David Cassidy

It's almost nine years since David Cassidy passed away. Looking back now, it’s hard to explain just how big he was in the early 1970s. These days we throw the term “teen idol” around rather casually, but in Cassidy’s case it really meant something. For a few short years he seemed to be everywhere: television, radio, record racks in the shops and the bedroom walls of teenagers all over the world. Even here in Penang you couldn’t miss him.

Cassidy first burst into the public consciousness through the musical sitcom The Partridge Family, which began airing in 1970. He played Keith Partridge, the son in a family band that travelled around performing. The show itself was light entertainment, but the music took on a life of its own. When the single I Think I Love You came out, it became a massive international hit. It was heard everywhere, from record shops along Campbell Street to radios playing in coffee shops.

But anyone searching for I Think I Love You on a Partridge Family album might have been slightly puzzled. The song first appeared in 1970 as a seven-inch 45 rpm single issued under The Partridge Family name, with David Cassidy on lead vocal, and it quickly became a huge international hit. That was the format most people knew it from at the time. In later years, however, collectors sometimes encountered the track again on compilations such as David Cassidy’s Greatest Hits rather than on albums credited to The Partridge Family. Back in those days, if you wandered into, for instance, Wing Hing Records on Campbell Street and asked for the song, chances were the proprietor would simply point you to whichever record that happened to have it in stock.

The recording itself also had an interesting backstory. Despite the television image of a family band, most of the studio recording was actually done by seasoned Los Angeles session musicians. Cassidy sang the lead vocal, but the backing band was part of the famous circle of studio players often associated with the so-called “Wrecking Crew.” The result was a perfectly crafted slice of early 1970s pop that went on to sell millions of copies around the world.

Of course, once the television fame took hold, the record companies wasted no time building a solo career around him. Albums like Cherish and Rock Me Baby began appearing in the early 1970s. Even people who didn’t follow The Partridge Family probably knew at least one or two of his songs. By the mid-1970s he was reportedly one of the highest-paid entertainers in the world. 

But fame built on teenage hysteria rarely lasts forever. By 1975 the signs were already there that the wave was beginning to crest, at least in the United States. Musical tastes were changing, and the industry was moving on to other styles and new faces. Cassidy was still hugely popular internationally, but the days of absolute teen idol domination were starting to fade.

It was around this time that Bell Records released David Cassidy’s Greatest Hits. It was the usual record company strategy to gather up the familiar hits and sell them again while the name was still hot. But the album also ended up acting as a kind of summary of Cassidy’s first phase as a pop star. The songs on it came mostly from the years when he ruled the teen market: the Partridge Family period, the early solo records and the hits that had fuelled those screaming concerts. Soon after that, Cassidy moved to RCA Records and began trying to reshape his image. 

When I listen to those early hits today, it’s easy to remember why he made such an impact. For a few years in the early 1970s, David Cassidy was one of those rare pop figures whose appeal crossed borders and cultures. His records travelled easily around the world, and even in a place like Penang his songs found their way into record collections and transistor radios.

That’s what makes Greatest Hits interesting now. It isn’t just a compilation album. It’s a reminder of a particular moment in pop history when a television actor with a good voice and a lot of charm briefly became the centre of a worldwide musical craze. For those of us who remember those days, hearing those songs again also brings back a time when a simple pop tune drifting out of a radio could travel halfway across the world and still find its way into a Penang coffee shop.

Side 1: Cherish, Doesn't somebody want to be wanted, Daydreamer, Please please me, Could it be forever, If I didn't care
Side 2: How can I be sure, I think I love you, Rock me baby, I am a clown, I'll meet you halfway

Butterworth ferry terminal tragedy 1988

A few days ago, while I was just beginning my recuperation after the cataract operation, a story appeared in The Star newspaper revisiting the Butterworth ferry terminal tragedy of 1988. I’ll reproduce that story at the end of this posting, but first I want to say this: I was there when the terminal platform collapsed. This is my story too. My experience, my memory.

Almost 40 years have passed since that day. July has always been the time when the St Anne’s Church in Bukit Mertajam holds its annual novena, culminating in the Feast of St Anne, usually observed on the weekend closest to the 26th of July, with the candlelight procession drawing the biggest crowds. Every year the festival draws huge crowds from all over Malaysia and even from neighbouring countries. Not just Catholics, but people of other faiths as well, though perhaps not so much the Protestants or Muslims. In those days, many still crossed over from the island to the mainland by ferry, on foot or with their cars and motorcycles, even though the Penang Bridge was already there.

In 1988, also around July, there was another major event taking place. The committee of the Kong Hock Keong temple had announced that a once-in-60-years procession of Kuan Imm, the Goddess of Mercy, would take place on Penang island. That alone was enough to stir the imagination of the Chinese community. A rare chance to see the Kuan Imm images from this and other temples taken out and paraded through the streets of George Town.

