Meeting Wild Boar’s Guardian Spirit
Grandpa’s quarrel with the djinn was getting heated, slowly the quarrel turned into a spiritual fight. Grandpa’s skills and strength was truly tested. Grandpa’s eyes shone with a dangerous light as veins in his forehead and arms popped into view. His sweat continued to wash over his entire body.
Grandpa knew that if he lost the battle, he would fall to the earth, and his entire body would be bruised blue. So grandpa was determined to fight by any means necessary. It was during this fight that grandpa felt that his left earlobe became soft. Grandpa smiled, as it was a good sign. Victory would be on his side.
Grandpa said, “Jong keli jong, tali cemeti tebang buluh bunting pagi melemang…”
Ai-chan has absolutely no idea what this is supposed to mean. Keli means catfish, but this is not pronounced as ‘curly’, but instead is ‘caely’, it is a much older word meaning something other than catfish. Jong is an old word for a type of merchant vessel, the Chinese merchant junkships. So if Ai-chan were to translate this regardless, it would be, “Junkship full of catfish, whip cuts pregnant bamboo in the morning to make lemang…”
Ai-chan when asked what melemang means.
Before grandpa could finish his incantation, he felt the base of his back became hard as stone. Grandpa couldn’t move left or right. Realizing this, grandpa cried out the name of his spiritual master, as grandpa grabbed his shotgun at the same time.
Grandpa said aloud, “If I lose, I fall. If I win, I stand and you return to your home.”
Grandpa unleashed one fiery shot at the stag. As if guided by unseen hands, grandpa’s bullet hit right between the stag’s brows. The seven stags vanished without a trace as the place became still. Grandpa’s vision normalized as he saw in front of him a large tree with a wide trunk and many sprawling roots extending outward.
Grandpa had won the fight. Before leaving the place, grandpa looked for twigs with seven branches that pointed towards the setting sun. The seven-branched twigs were stabbed into the earth, with the branches downward. Then grandpa cut the seven branches and said, “This is human land, and you have returned to your place.”
Grandpa then looked for the direction he came in from. He sat there for about half an hour before his friends returned. All the hunted animals were put into the boot of grandpa’s Ford Anglia before they set off home. On the way home, grandpa and his friends stopped by the town of Pengkalan Bharu, to eat and drink at a food stall near a surau (1).
Coincidentally, the owner of the food stall was a friend of grandpa who came to Malaya together from Aceh. Grandpa told him what he experienced in the forest. According to the stall owner, every hunter who met with the seven stags usually found it hard to leave the forest. Even when they left they would often be left unwell or half-mad.
“Usually when they arrived home, they would fall sick and pass away. It was when they were sick that they became insane. If it was wrongly treated or they didn’t meet a capable dukun (2) who knew how to treat the illness, it would jump to the child. It usually likes to jump to the youngest child,” the stall owner explained.
Grandpa went silent before grandpa asked the owner of the stall to go with him to the river. Grandpa asked the stall owner to bathe him in the water mixed with seven types of leaves, to avoid the stag’s curse from following grandpa home. Despite that, grandpa was free from any illness.
In fact, his hunting habit became even more of an obsession. The moment he heard that an area had porcupines, mouse deer or roe deer, grandpa would never let it go. If he couldn’t go at day, he would go at night. Hunting was something grandpa deeply loved.
If it was about time for grandpa to hunt, don’t stop him. He wouldn’t give a damn. If you stop him regardless, he’d drop rain of fire on everyone. Usually it was grandma who took the brunt of his outbursts because of her dissatisfaction with his attitude. Apart from hunting, grandpa was very diligent in learning spiritual wisdom. Grandpa once secluded himself in Ulu Licin Cave for seven days and seven nights without eating a single grain of rice, but grandpa’s body did not become thin.
If there is a dukun healing people spiritually, grandpa wouldn’t show any reservation about befriending them. The goal was always to steal their techniques. Strangely, grandpa didn’t want to become a dukun himself. He said, “Everything that I learn is only to protect myself.”
One Sunday, grandpa received a visit from his friend, Lee Kong Hua, from Port Weld, near Taiping. He was the owner of a coffee factory. After chatting for quite a long while, grandpa decided to go hunt for pigs that often damaged his crops in Paya Besar. His friend agreed, and they went to the Beruas Police Station to inform them of their wish to hunt for pigs.
