I’ve been having a bad sore throat. My body aches and I cough incessantly. I have resorted to self-medication. It’s not working. By the way, I’ve discovered, in my weakened and pathetic state, the perfect sick-food: Gardenia’s vitamin-enriched, el cheapo chocolate cream buns. Only RM 0.50, and goes past the inflamed roof of my throat wonderfully. This is hardly a product endorsement. They taste that good.
I am blessed by the amenities of a modern age.
I can’t imagine what sort of treatment they’d have in the middle ages. I suppose they’ll blame little imps for my sore throat. Inescapable, the stench of superstition. Now, what would Richard Dawkins say to that, eh? Aren’t I the disbelieving theist.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to tour a plant with my erstwhile boss and comrade-in-arms, Martin. It used to be an Indian-run company till it faced near-bankruptcy in the early ’90s, apparently because it was ahead of its time. I’ll leave the speculations aside and take it at face value.
The plant was, in a word, beautiful. I don’t know how many of you get the opportunity to see massive feats of engineering up close and personal. I have to, as part of my job, and I’m always amazed by the confluence of steel and human design: the geometric arrangement of pipes, in sharp angles; the layers of steel supporting massive cylinders of plate metal and shaped steel, and the dull glow of brushed metal and small gauges that look like accessories.
I understood some of it: there a heat exchanger, there a gas furnace, there an induced-current exhaust system for flue gas. Still, there was much for me to learn. I wonder sometimes at our capacity to be impressed by the work of our own hands, and laugh helplessly.
In any case, it was a well-run plant, and a well-run business. It was, at the brink of collapse, bought over by a government-linked company. And since its purchase, it had grown from strength to strength. Today, it’s the largest plant of its kind in the world. At least, that’s what they tell me.
Walking beneath the plant’s awe-inspiring web of pipes and poles made me recall a journey I was forced to undertake about a year ago. I was due for an.. inspection.. at another plant. It was nestled deep in the belly of an area described as ‘part-jungle, part-oil palm plantation’ by my client. I didn’t know what to expect, except for roads that would completely wreck the suspension of my car.
Finding the entrance into these little oil palm estates is a feat in itself. The times when I’ve had to burrow my way into the multitude of estates that fester all over Johor are many, and the discovery of the entrance into these estates is always something that gives me pause. I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not; little clay slip roads into a riot of green look nothing like the stubborn black and off-white of tar and concrete. These entrances look more like folds in moist flesh: earthy, wild and enticing.
Driving down the makeshift clay road of this particular oil palm estate wasn’t a chore, in the beginning. My windows were wound down, and in between puffs of cigarette smoke, I could smell the rich scents of decaying foliage and lush growth. The whine and chirp of insects I would never see between walls of concrete rose and fell in waves, as if at the twirl of an unseen conductor’s baton. I remember smiling to myself, wanting to feel alive, despite also feeling like an other.
I was the interloper, this time.
It was not 10 minutes of driving at a snail’s pace before I reached a clearing. I stopped, a little concerned, staring at the splintered and decaying planks on a steel-structured bridge. A river ran beneath it, and near the banks, sampans in dirty red and blue tugged at their moorings. The road continued on beyond the bridge, and I saw that the road got rougher as it receded in the distance, suddenly devoured by lalang and brush seven or eight feet high. That bridge never looked more comforting, for some strange reason.
I found myself on the other side, soon after, and as my car began to heave and stutter under the packed, sun-dried clay, I had the feeling I was leaving the last remnants of a civilization behind. The bridge became smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror - and then it disappeared, a wall of wavy green obscuring my view. I wound up my windows, and the roar of my car’s engine became muted. There was no signal to my radio, and I felt loading in Pearl Jam’s “Vs” was a bad idea.
It was the first time I felt truly alone.
Shades of green rose from either side like the frayed remnants of an canopy, strands waving in the wind. A vast, vast hill rose in the distance, and its mottled, green face glowed and darkened with the passing of clouds. The tiny road on which I found myself began to lose all semblance of a road, and began to look more and more like an undulating path in a deep jungle. I paid less attention to what I was driving on, and more to either side of the orange-brown path; I half-expected a cacophony of wings, beak and tusk to explode from the brush at any time.
The path coiled about like innards, following some strange logic and flow, but never revealing more than ten feet of itself before me. The path dipped, and then rose, and then turned, each twist to the left or right bringing me closer and closer to the green.
And then I heard a shriek like no other. I thrust my foot down on the brake pedal and brought my car to a halt, feeling it skid a little on the clay. I checked the locks on my door and turned, slowly, coming face to face with the smallest monkey I’d ever seen. It hung from a branch, gibbering and nibbling at something in its paw. Then in a flash and a rustle of leaves, it was gone.
I swore and edged my car down the path again, this time wondering how long it would take to get out of there. I had wild, panicked thoughts of blowing a tyre or blowing a gasket, or of the mechanical contraption beneath me just ceasing and giving up the ghost. Moving at speeds more suited for a traffic jam made me testy, and made the jungle feel all that more endless. It was like moving in slow motion, and I hated it.
Just as I was about to reach for my handphone and scream bloody murder at my client, the path rose sharply and I powered my car on, and emerged near the top of a hill.
The view was strange, and breathtaking. It was alien, and the sky rose and rose where before it was lost in a network of branches.
I found myself at a three-way intersection, and the familiar sight of oil palms in geometrically sound rows carpeted the surrounding hillocks. There was a rundown brick hut at the intersection. It was all grey and overrun with vines and leaves, with no doors; the front section appeared to have collapsed on its own weight. For a brief moment, that small structure looked like one of those abandoned houses with less than pleasant occupants at night.
The hill that I saw earlier loomed closer and now towered, on one side, over the small brick hut. On the other side of the hut, the fields of young oil palms stretched on and on. Roads like little lines in sand segregated the ordered, square patches of planted oil palms. I should’ve stayed longer, or taken some pictures, but I didn’t. I turned my car down a road branching off toward the plant, leaving the sun-baked path behind, grateful for driving on packed bitumen again.
I’ve never been back to that place since, though I hear that path has now been replaced with a road. For some reason, that made me sad.