Unlike the St Anne’s Feast, where people made a beeline for the church itself, the Kuan Imm procession would have people lining the streets to watch the floats go by. Since Kong Hock Keong was located right in the heart of George Town, long before UNESCO heritage status came into the picture, the ferry remained the natural way for people from the mainland to cross over.

At that time I was working in Ban Hin Lee Bank. I was living in Seberang Jaya then, newly married to Saw See, and my daily routine was simple enough. I would drive to Pantai Road in Butterworth, park the car in the compound of a private house, walk through the Penang Port Commission Complex to the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal, cross over to the Raja Tun Uda terminal on the island, and then walk the last stretch to the bank in Beach Street.

A few days before 31 July 1988, I suggested to my father and my father-in-law that we should go together to watch the procession. Everyone agreed. So on that Sunday, we drove to Butterworth, I parked in my usual spot at the old couple’s house, and we made our way to the ferry terminal.

We thought it would be easy enough to cross over, but we were wrong. There were already several hundreds of people there, and more were arriving all the time. Add to that those returning from St Anne’s Church, and you were probably looking at a few thousand people packed into the terminal building.

The four of us edged forward slowly with the crowd. The ferry service was still running, but between ferries the whole mass would stop and wait. Then when boarding was announced, those at the back would surge forward. At the front of the enclosed terminal, the pressure built up on the steel structure and the wooden flooring.

Somewhere in that slow, relentless push, my father became separated from me. I could see him ahead, but the distance between us kept widening. But my father-in-law was still beside me. By about 4.30pm, we had cleared the ticket turnstile. We thought we might finally be able to board the next ferry. Spirits lifted a little. My father-in-law and Saw See next to me, my father perhaps ten feet ahead. Kuan Imm procession, here we come.

Then came a tremendous vibration followed immediately with a loud whoosh.

At first I thought it was a jet flying low overhead. The sound was something like that. And then, in an instant, everything changed. One moment we were enclosed within the terminal structure, the next moment we were staring at open sky. The roof had given way. Hardly 20 feet away, the platform in front of us had collapsed, taking with it everyone standing there.

Panic broke out immediately. The crowd surged backwards. We three had no choice but to move with it. But where was my father? I couldn’t see him anymore. Was he on that section that gave way? There was no way to know.

We were pushed all the way back towards the Penang Port Commssion Complex. Nobody could go forward, only back. Somehow the three of us made our way out of the building. But I knew I had to go back and look for my father.

As I tried to push against the flow, I suddenly saw him. He was staggering unsteadily towards me, holding on to his cane. He was alright though. Shaken, but alright. I gave him a hug, more out of relief than anything else, and we made our way back to the car. Not long after that, we all drove home in silence.

The incident happened on a Sunday. The next day, Monday, it was back to work for many people. But how were we to cross over to the island when the terminal had collapsed? I didn’t know what to expect, but to my relief, the ferry service was still operating. The damaged terminal was cordoned off, and foot passengers were diverted to the vehicular ferries. For the next few weeks, until the authorities sorted things out, the lower deck of those ferries was opened to foot passengers. There were no benches, so we stood all the way from Butterworth to George Town and back again every day.

In the end, although the debris was cleared and investigations concluded, that old terminal, built in 1956, was never used again. The vehicular terminal was modified instead to handle both vehicular and foot passengers.

It still feels a bit unreal. One moment we were just three people trying to catch a ferry to see a procession, the next moment we were part of something far bigger and far more serious. Time has moved on, the old terminal is gone, and life has carried on. But memories like this have a knack of staying with you, surfacing when you least expect it.

This past Chinese New Year, for instance, my daughter was talking to her old schoolmate when the topic of the tragedy was raised. They were only one-year-old when it happened. Later, she mentioned it to me in passing and I could see the look on her face when she realised just how close her grandfathers and parents had come to being caught in it.

So when I came across this recent article in The Star, it brought everything back in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated. I reproduce it here for the record.

Revisiting the 1988 Butterworth jetty tragedy
Story by ANGELIN YEOH, 18 March 2026

THE year was 1988, and The Star reporter Paul Gabriel found himself at the district hospital in Butterworth, Penang. It was past 10pm on a Sunday and he had set himself a crucial task.

Paul needed to get into the morgue. Five hours earlier, Paul had arrived at the Pengkalan Sultan Abdul Halim jetty where a wooden platform collapsed under the weight of a crowd estimated at around 10,000 people.

The crowd was due to the Buddhist Guan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) festival taking place in George Town on the island, with the annual St Anne’s Feast being celebrated in Bukit Mertajam on the mainland on the same day. The Guan Yin procession was touted as a once-in-60-years event, with tourists coming from as far as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

Paul remembered the chaos that followed the collapse of the jetty platform - sirens blaring, helicopters hovering overhead and blood-stained ambulances rushing the injured to hospital.

For a reporter, the most important detail is to uncover and be accurate with the number of casualties – a figure that will let readers understand the full scale of the tragedy.