Grandpa’s request was approved by the police, as Paya Besar area was not yet part of the Black Zone. With his Ford Anglia, they entered the Paya Besar area through a 6-foot wide road. They arrived at the rubber plantation area around ten in the morning.
Then grandpa and his friend went to follow a boar track going north. Almost two hours they walked, the boar was still not found. Yet, they didn’t give up. Lee Kong Hua already planned that once he got the wild boar, he’d take it home with a lorry owned by his friend who had agreed to come to grandpa’s rubber plantation around three in the evening. He imagined he would get at least five boar, as he knew grandpa was a great shooter
On and on they walked, grandpa and his friend finally came across a large wild boar. Grandpa fired a shot, but the pig immediately jumped into a small bush filled with sea daisies and senduduk (3). Grandpa and his friend surrounded the small bush before the boar jumped out of the bush and ran towards Ulu Dendang. They continued to hunt it. While hunting, grandpa and his friend came across a group of wild pigs, and the boar that they chased wasn’t far from that group.
“It’s wounded,” grandpa informed his friend.
“Careful, wounded wild boars are usually vicious.”
“I know. Wait here, it must be shot. If not we’ll be attacked,” grandpa said, as his friend nodded.
Grandpa circled around the boar behind it. The boar turned towards grandpa, much to his delight. Grandpa had already settled at a good spot. He continued to aim the barrel of the shotgun at the wild boar’s head. Like usual, his target was between the brows of the animal. When grandpa pulled the trigger, the boar turned around before entering the forest on its left. Grandpa calmly followed its tracks.
At one point the animal stopped. Grandpa had already found a good place to shoot from. Somehow, there was a kind of force that pulled grandpa’s finger to pull the trigger. The shotgun fired, scaring the wild boar and causing it to run. Grandpa continued to hunt it all the way upriver of Sungai (4) Dendang.
On the other side of the river, grandpa saw the wild boar quietly nudging the ground. Grandpa walked along the riverbank upstream. Crossing on a fallen ironwood tree across the river, he arrived on the other side. As he walked, he thought it felt like being in a separate space.
It didn’t seem like grandpa could get close to the boar, as it was on the other side of a small pond with murky water. Grandpa could’ve just shot the boar from there, but grandpa didn’t want to. He wanted to shoot the boar at a very close range. Therefore, grandpa jumped the small pond that was about five feet wide. Once on the other side, grandpa crawled forward to find a good spot.
The boar continued to nudge the ground as grandpa took his position behind a fig tree. Suddenly his ears rang, his vision blurred and flashed. Grandpa suddenly found himself in another world that was serene but terrifying. Many large trees of different forms surrounded him, their large roots jutted out drawing deep shadows on the soft ground. Grandpa thought he must’ve been too tired, as he wasted a lot of time running. He wanted to fell the wild board immediately. If the boar didn’t die, it’d rampage, and the rubber tappers in Paya Besar would be its victims.
Grandpa knew that if a wild boar rampaged, the result would be catastrophic. Grandpa spied the wild boar nudging the roots of a large tree. He placed the buttstock of the rifle against his shoulder. With careful and precise movements, he pulled the trigger. Grandpa felt alarmed. The shotgun didn’t detonate and the wild boar simply snuck away behind the large tree.
From a crack in the large tree, a beautiful woman came out. She approached grandpa, telling him that the boar wasn’t far from the tree. She asked grandpa to hunt it and that was when he knew, that he was trapped again. The beautiful woman in front of grandpa continue to speak to grandpa in a seductive voice that sounded like the rustling of leaves. Her body gyrated, a very foreign sweet smell assaulted grandpa’s noise. Grandpa felt like he was flying in the clouds.
Grandpa quickly meditated, uniting his mind’s eye and the entire might of his six senses. He felt a force telling him to continue hunting the boar. Grandpa fought that power with all his will. But this time, grandpa felt like he was about to lose.
Just as he was about to reach his limit, he heard the beautiful woman giggle. Grandpa opened his eyes. The beautiful woman was no longer in front of him. Grandpa decided that enough was enough and headed back.
The ringing in his ears vanished the moment he set foot on the other side of the river. The large trees with with jutting roots were no longer there, instead there were only small trees normal for that place. Grandpa sat there, for a few minutes, before his friend Lee Kong Hua arrived.
