The journey in life is never a straight line (PART 12)

But that was not my dream, though. My dream was to ride my motorcycle from Kuala Lumpur to London. Earlier I had become a member of the Automobile Association of Malaysia and had asked them to help me obtain the road maps from India to the UK. My plan was to take my motorcycle on a passenger ship from Penang to India and from India ride my motorcycle overland to the UK.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I pulled through my MCE exam in 1967 and then decided to retire from studying while most of my contemporaries went on to do their A-level and sit for their HSC exam. There was no way I was going to continue studying and instead I did what my mother used to call ‘bumming around’.

That basically means I did nothing for the two years of 1968 and 1969 except to race my motorcycle. And it was that same year, in 1968, when I participated in the Malaysian Grand Prix –- and spectacularly crashed.

I flew through the air and somersaulted a few times before coming to a stop quite a distance from my motorcycle. I rushed back to my motorcycle to continue the race but could not lift my left arm. When I unzipped my racing suit I discovered that my left wrist was broken.

That did not stop me from riding though and I continued riding with my plaster cast on. My arm itched like hell and I could not wait to remove the plaster cast. However, by the time it was supposed to have come off, the whole city was under curfew because of the May 13 riots. So I decided to cut off the plaster cast myself.

Because I had continued riding with the plaster cast on, my wrist had set in a most awkward position. My wrist was actually disfigured. My mother took me back to the University Hospital and the doctor was appalled. He just could not understand why I did not allow my wrist to set properly instead of continuing to ride with my plaster cast on resulting in my wrist being totally damaged.

The surgeon had to break my wrist again (at least this was what he told me he was going to do). When I woke up I felt so thirsty I tried to get out of bed to get a drink but could not move. My hip hurt like hell.

I called the nurse and told her that my hip hurts and she replied that that was because of the operation. What operation? It was my wrist that they were supposed to have operated on. Ah, yes, but to reset the wrist they needed to do bone grafting so they took the bone from my hip to do that.

I was never told they were going to transplant my hipbone onto my wrist. I was discharged after two weeks or so (actually I was thrown out because I was racing along the hospital corridors in a wheelchair) and was warned not to continue riding this time or else my wrist would again be damaged.

This time my wrist set beautifully and the doctor told me they could now remove the wires. What wires? It seems in grafting my hipbone to my wrist they had to use wires to tie it. Hence now they had to remove the wires. So, for the third time, I was admitted into hospital for the wires to be removed.

In 1970, most of my friends went on to university. Some went to University Malaya while those from richer families went to the UK. “What do you want to do with your life?” my father asked me. My father was amongst the first group of Malays to go to the UK soon after the Second World War. He went to Lincoln’s Inn and became a barrister. He was hoping I would follow in his footsteps.

But that was not my dream, though. My dream was to ride my motorcycle from Kuala Lumpur to London. Earlier I had become a member of the Automobile Association of Malaysia and had asked them to help me obtain the road maps from India to the UK. My plan was to take my motorcycle on a passenger ship from Penang to India and from India ride my motorcycle overland to the UK.

The road maps were hand-delivered to my house. I suppose the AAM chap was very curious and wanted to personally meet the crazy person who wanted to ride his motorcycle from Kuala Lumpur to London.

I had chosen to take a ship from Penang to India so that I could avoid riding through Burma. From India I would go to Pakistan and Iran and then to Turkey and Europe.

How long this would take did not matter because I had all the time in the world. I would need to just carry spare jeans and a couple of T-shirts in my backpack and would travel 200-300 miles a day depending on the terrain and weather.

I never considered what I would do if my motorcycle broke down, if I had an accident, if I was robbed along the way, if I got sick, where I would sleep, and so on. Those were details and I was not going to allow details to get in the way of my plans. When you are 18 or 19 you tend to think like that and you would let tomorrow take care of itself.

During my two years of bumming around, and when I was not racing up and down Kuala Lumpur, I would take my bike apart and put it together again. Even when there was nothing wrong with it I would tinker with it. I also modified it and tried to make it go faster.

I was obsessed with trying to make my 100cc motorcycle go from 0-60 mph in less than five seconds. The problem with this, though, is that motorcycles in those days, especially Japanese motorcycles, did not handle well. So they were only good if you were going in a straight line. On winding roads it was like a riding a coffin.

Furthermore, the braking system in those days was very primitive. The motorcycles used drum brakes, not disc brakes. Hence, while you could go 0-60 in under five seconds, it was impossible to go 60-0 in also under five seconds. Most times you would have to hit something to come to a stop -- hence the 12 accidents that I suffered during that period.

“Okay,” my father said, “since you only want to tinker with engines, I am going to send you to do an apprenticeship.” And he phoned Pak Arshad, the manager of Champion Motors, the Volkswagen/Rover distributor, to request him to take me in as an apprentice.

(Those of who had been around in the 1970s/1980s probably remember Pak Arshad, which is another very interesting story).

Pak Arshad was puzzled as to why someone like me and with my family background would want to embark upon such a ‘low’ career. “You are overqualified for this job,” he told me. “Why don’t you get your father to send you to England instead to do motor engineering?”

Actually that was what I wanted. But my father did not trust me enough to let me loose in England unsupervised. He knew that the first thing I would do would be to join the Rockers (the early version of The Hells Angels). The fact that I wore a black leather jacket with a Swastika on the sleeve and the ‘The Malaysian Hells Angels’ painted on the back was a give away.

So my father made a deal with me. I must prove that tinkering with cars and bikes is really what I want to do and if I can survive the four-year apprenticeship he would send me to England. And I would have to serve this apprenticeship with Volkswagen.

I spent my first three months washing cars and was paid RM105 a month. Even back in 1970 that was pittance but that was the deal so I had no choice. Before each Volkswagen is sent into the workshop it has to be washed and after it has been serviced or repaired it has to be washed again.

After three months I was transferred into the workshop and was put under a Hakka mechanic. He was one loud-mouthed chap. I would greet him with ‘selamat pagi’ and he would respond with ‘tiu niamah ka fa hai’ or ‘tiu na seng’ or a host of other ‘pardon my French’ phrases.

I also had to brush up on my Chinese very fast. He would shout for me to pass him the loh si fai and I would pass him the spanner. He would throw the spanner at me and grab the screw driver and wave it in my face and scream, “Loh si fai! Loh si fai!” Ah, loh si fai, now I understood.

Most of the senior mechanics resented us apprentices. That was because they would train us and in four years we would become service advisers and hence would be their bosses who would order them around. Hence they made life difficult for us while we were still ‘under them’.

But my mechanic was a lazy person. So he would train me so that I could take over all his functions. He would tell me what to do and then would disappear. Once I had finished stripping the engine, I would summon him and he would inspect the parts and tell me what needs changing. He would then disappear again.

I had to learn very fast if not I would again get a scolding -- tiu niamah ka fa hai.

It was that same year, in 1970, that almost the whole of Kuala Lumpur was flooded. The whole city practically closed down and invariably Champion Motors was submerged.

When we came back to work I was asked to clean every car on the showroom. The workshop manager, an Indian chap, wanted the cars as good as new, as if they have just come out from the factory.

I tried my best but could not get them, as what the manager wanted, 101% clean. There were still some traces of mud and anyone who has ever owned a 1960s model of Volkswagen would know why.

The manager inspected the cars and he was not satisfied. He handed me a toothbrush and told me to use the toothbrush to clean the cars. I threw down the toothbrush and told him to clean the cars himself.

I was kicked out of Champion Motors then and there. Thus ended my career as an apprentice with Volkswagen -- all due to the Great Flood of 1970.

TO BE CONTINUED