“It was getting late into the evening and the police were not ready with the full casualty list. I wanted to go the extra mile to get as close a figure as I could,” he said.

Paul was 25 and was a year into his stint as The Star’s Butterworth correspondent. He was familiar with the district hospital grounds as he had covered VIP visits and interviewed victims involved in other incidents.

But stepping into the morgue was new territory for him. He approached a security guard with a story that he was looking for a missing relative.

“I said I was concerned for a relative who had gone to the jetty. I pleaded with him to let me in just for a while,” he recalled.

It took some time for Paul to convince the unsuspecting guard to let him in.

Eventually, he was granted access and went in alone. Then in the dimly-lit morgue, Paul saw black body bags and began counting, notebook and pen in hand.

“I took it that the large bags were that of adults and the small ones that of children,” Paul said, adding that as nervous as he was, he tried to keep calm to get the counting over with as fast as he could.

“I was purely in reporter mode. My thoughts were focused on covering the news and getting the facts as best as I could.”

Paul said he was done in about 10 minutes and left the morgue with the grim task of reporting to his editor that 31 people had died.

Later, police confirmed that there were 32 casualties with more than 400 injured.

The story didn’t end there as Paul said there was more work to be done to interview survivors and ferry officials. Ultimately, how did things go wrong and who was responsible?

He knocked on the door of then-Penang Port Commission (PPC) chairman Datuk Seri Syed Mohamad Aidid Syed Murtaza's office seeking answers.

“I asked him point-blank what he was going to do.... how much of a responsibility he would take.”

Paul remembered how Syed Mohamad Aidid looked him in the eyes to say: “I will not quit. I am not going to run away from this tragedy. I will stay and put things right. That is my commitment.”

Ironically, the PPC chairman was among those who narrowly escaped death, being just five metres away from the crashing platform and metal beams.

Paul said covering the tragedy was one of the biggest stories of his career, one that had also taken him to shootouts and a tour bus hijacking during his time in Butterworth which was notorious for crime back then.

He had no regrets about counting body bags in the morgue. "There was no time to ponder. It was a challenge I had to rise to. Back then, there was no Internet or social media. Everyone was waiting for the news. People would wake up and grab The Star  first thing in the morning! We had to be the best in delivering the news.

"As a child, Paul had fond memories of the ferries in Penang. He looked forward to being in the vehicular deck as his father drove the family across to the mainland.

“The sea breeze, the seabirds and yes, I think we also saw dolphins from afar!”

But now, whenever he returns to Penang and passes the Butterworth jetty on the mainland, memories of that fateful day 38 years ago come flooding back.

"The scene of the jetty platform collapse and bodies lying on the road is still etched in my mind," he said.

**On Sept 21, 1989, a 200-page report of a Royal Commission of Inquiry set up up to investigate the mishap found the PPC to be negligent. It said the ferry manager ought to have known the limitations of the upper deck, and that the duty of anticipating the passenger load lay squarely with operations which had figures from previous festivals.

The report concluded that overloading of passengers in the waiting area of the terminal caused the platform to collapse, and that the PPC’s operations department had pleaded ignorance on the maximum number of passengers allowed there.

The nyonya kitchen awakens, part 3

Reading back over what I wrote in Part 1 and Part 2, I realise that I’ve been mentioning all these Nyonya koay rather casually, as though everyone would know what they are. In Penang half a century ago, that might well have been the case. In those days the names were simply part of everyday kitchen talk, especially around Chinese New Year when trays of koay would appear one after another from the steamer or oven.

A typical array of Penang Nyonya koay available commercially today:
(outer ring) serimuka, koay bengkar ubikayu, koay lapeh;
(middle ring) koay bengkar, koay tatai; (inner ring) koay talam

A household like my maternal grandmother’s could easily produce 15 or 20 varieties over several days. Some were meant for the altar, some for visiting relatives and friends, and some simply for the family to enjoy between meals.

Today, a number of these koay can still be found in Penang, though more often at market stalls or specialty shops rather than in home kitchens. Others have quietly slipped out of common memory. So for the benefit of younger readers and perhaps to refresh the memories of older ones, here is a short glossary of the koay I have mentioned, and more!

Note: Traditionalists like the Malacca peranakans will insist on using gula malacca when the recipe calls for it but the more pragmatic Penang Nyonyas generally substitute it with brown sugar.

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Glossary

Huat Koay – Small steamed rice cakes that crack at the top when cooked. The split crown is taken as a sign of prosperity and good fortune.

Tnee Koay – Sticky brown Chinese New Year cake made from glutinous rice flour and brown sugar. Traditionally steamed for hours, sometimes overnight. Will gradually harden over weeks if left untouched. To be enjoyed, the hardened tnee koay is sliced thinly and either steamed and coated with freshly grated coconut, or fried with egg and batter.

Ang Koo – Red tortoise-shaped glutinous rice cake filled with sweet mung bean paste. The tortoise symbolises longevity, although there can be other shapes as well, notably the Chinese gold bar and the peach.

