Tuesday 28 March 2017

Fallen tree at Wat Pinbang Onn



I had a shock when I went to the Siamese cemetery at the Wat Pinbang Onn temple in Green Lane, Penang, this morning to find someone who could spruce up my grandparents' grave before we go for Cheng Beng this Friday. There was a fallen tree at the cemetery and it had narrowly missed my grandparents' grave by not more than 10 feet. Apart from some broken bits and pieces of the branches that had fallen behind the gravestone, it was very lucky that the grave had not been affected physically at all. Some of the graves were not so lucky as the tree had fallen right on top of them. I heaved a big sigh of relief when I could finally size up the situation. The tree was huge and tall, black with age and possibly already dead, and must have had fallen many months ago during a thunderstorm or heavy winds.

I don't know how long it will take the Wat Pinbang Onn to remove the trunk. The temple does not have a good track record in looking after the cemetery grounds which, after all, belongs to them. I remember that about 18 years ago, another huge tree - a much bigger tree than this present one, actually -  had crashed down in the cemetery. Miraculously again, it had missed my grandparents' grave by several feet. It was as if some invisible hands had swiped the tree aside. It took the temple some three or four years before that tree trunk was finally removed. Not good enough, in my opinion. Will it take that long again for the temple to respond to this latest incident? And will the temple learn from this second disaster to check and chop down the other old and possibly dead or rotten trees in the cemetery? The responsibility is theirs.


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