SAHOCA 3 – Into The World of Malay Literature

My interest in Malay literature started when I was in Form IV at the Sultan Abdul Hamid College in 1962. It was the year that the subject of Malay Literature was introduced in our Malaya Certificate Of Examination. Our first Malay Literature teacher was Che Gu Shahnon Ahmad who hailed from Sik. He was also a former Collegian and it was also his first outing as a teacher.

We were dumb founded when he started the class by saying “ Boys, welcome to the subject of Malay Literature. First of all, I would like to teach you about drawing.” We were astonished with his opening remarks as we were wondering to the question of what was drawing had got to do with Malay Literature. We were thinking whether we were in the wrong class or the teacher himself was in the wrong class. When he began to explain further about his opening remarks, then the correct interpretation of the term drawing sunk into our heads.

Che Gu Shahnon told us that you must possess a strong power of imagination if you want to be a good writer or for you to produce a good piece of literature. Then he began to teach us about the power of imagination which he termed as drawing. The process of imagination he was teaching us was actually the process of mind mapping. At that time, Che Gu Shahnon was already a budding short story writer. His writings were published almost every other months in the weekly edition of Berita Harian or Utusan Melayu. In those days you were paid between $50.00 to $75.00 for a piece of your literary works that were published in the weekly editions of Malay newspapers.

We were in fact carried away with the concept of imagination or drawing that was initiated by Che Gu Shahnon. We were actually entranced by his ability of imaginations or story telling. We were indeed captivated by his story lines. We also began to emulate Che Gu Shahnon’s style of writings which comprised of short sentences when we wrote our essays. Every week, we would produce our own writings for our class assignments which were highly acknowledged by Che Gu Shahnon.

An amusing incidence happened when one of our classmates got carried away with one the drawing exercises. Our classmate Ismail Bakar was so impressed with one of the drawings of Che Gu Shahnon to the extend that he produced a short story wholly based on Che Gu Shahnon’s story telling. Ismail Bakar then sent his master piece to Utusan Melayu. Luckily enough, his master piece was published in its weekly edition in the following month. He was paid $50.00 for his efforts. He was so delighted with this surprised bounty so much so that he spent his rewards by celebrating with us at the College tuck shop.. We skipped our normal lunch that day by having nasi mee telok Mamak which was the top choice cuisine at the canteen.

One month later, to our surprise we found out that Che Gu Sahnon was having problems with his short story publisher. He was accused of plagiarism as his short story was a duplicate copy of Ismail Bakar’ short story that was published a month earlier. It was indeed an embarrassing situation for Che Gu Shahnon as he was already an established writer in the Malay literary world. It did effected his reputation as a prolific writer. With that embarrassing episode, then we realized that Che Gu Shahnon’s story telling was in fact his way of pursuing his mental exercise on his proposed story lines before he actually start writing on his next short story.

Realising his unintended mistake, Ismail Bakar opologised to Che Gu Shahnon on the embarrassing incidence. To solve that matter amicably, Ismail Bakar also wrote to the newspaper publisher explaining his predicament. Luckily for Ismail Bakar, he was not penalized and he was very delighted because he could still keep his honorarium. Che Gu Shahnon’s controversial short story was also published in the next month’s edition without anybody realizing about the furor attributed to it. It was lucky for us too or otherwise we would have to pay back our meal of nasi mee telok Mamak.

With this amusing episode, Che Gu Shahnon stopped his practice of telling us his drawings. We really missed his drawings because since then we have to endure forty five minutes of solid lesson on Malay Literature. However Che Gu Shahnon’s efforts on drawings has proved its worth as it was already entrenched in our line of thinking in wanting to produce the highest quality of literary products.

I was really infatuated with Che Gu Shahnon’s style of teaching and writings. I began to indulge myself in reading literary works of Malaysian and Indonesian writers. As there were not much Malay books available then, I used to borrow Indonesian books from my late uncle-in-law Syed Hamid Syed Ali. My style of writings was also influenced by Che Gu Shahnon and sometimes also by the Indonesian writers.

Due to the effective teaching of Che Gu Shahnon, most of us rose to the occasion whereby many of us scored As in our Malay Literature subject in the following year Cambridge School Certificate Examination. With my attitude of over confidence, I could only scrapped through in Malay Literature. Ismail Bakar also scored an A for his Malay Literature and proceeded to become a Malay Language Teacher in Sungai Petani. Apart from that, he also excelled in football whereby he was one the prominent football referees in the state.

A few of us who were lovers of Malay Literature such as Shuib Din and Mohd. Daud Hamzah excelled in their academic endeavours by becoming professors. Prof. Mohd. Daud Hamzah even joined the academic staff of USM together with our Che Gu Shahnon. Kudos to Che Gu Shahnon who is our beacon of literary excellence in which he is a National Laureate as well as an Emeritus Professor of USM.

12^th August 2008, Dietitian Clinic, Sultanah Bahiyah Hospital.