Koay Kochnee – Banana-leaf parcels of glutinous rice dough filled with sweet grated coconut cooked in brown sugar, then steamed until fragrant.

Koay Kochnee Santan – A variation of the koay kochnee where each banana-leaf parcel is steamed with coconut milk that sets into a soft, jelly-like santan coating around the dumpling.

Koay Bengkah – A baked cake of rice flour and coconut, often coloured purple with the bunga telang or yam, with a lightly caramelised golden top. Usually cut into squares or diamonds.

Koay Bengkah Ubikayu – A separate cassava-based version made from grated tapioca (ubi kayu) mixed with santan and sugar, baked until the surface turns golden and the interior remains moist and slightly fibrous.

Koay Talam – Two-layered steamed kueh consisting of a pandan-flavoured base and a soft coconut custard top.

Pulot Tatai – Blue-coloured glutinous rice tinted with the bunga telang and steamed with coconut milk, then pressed into diamond shapes. Often eaten with kaya.

Serimuka – A glutinous rice base topped with a thick pandan custard layer, steamed carefully so the two layers remain distinct.

Koay Lapeh – Nine-layered steamed cake, alternating pink and white layers with a top layer of red, where each layer is added and steamed in succession. Children like to peel the layers apart before eating.

Koay Kosui – Small brown sugar steamed cakes with a soft, slightly springy texture, typically topped with freshly grated coconut.

Pulot Enti – Small banana-leaf parcels of steamed glutinous rice topped with grated coconut cooked in brown sugar.

Koay Tayap – Thin green pandan crepes folded around grated coconut cooked with brown sugar. Very rarely seen is the white crepe version filled with freshly grated coconut and white sugar.

Apong Bokkua – Soft fermented rice pancakes served with a syrup made from coconut milk and brown sugar. The Malays name this serabai or apom berkuah.

Onde-Onde – Small glutinous rice balls filled with brown sugar syrup and coated with grated coconut.

Koay Balu – Small sponge cakes baked in brass moulds over charcoal, crisp on the outside and soft inside.

Koay Ee – Small glutinous rice balls usually served in sweet ginger syrup. More commonly seen during the Tang Chek or Winter Solstice festival but still remembered in some festive kitchens.

Koay Bangkit – Light, airy coconut cookies made from tapioca flour and coconut milk, pressed into small moulds and baked until crumbly.

Koay Kapek – Chinese New Year love letters! Thin coconut wafers made by pouring a light batter onto a heated brass mould over charcoal, then folded or rolled quickly while still hot. The process requires two people working together, one baking and the other folding or rolling. 

Pineapple Tarts – Short pastry filled with thick pineapple jam; the pineapple symbolises the arrival of prosperity.

Peanut Cookie – Crumbly cookies made from finely ground roasted peanuts, flour and sugar, brushed with egg glaze before baking. Sandy texture and strong peanut aroma, they are common in Penang homes.

Cataract done

So I had my cataract procedure done on my left eye yesterday and I got through it okay. Many thanks to my doctor, Teoh Hian Jin, from Bagan Specialist Centre in Butterworth. I must admit that before the procedure I was mighty anxious and nervous because he had warned me that my iris was rather small and that he might have to use some alternatives to get it to open wider. And true enough, despite several attempts to dilate the eye, he eventually had to use hooks.

I probably wasn’t the perfect patient either. Several times he had to remind me to relax and unclench my jaw and turn my head slightly towards him. In the end, I attempted some basic techniques to calm myself down. 

Maybe I should also explain why I chose to go to him in the first place. I discovered that he is also an Old Free but seven years my junior at Penang Free School, although he isn’t a member of The Old Frees’ Association. Still, that information was good enough for me. I would trust an Old Free any time and in this case my trust certainly wasn’t misplaced. Hian Jin did an exemplary job on me. Now I just have to wait for the world to look a little brighter through that eye!

Cataract

Today's the day. Left eye. Wish me well.

Nursery rhymes

I've written before about my kindergarten days. That particular episode goes back to 1960, when I was six years old. It was my first experience attending kindergarten and it turned out to be quite an eye-opening cultural shock. Until then the only children I really knew were those from my immediate neighbourhood and my cousins scattered across the island. Suddenly there were perhaps 80 or a hundred children all under one roof, learning our ABCs and 123s.

Ten years ago I wrote that the master of the kindergarten was someone I knew only as Mr Poh. Since then a little more has come to light. His name was Poh Thean Poe, and he ran the place, officially known as Seang Tek Road Kindergarten, from 1955 until 1973. By then he had already stepped back from the day-to-day running two years earlier and left for Kota Kinabalu to work in his mother's restaurant. Later he settled in Seremban. That much I know about him.

Music was a big part of my kindergarten days. I still remember those mornings when we were seated upstairs in the two-storey wooden bungalow that housed the school. The teacher would put on colourful 45 rpm records on one of those changeable record players and we listened to nursery rhymes.

