Is there a version of me who...

'The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering". So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return,' Milan Kundera, Ignorance.

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life. And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect.

- an excerpt from À la recherche du temps perdu (A remembrance of things past) by Marcel Proust

There is something of a pleasantness that comes with the smell of rain brought upon maybe from the promise of a sort of a turn: in the temperature. While the rain does cool the day down, the air would still hang heavy with moisture that clings to the skin. Arriving back at old haunts, and walking along streets I once walked along, my soles stood again on familiar grounds as I looked down alleys, feeling as if I was looking into a past life. My tongue returned to an old way of speaking: a jumble of Malay, English and Chinese in a sing-song tone with added suffixes like -lah: tongue one version of myself would ashamedly disguise. I smiled at the ones around me who understood those sounds that rolled so easily off my tongue as just the way we speak. How old sights and sounds conjure up parts of ourselves that we once were. Old questions associated with these old versions of me rise up and threaten to return as I stared them down: Am I not enough? The echoes rung. Familiar scents and old tastes, set against the hugging heat, sepia toned sights and grainy sounds that invoked a sense of nostalgia. It was mostly a wispy sort of feeling that is un-pin-down-able.

Is there not so much that is stored in the smells and tastes of the food we grew up with? When asked to name a food I miss, I would often say: nasi lemak. Nasi lemak literally translates as fat rice: rice cooked in coconut cream, served with sambal, fried anchovies, hard boiled egg and cucumber often wrapped in banana leaf. And one can have it with additional sides like fried chicken. But it invokes memories of the old roadside stalls we were so used to driving past, and the old walks to the markets with my grandma, and the pasar malams (night markets) that is buzzing with noise and smell of food of all sorts. Of late, nasi lemak, has been associated with my visits back to Malaysia. Old tastes can store new memories, and I am unsure if they give a certain flavour to new memories, like some depth, and there are times, I think they possibly do.

We attach meaning to foods: some are so central to familial rituals and tradition. Perhaps the food, or ritual gives us something tangible in which we can store our memories, or make our meaning. Take bak kut teh, pork bone tea, which, as a child, had been a family Sunday morning ritual. We went to the same bak kut teh shop each week in Klang, before going to the Taman Eng Ann morning market where my brothers and I would wait in a bakery while my parents hauled in the weekly groceries. In the taste of bak kut teh I remember these mornings, and feel family. Tau fu fah, (a Chinese dessert made from soya beans) according to my mother, had been a ritualistic afternoon snack when she first had me. She used to buy them every afternoon when she was home from the local tau fu fah vendor: a man on a motorbike with a silver thermos-like tub of fresh hot tau fu fah. It had now somehow taken its place as one of my favourite foods that is a go-to for comfort.

There are the new memories too, that I have built around food. On a recent trip home to Malaysia, one of my dearest friends had taken me on an overnight trip to Melaka. Now I will always associate the food we had: the Melaka chicken rice balls, cendol with sago, and the exquisite Nyonya cuisine, to that trip that was one of the most meaningful road trips I had been on with friends. With the same dear one I had also shared a meal in my old neighbourhood, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, which featured the yam basket: an old favourite of a deep fried yam basket that is filled with vegetables. But these foods, and these places only ever mean as much as the people I share them with. But it is not all meals that I remember: the meals I remember and savour seem to be the ones shared with those who mean something to me. Meals where meaningful conversations are had, laughter and silliness are shared, and where love is given and received.

Nonstalgia (noun) The unsettling sensation that you are never able to fully access the past; that once you are departed from an event, some essential quality of it is lost forever. A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.

- Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

But these moments spent, despite our trying our hardest to anchor it in something, like the food, and the place, pass us by and we are left with whatever remnants of it we can retain in our memory. There is something about me that often feels heavy, as if I am leaving something important behind, whenever I leave Malaysia. But what is it about this place that I am so desperate to hold onto? Perhaps because there is something about me that fears losing a place that is very much a part of me, losing the people that are very much a part of who I am.

I walked down streets I used to frequent, and stood outside the apartment building where I used to live. I see her, the one who I once was. I recognised and acknowledged her, and saw her wistful wave. I nodded as I walked by and saw her edges: wispy, thin, like an apparition, a ghost, and I heard her laughter. Nervous. Someone in primary school told her once that her laugh sounded fake. Maybe that is what you do when the world around you makes you feel like you are wrong, you resist, or you pretend. But when did that feeling of being wrong start? She does not know, and I do not remember. But it matters not. It really doesn’t. I felt in my body all the things that has happened to her, saw in my mind the flashbacks. She seems so familiar, and yet, so different: there is a version of me who does not understand the things I currently so passionately talk about. A version to whom the words that weigh down with meaning and purpose, words like love, or friendship, or even words like colonialism, now mean something different, and so much more.

I left her there at a time when we broke. Discarded, or dismissed her perhaps, at a time when I thought she was what had been wrong with me, and that I must leave her behind to fix my life. I looked her in the eye. I looked at her as she listened to me catching old friends up on life, and she stirred. Some of her excited, most of her grateful for the journey we had taken. A journey that had most definitely opened the eyes of both our minds to understanding a little more, one that has looked into worlds I have since seen, felt feelings I have since felt, understood perspectives I have since been able to look out from. Her eyes widened in disbelief at the worlds I have since peered into. There is a version of me who did not know the things I now have, I now pursue even existed.

I retraced old steps in new ways, and had new conversations with old friends as we ate old meals in new ways, and met with each other all over again anew. I realised I had come to gather her up again: the one who I once was, is one who is a part of me. We are meant to journey together. I sat at the edge of our worlds and acknowledged the things she had been through. She grieved as I told her of the waves we had since rode through, the things we had lost, and the more valuable things we had since found. I told her I saw her when the cruelty of the world lunged at her. This version of me did not know that she would get through them, that she would emerge on the other side, somehow, still standing. And although her questions remain unanswered, we will have some answers, that will become more and more complete as we go.

I told her about how our heart will break And as we walked down those times together, it became clear to us that as long as we are still journeying, we, our heart will continue to break, again and again.

But it will all be ok. Really.

If she had been waiting for someone to save her, she saw then, it is I, only she, us, that can, will, save her. And so, we stood up, together. And we walked on, choosing the two things that have got us this far:

courage, and love,

and knowing we must choose them, again and again. Together.