life had temporarily suspended its ordinary rules. The music played, the lights moved, young people danced, and for a few hours nobody seemed particularly interested in what tomorrow might demand of us.

Tomorrow could wait.

Tonight belonged to us.

And outside, Penang was still Penang.

Georgetown had its old streets, old shophouses, hawker stalls and the smell of food drifting through the night. The island seemed smaller then, but perhaps it was our world that was smaller.

We did not need much.

A good song.

A little money.

A few friends.

And the possibility that love might be somewhere nearby.

Eventually there was Batu Feringgi.

The beach.

The palms.

The sand.

Those long evenings when the sea seemed to stretch endlessly into a future we were certain would be wonderful.

We were young enough to believe that memories belonged to old people.

We had no idea that we were already making them.

That is the cruel joke of youth.

You never know when you are living through the days you will spend the rest of your life remembering.

We thought those evenings would continue forever.

They didn't.

The people changed.

The hotels changed.

The music changed.

The island changed.

And, inconveniently, so did we.

The young men who once stood beneath the lights of the discotheque eventually became fathers, husbands, professionals and old men with stories they occasionally tell themselves more than anyone else.

The girls who once walked along Batu Feringgi became women carrying their own histories.

Some stayed.

Some left.

Some disappeared completely.

And some remain only in the strange little museum of the mind where an old song can suddenly bring them back.

That is what the Alleycats did.

They did not merely sing about love.

They preserved a version of us who still believed in it without asking too many questions.

Listening to those words again today, I am struck by how simple the longing was.

A man wanted to offer his love. He had no palace of jewels, no golden ink, perhaps not even beautiful words. What he possessed was sincerity.

Today we have everything required to communicate instantly.

Yet somehow we have lost the art of waiting for a letter.

We can send a photograph across the world in seconds.

But we cannot send the feeling of sitting beside someone on a beach at dusk while the palms move gently in the evening breeze.

We can say "I love you" with a tap.

But once upon a time, people had to find the courage to say it.

Perhaps that is why those old songs remain.

They belong to an era when love was not always convenient, communication was not instantaneous, and dreams did not come with terms and conditions.

I sometimes wonder what happened to all those dreams we had in Penang.

Did we fulfil them?

Did we abandon them?

Or did they quietly change shape without telling us?

Perhaps the palace was never meant to be built.

Perhaps the golden letter was never written.

Perhaps the girl across the room never became the love of your life.

Perhaps she became something more elusive.

A memory.

And perhaps that is enough.

Because memories have an extraordinary way of preserving what life itself cannot.

Give me an old Alleycats song and suddenly Georgetown is young again.

The Merlin is glowing.

The music is playing.

The sea at Batu Feringgi is still warm.

The palms are moving in the evening breeze.

And somewhere, among the lights and the music and the smell of the sea, a young man is still dreaming.

He has very little.

But he has hope.

He has love in the air.

And tomorrow has not yet disappointed him.

Then the song ends.

The lights come on.

The discotheque disappears.

The beach becomes quiet.

And we return to today.

That is the sadness — and perhaps the beauty — of nostalgia.

Yesterday does not really come back.

It only visits.

Sometimes in a photograph.

Sometimes in the smell of salt air.

Sometimes in the sight of an old hotel.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, in an Alleycats song.

For a few precious minutes, the years disappear.

And we are young again.

Among the palm trees.

On the sands of Batu Feringgi.

Waiting for love.

Waiting for tomorrow.

Waiting for a life we were certain would last forever.

It didn't.

But the song did.

And perhaps that is why, all these years later, when the Alleycats begin to sing, I listen.

Not because I want to go back.

But because, for a little while, I can.

Puisi Untuk Sang Puteri - Alleycats

Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!

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