I sometimes wonder whether kindergartens today still play these traditional English nursery rhymes. Songs like The Farmer in the Dell, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and London Bridge Is Falling Down. They can still be found easily enough on streaming services like YouTube or Spotify. Recently I have been reacquainting myself with some of them and came across a collection recorded by Oscar Brand. 

Who exactly was he, this Oscar Brand? A practical unknown in this part of the world but Oscar Brand was one of the most prolific figures in the 20th century American folk revival. Born in Winnipeg in 1920 and later based in New York, he built a career that stretched across more than 70 years as a singer, songwriter, author and broadcaster. He recorded nearly 100 albums and wrote hundreds of songs, ranging from sea shanties and patriotic ballads to political campaign songs and his famous, or perhaps notorious, Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads series.

Brand's recordings covered an astonishing range of material. On one hand he recorded gentle nursery rhymes for children. On the other he was equally willing to document the more mischievous side of folk tradition.

That series was Brand’s cheerful attempt to preserve a part of folk tradition that polite society often preferred to ignore. Folk songs were not always wholesome campfire
material. Sailors, soldiers and travellers had been singing slightly risqué verses for centuries, usually in taverns or other less respectable surroundings. Brand simply gathered a number of these songs together and recorded them more or less in the spirit in which they had originally circulated.

My copy of Volume Three in the series was given to me by Anwar Fazal, that well known figure in Penang's civic and cultural life. The songs are performed in a straightforward folk style with little more than Brand’s voice and guitar. Despite the title, the humour is mostly based on suggestion and wordplay rather than anything explicit. That probably explains how such songs managed to be recorded at all in that period.

When these records first appeared in the 1950s they caused a certain amount of fuss. Some countries even banned them for a time, which of course only made them more attractive to collectors. Brand himself always maintained that these songs were part of genuine folk heritage. In his view they deserved to be documented.

Brand was also the long-time host of the American radio programme Folksong Festival on WNYC. The programme began in 1945 and ran for more than 70 years, earning a Guinness World Records citation as the longest running radio show with the same host. Throughout his career Brand championed both traditional and contemporary folk music, giving early exposure to performers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. He remained active almost until his death in 2016 at the age of 96.

Listening to some of his recordings today, especially those old nursery rhymes, brings back faint memories of those mornings in the wooden bungalow on Seang Tek Road. It is curious how a few simple songs on a record can open a small window into a very distant part of one's childhood.

Nepal-India Day 16: Delhi and goodbye

Dateline: 6 December 2025. Waking refreshed the next morning, we checked out of Hotel Africa Avenue after breakfast and began what would be our final full day in Delhi. The original programme indicated a visit to Lutyens’ Delhi, that grand imperial layout conceived in the early 20th century. However, the roads were closed due to visiting foreign dignitaries. Our coach could only crawl through the roads, offering us a moving glimpse rather than the intended walk.

Still, we saw the imposing sweep of the India Gate. Beneath its 42-metre-high arch now stands a 28-foot granite statue of Subhas Chandra Bose, installed in 2022 in the canopy that once housed a statue of King George V. Designed by Edwin Lutyens and completed in 1931, the India Gate commemorates more than 70,000 soldiers of the British Indian Army killed in the First World War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Its resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe is unmistakable.

Yet it was Bose who held my attention. A pivotal figure in the independence movement, he led the Indian National Army (INA) against British rule during the Second World War. The name was not unfamiliar to me. I have written about him before, particularly the INA’s activities in Malaya. I told our surprised guide how the INA had used my alma mater, the Penang Free School, as a training ground during the Japanese Occupation. He seemed taken aback that someone from our group could recount such details about one of India’s national heroes.

From imperial grandeur, we proceeded to Gandhi Smriti, formerly Birla House. It was here that Mahatma Gandhi spent the final 144 days of his life, and where he was assassinated on 30 January 1948. The museum preserves the atmosphere of those last days.

Born in 1869 in Gujarat, Gandhi studied law in London before forging his political conscience in South Africa, where he spent 21 years advocating for Indian civil rights after being thrown off a train for refusing to leave a “whites-only” compartment. Returning to India in 1915, he transformed the Indian National Congress into a mass movement. His philosophy of Satyagraha or non-violent resistance reshaped the struggle for independence and inspired global leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.

At Gandhi Smriti, a simple concrete path marked with footprints traced his final walk to the prayer ground. A modest pavilion marked the exact spot where he fell. Inside his preserved living quarters, we saw the sparse belongings that defined his life: spectacles, a walking stick, a spinning wheel, low writing desk. Outside, pillars inscribed with his teachings stand among traditional symbols such as “Om” and the ancient swastika in its original Indian context of auspiciousness.

In the afternoon we visited the National Museum. With approximately 200,000 artefacts spanning over 5,000 years, it was less a museum than a condensed archive of Indian civilisation. Walking through its galleries felt like compressing millennia into a single afternoon.