“Something happened?” grandpa’s friend asked.
“We go home,” grandpa said.
They immediately returned to the rubber plantation. The lorry that Lee Kong Hua promised was already waiting there. Grandpa was surprised that apart from the driver, there were two policemen with one of them a sergeant waiting for them. Grandpa knew the sergeant, his name was Ali, though most people called him Sergeant Ali. He was from Paya Ara dan bought land near grandpa’s house.
“Is there anything wrong, sir?” grandpa asked the sergeant calmly.
“If I had known that you were going to hunt, I would’ve stopped you. I knew you would arrive at Ulu Dendang.”
The original text said ‘Ulu Bendang’, but that’s probably a typo. The author probably meant Ulu Dendang, as in Dendang River.
Ai-chan while looking at the map.
Grandpa became quiet. Then Sergeant Ali questioned him, asking if grandpa came across weird things while hunting. Grandpa decided to tell the sergeant everything he experienced.
“I knew that place is hard and has a guardian. There has been a lot of people who went hunting there and never returned. A month ago a Chinese man from Setiawan disappeared without a trace hunting there. When finally found, only some pieces of cloth and bones were left behind.”
‘place is hard’ (tempat itu keras) refers to a place with strong spiritual energy. When your elders say not to play somewhere because that place is hard, it doesn’t mean that place is rocky, it means that place is either haunted by a ghost, a djinn, a guardian spirit or is a bunian village or all of them at the same time.
Ai-chan when asked about hard stuff.
Grandpa’s felt goosebumps listening to the sergeant’s story and decided to leave right away. The explanation given by Sergeant Ali made grandpa’s hunting itch worse. He wanted to go hunt in that area again, but he cancelled that plan when he received an advice from an old man from the village of Cangkat Berangan.
The old man said so, “Don’t go. If you had accepted that woman’s request to continue the hunt for the boar, it’d be you who’d be walking the forest forever.”
“But I want to meet her,” grandpa said like a horn-dog.
“Strengthen yourself, learn more spiritual defense techniques,” the old man said. His name was Tok Aki Simbang. When he was younger, he was a powerful warrior and was even involved in the Larut War. He was one of Long Jaafar’s sidekicks.
Grandpa continued to learn more spiritual wisdom from Tok Aki Simbang. That old man was also only too happy to share his wisdom with grandpa. And grandpa learned this with much diligence, as he still wanted to meet the beautiful woman.
- Surau – It’s is like a mosque and functions exactly the same. The term ‘surau’ is exclusively of Nusantaran origin (Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Sulu and Southern Thailand). Nowadays, surau is used interchangeably with the Arabic word musolla which refers to a small prayer hall.
- Dukun – It is one of the 4 titles of Malay witchdoctors. Unlike the other witchdoctor titles, dukuns normally do not have spiritual power. Dukuns are people well-versed in knowledge of herbalism and forest spirits. The closest English term to describe a dukun is ‘medicine man’.
- Senduduk – Ai-chan has no idea how it looks like, just read the wikipedia article.
- Sungai – It translates into ‘river’. Yes, that’s 4 vocabularies for you to memorize today. Ai-chan is nice.
Translator’s Note:
The ‘stag curse’ (raw: badi rusa) refers to the curse a person is inflicted on for killing or watching the corpse of a deer/stag. This is a belief inherited from Malay’s animism roots, in that everything has a spirit guarding it and when the animal dies, the spirit screams a curse on you and on its own corpse. While most of the time you won’t be harmed by the curse at all as you can simply wash them away with a simple bath, particularly strong creatures also have strong curses.
In game terms, young deer (for example) have Level 1 Curse. Mother deer probably have Level 5 Curse, while the stag that grandpa came across has Level 50 Curse. In this case, killing a young deer will not harm you at all, but what if you killed 50 young deers? In this example, the curse of killing 50 young deer is the same as killing one strong deer. Therefore, you need a proper ritual to get rid of the curse, as simply taking a bath is no longer enough. Failure to remove the curse may cause you to suffer injury, has persistent nightmares, get hit by a truck, afflicted by a mysterious illness or just straight up dead.
By the way, you won’t be cursed from eating deer meat. The curse falls on the hunter and the people who handle the carcass. Dead humans also release a curse, which is why even Muslims in Malaysia has a ritual for it despite claiming that it’s nothing but superstition.
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