The title of this post is also the title of my mother's favourite Hari Raya song. It translates loosely to "Traveller's Song". With a sense of melancholy, the singer talks of things and people missed and gone, on this day of festivity.For those unacquainted to Malay Muslim culture. Hari Raya Aidilfitri is the occasion by which Muslims celebrate the end of the fasting month. For a Malay child growing up in a Malay country this means new clothes, yummy food, lots of friends and family, fireworks, green packets filled with money and generally a lot of the best things in life. It's a time of celebration.
As a child with this perception of Raya, I always found it strange that Mama chose this sad song in such festive times.
Growing up, this knowledge gave me some small insight into the woman my mother was when she wasn't busy being mother, wife, daughter, employee and all the million other hats that she dons.
As an (dare I say it) adult. I perhaps now understand her song choice. This Raya, may prove to be my last in this incarnation of me. A prospect I look forward to with much joy, but, truth be told a little sadness. For in leaving this part of me I leave perhaps the last vestiges of childhood. But this is the subject matter of another post and for another time.
Faced with the prospect, that after this Raya, the lyrics of Dendang Perantau may once again apply to me, this time permanently, has made the song more poignant.
That this song will always remind me of her. The woman she is, that eludes me in so many ways as her child. The bitter sweetness of the possibility of future Raya's away from the ones who love you and formed you. That one day she will be gone and how this brings me to tears even now. That when that happens, I can think of no one else I want at my side other than He.
Image courtesy of djflowerz on Flickr.