The Indus Valley Civilisation section alone contained more than 3,500 objects excavated from sites such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. There were sculptures from the Maurya, Shunga, Kushan and Gupta periods, coins and armour, textiles and jewellery, miniature paintings and manuscripts. Each gallery offered a different chapter in India’s long history.

But it was the section devoted to the Buddha that drew us all in the end. The most fitting end to our Indian journey. Here were sacred relics of the Buddha excavated from sites such as Piprahwa in Uttar Pradesh. These relics, believed by many scholars to be among the corporeal remains distributed after the Buddha’s cremation in the 5th century BC, were displayed in a specially designed chamber meant to evoke the serenity of a stupa. 

A notice on the wall invited visitors to pay homage to the relics: 

"Around 463 BCE at Kushinagar, Lord Buddha passed away or achieved Mahaparinirvana at the age of eighty. The residents of Kushinagara cremated his body with ceremonies befitting a Universal King (chakravartin). Buddha's relics were divided into eight portions and distributed among eight kingdoms. The sacred relics were commemorated into eight different stupas. 

The relics housed in this hall are excavated from Piprahwa in the Siddharth Nagar District of Uttar Pradesh, an erstwhile part of the ancient city of Kapilavastu. The discovery of one inscribed casket in 1898 by W.C Peppe refers to the relics of the Buddha and his clan, 'Sakya'. Further excavations conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1971-1977 discovered two more un-inscribed steatite caskets containing twelve sacred relics in the bigger casket and ten sacred relics in the smaller casket. 

National Museum, New Delhi humbly invites the devotees and museum visitors for paying homage to the sacred relics of Gautama Buddha."

Here, the atmosphere was understandably hushed. Visitors instinctively lower their voices. One does not merely look; one contemplates. Our Chief Abbott signalled everyone for a session of meditation. Even visitors from outside our group joined in. Later, there were other Buddhist groups that arrived to perform their own sessions.

There were exquisite sculptures representing different artistic traditions: the serene sandstone Buddhas of the Gupta period, often regarded as the classical ideal of Indian Buddhist art; the Gandhara sculptures influenced by Hellenistic forms, where the Buddha’s robe fell in Greco-Roman folds; and Mathura figures carved in the red sandstone of India. Each style reflected how Buddhism travelled, adapted and absorbed regional influences.

The museum also displayed fragments of ancient stupas, votive tablets and inscriptions in various scripts. Together they charted not only Buddhism’s spread but also the evolution of artistic language across centuries. For us who had earlier stood beneath the Qutb Minar contemplating the rise of medieval powers, it was humbling to be reminded of an even older spiritual current that had once radiated from this land across Asia.

By late afternoon, the collective weight of the centuries seemed to have settled gently upon us. Once again, there was that familiar sensation of information and visual overload. Delhi had offered us monuments of empire, places of martyrdom and relics of enlightenment. All in a single day.

Within hours, we would truly be on our way home. As I reflected on our 16-day journey from Kathmandu to Delhi, what I had initially thought would be a long trip but which now felt unexpectedly too brief, I realised how much there was still to absorb. Not merely the sights, but the stories behind them, which I hope I have been able to do justice to here in my blog. Perhaps that is what travel ultimately offers: not simply movement across geography but a quiet passage across time.

Previous:

Nepal-India Day 15: Jaipur to Delhi
Nepal-India Day 14: Jaipuri

Nepal-India Day 13: Agra

Nepal-India Days 11 and 12: The Varanasi ghats
Nepal-India Day 11: Varanasi deer park
Nepal-India Day 9 and 10: Bodhgaya to Varanasi  

Nepal-India Days 9 and 10: Bodhgaya
Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Nalanda  

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Gridhakura
Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali
Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar
Nepal-India Day 6: Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 5: Lumbini to Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 4: The sala tree 
Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: Lumbini and Kapilvastu 
Nepal-India Days 1 and 2: Kathmandu and Nagarkot

Belly dancing music

Some years ago a rather unusual record came into my possession. It was 51 Belly Dancer Favorites by Gus Vali and his orchestra. I did not buy it myself. The LP was given to me by Anwar Fazal, a well-known figure in Penang’s civic and cultural life.

Anwar Fazal, as many people know, has spent decades involved in consumer, environmental and public interest movements. He helped found organisations such as the Consumers Association of Penang and played a role in several international networks dealing with health and consumer protection. At some point along the way this curious record found its way into my hands through him. The LP has stayed in my collection ever since.

The album itself is a relic from the early 1960s when Middle Eastern themed music had a small but noticeable presence in the Western record market. The title sounds grand enough but it is really a clever bit of marketing. There are not 51 separate tracks. Instead the record consists of six long medleys, each one stitching together fragments of many melodies from across the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Vali was a Greek-American clarinetist and the clarinet is very much the dominant voice throughout the record. It weaves through those unmistakable oriental scales while the rhythm section keeps things moving along. Around it is a mixture of instruments like the oud, Middle Eastern percussion such as the doumbek and the occasional support of a Western bass and drum kit.

The medleys are grouped loosely by region. One sequence moves through Turkish and Greek themes, another brings in Israeli melodies and elsewhere the music shifts toward Arabic material. Each tune appears briefly before the next one takes over. The idea was not to dwell on any particular melody but to keep the music flowing without interruption. But to someone like me who had never been exposed to Middle Eastern music before, the transitions were a bit too subtle. The melodies came and went so quickly that I could hardly tell where one ended and the next began. To my ears, they all sounded much the same.

That format made sense for the setting in which this sort of music was often used. These medleys could accompany belly dancing performances in restaurants or nightclubs where the dancer might want to change tempo or mood without stopping the music every few minutes.

Listening to the record today, however, one cannot help reflecting how sobering the timing feels. The melodies come from a part of the world that is once again dominating the news headlines. Since 28 February 2026 the Middle East has been engulfed in another violent chapter, with the United States and Israel now openly at war with Iran. The same region whose folk melodies once circulated harmlessly on lounge records is again a theatre of bombs, missiles and political brinkmanship.

When this album was produced, the music was packaged as a kind of exotic entertainment for Western listeners. Few people probably thought very deeply about the cultures or histories behind those melodies. Yet here they are again, echoing faintly from an old LP, reminding us that the Middle East is far more than the grim news images we see today.

Perhaps that is why I keep the record. It is not particularly rare or musically profound but it carries a small chain of associations: a gift from Anwar Fazal, a glimpse of a musical tradition far from our shores and now a reminder that the same region continues to shape the world’s anxieties. A rather unlikely record to sit quietly in a Penang collection, but there it is.

The nyonya kitchen awakens, part 2

When Part 1 ended, my maternal grandmother's kitchen had quietened down after the midnight steaming of tnee koay, the trays of huat koay and ang koo lined up, and I had been safely sent outside to avoid “spoiling” the delicate process. That was only the beginning. A full Penang Nyonya Chinese New Year table in the 1950s and 1960s was never just a few signature koay; it was a display of 15 to 20 varieties, some now almost forgotten.

Among them were pulot tatai, glutinous rice coloured by the clitoria flower, then steamed with coconut milk and cut into squares before eaten with kaya; serimuka, with a glutinous rice base and pandan custard top; and koay lapeh, the colourful dual-coloured, nine-layered steamed koay that children loved to peel apart layer by layer. The koay kosui, small steamed koay topped generously with grated coconut, was also common. Alongside them would be koay kochnee which was glutinous rice dumplings filled with sweet coconut and brown sugar, carefully wrapped in banana leaf before steaming so that the fragrance of the leaf infused the dough. Koay tayap, thin pandan crepes filled with grated coconut, would often make an appearance. Even apong bokkua or the onde-onde, small glutinous rice balls with molten brown sugar, might appear if there was time.

Preparing these required taboo rituals to be strictly observed. A child like me would always be sent outside the kitchen while the more delicate koay was steamed. A dropped utensil was considered a sign to pause and restart to avoid “offending” the koay; and in one instance, a steamer lid had to be lifted clockwise, never counter=clockwise, to encourage proper rising. No one knew precisely why, but the rules were fastidiously followed.

The koay for visitors often included pineapple tarts, peanut cookies, koay bangkit and small baked items like koay balu. These were sweet, delicate and required careful handling, especially with the coconut-based varieties, which could dry or curdle if steamed too long or stirred too roughly.

By the end of the preparation, trays would cover every flat surface in the kitchen and hallway. The aromas of pandan, coconut, sugar and toasted flour mixed into a festive perfume. Only then would my grandmother allow herself a small rest, knowing that the household was ready for the 15 days of Chinese New Year visits, offerings at the altar and the family gatherings.

It is tempting to think of these koay simply as food, but they were more than that. They carried memory, patience, skill and the quiet discipline of the kitchen. The taboos, the careful layering, the repeated steaming and pressing were all part of the dance of the festival, handed down over decades. Even as supermarkets and shops now offer quick substitutes, there is something in the deliberate care of those old kitchens that cannot be replicated.

When I see a tray of huat koay or a slice of koay talam, I can almost hear my grandmother's exhortations: “Don’t quarrel while steaming,” “Don’t taste until it’s ready,” “Move the tray carefully.” These are not just rules but echoes of a household that measured time, care and love through the preparation of food. In those days, Chinese New Year was as much about ritual, patience and attention to small details as it was about celebration. And that, more than anything, is what I remember most vividly.

There'll be a Part 3 to this story, in which I shall give a glossary of the Nyonya koay that I know. 

Nepal-India Day 15: Jaipur to Delhi

Dateline: 5 December 2025. The journey from Jaipur to Delhi took close to six hours, a long stretch of highway that gradually thickened with traffic as we neared the capital. By the time we entered the city, the afternoon sun had begun to mellow, casting a warm light that seemed to soften even the concrete flyovers and busy intersections. There was no pause for rest. The Qutb Minar was our first destination in Delhi.

Stepping into the complex felt like stepping back into time measured by centuries. The grounds opened wide and there it stood, the Minar itself, which rose in red sandstone against a pale sky, radiating warmth in the late afternoon light.

Construction began in 1199 under Qutb al-Din Aibak, founder of the Delhi Sultanate, and was later completed and repaired by successive rulers after lightning damaged its upper levels. Its five storeys remained clearly distinct. The lower tiers were more intricately carved with bands of Arabic calligraphy wrapped around the stone. Higher up, the surface became plainer, the ornamentation less dense.

Our tour guide, while explaining dynasties and dates, mentioned the name of a Sufi master connected with the early Sultanate period. Unfortunately, I cannot now remember the name he mentioned. Information overload. But the reference lingered. The Minar is commonly described as a victory tower where power was proclaimed with each new ruler. Yet the Sufis of that era were preaching something altogether different: humility, inwardness, love of the Divine beyond formal authority.

At the first opportunity, I mentioned the Persian poet Rumi whose verses on longing and union continued to resonate across centuries. And I confessed my long-standing admiration for Omar Khayyam whose quatrains, hovering between faith and scepticism, have always appealed to my temperament. The guide looked mildly surprised.

We could not climb its 379 internal steps since access has long been closed. At one point, two guards arrived to open the door briefly to go in and that was that. That was as close as we would get. From ground level, however, its scale was overwhelming enough. It did indeed feel like a vertical declaration etched into the skyline.

From there we wandered into the remains of the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque. Built in the late 12th century, it is considered the first mosque in Delhi. What struck me most were the pillars. Many had been repurposed from demolished Hindu and Jain temples. Carvings of bells, floral motifs and faint deities still lingered on their surfaces. One civilisation building on top of another. The vast stone screen of arches at the mosque’s façade seemed an attempt to assert a newer Islamic architectural identity upon earlier foundations.

Further within stood the Alai Darwaza, built in 1311 by Alauddin Khalji. Its proportions were precise, its red sandstone walls inlaid with white marble calligraphy and geometric patterns. It is said to be among the earliest examples in India of true arches and a true dome constructed with advanced engineering techniques. In the afternoon light, the contrast between red and white was luminous, almost delicate despite the solidity of the structure.

Nearby was the tomb of Iltutmish, the second Sultan of Delhi. Its exterior was plain, almost austere. Inside, however, the carvings were intricate with geometric patterns and calligraphic inscriptions etched deeply into sandstone. Not far away, the Tomb of Imam Zamin, a 16th-century addition from the Mughal period, offered yet another shift in tone. Its white marble dome and fine jali lattice windows contrasted with the rugged grandeur of the earlier buildings.

The complex was not merely a collection of monuments. It was a story told across eight centuries covering conquests and consolidation, destruction and adaptation, ambition and artistry. The Minar may dominate the skyline, but the surrounding structures give it context. Together they form a chronicle of Delhi’s long, long past.

From the Qutb Minar, we were returned rather abruptly to present-day realities. Some shopping was in order, and we were taken to a Pekoe Tips Tea outlet. While the others browsed shelves of neatly packed tins and fragrant blends, I slipped outside for a moment. The moon had already risen. It was one day past full, no longer perfectly round, but still luminous enough to command attention. After an afternoon immersed in centuries-old stone, that familiar orb felt reassuring and reminding me of home.

That evening we checked into the Hotel Africa Avenue. After the impressive accommodations in Bodhgaya, Varanasi and Jaipur, this Delhi hotel felt noticeably smaller. A little cramped and somewhat spartan, the furnishings simple and tired, the room lacking the polish of earlier stays. Yet it was clean, with amenities and the bed was comfortable enough. At that late stage of the journey, comfort mattered more than aesthetics.

The next morning we would be checking out. This would be our final night in India. And as I laid there, I thought back of our journey from Kathmandu to Delhi and thinking how much we had accomplished on this short trip of 16 days. Within 24 hours, we would be leaving for hime, carrying with us this story.

Next:

Nepal-India Day 16: Delhi and goodbye
Previous:
Nepal-India Day 14: Jaipur

Nepal-India Day 13: Agra

Nepal-India Days 11 and 12: The Varanasi ghats
Nepal-India Day 11: Varanasi deer park
Nepal-India Day 9 and 10: Bodhgaya to Varanasi  

Nepal-India Days 9 and 10: Bodhgaya
Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Nalanda  

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Gridhakura
Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali
Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar
Nepal-India Day 6: Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 5: Lumbini to Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 4: The sala tree 
Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: Lumbini and Kapilvastu 
Nepal-India Days 1 and 2: Kathmandu and Nagarkot

Full moon over Jaipur