Of course it’s halal, my neighbour said so

 

My parents worked at all kinds of jobs during my growing up years, mostly in some kind of business, if you can call a business to haul a pushcart around the kampung to sell various stuff.

If there had been social media then, my father would’ve described himself thus: “Serial entrepreneur, highly-motivated self-starter with strong business acumen in direct-to-home sales”.

Further: “Proven track record in fast moving consumer goods serving multiple demographics in diverse localities including high-traffic transport hubs as well as the education vertical.”

He’s obviously the “CEO and 100% equity-holder of the un-listed enterprise, conceptualising and executing the business model whilst overseeing all revenue streams with full P&L and balance sheet responsibilities”.

He also “employs a number of full-time and part-time staff, whilst outsourcing various products to external centres-of-excellence, from start-ups to established enterprises”.

Let me now translate.

Entrepreneurial self-starter because he started his own businesses, from selling vegetables to fish, and from running sundry shops to cafeterias. Being a handyman, he built the pushcarts and stores himself (“implemented low capex, make-versus-buy strategy optimising pre-loved building materials”).

It’s an unlisted enterprise because he never applied for a permit from the local authorities!

Locations at which he did business being high-traffic transport hubs? That’s when we had a food stall next to the main bus stop, and serving the education vertical refers to the time he operated a school canteen.

Managing all revenue channels was done by using a big Ovaltine tin to keep the money from the sales; he wouldn’t let anybody else touch it.

Start-up suppliers and centres-of-excellence were neighbours who were encouraged to make more of their own home cookies so my father could sell them on consignment.

Early adopter of multimedia

Not long after electricity supply arrived in the kampung, we became the first house to have a TV, a black and white set bought on installment (and regularly repossessed during tough times) from the Chop Ban Hin electrical goods shop in Bayan Lepas, Penang.

The TV was put on the veranda, facing out. Anyone in the family who wanted to watch had to go out and join the crowd under the stars.

In management-speak, my father would probably be described as an “early adopter of innovative revenue-generating multimedia channels for a discretionary pay-as-you-go business model”.

Meaning: our TV set was switched on to draw people in the evening, when my father would haul the pushcart selling laksa and ice balls back home and sell whatever’s left to the crowd.

Working hours were long. My mother exclusively worked from home (WFH) while my father had more flexible arrangements: he worked wherever he needed to.

Hari Raya was a full business day. How could we not be out there on the best day of the year when kids were flush with money and were in a high-spending mode?

Being a serial entrepreneur and a self-starter, he never stuck to any particular business for long. In earlier days he would cycle all the way to George Town to sell two speciality items at the foot of the Boston Bar on Penang Road.

A straight-forward kind of halal

One was “pulut udang” (or “pulut panggang” as the clueless non-Penangites call them), which is glutinous rice roll with spicy prawn and grated coconut paste in its centre, all wrapped in banana leaf, and grilled right in front of you.

The other items were various kinds of “pau” – steamed dumplings with fillings of coconut jam or red bean paste, made by our Chinese neighbour.

Wait, what? “Pau” made by a Chinese and sold by a Malay? How could it be? Didn’t they get the memo?

Yes, it was halal. There’s nothing in the ingredients or the cooking that wasn’t halal, and the neighbour said so, and that was good enough for my parents. The word of good people was their bond.

Nobody then seemed to have a problem with it, including pious hajis and imams. My father never hid that fact, and my parents, who’re only afraid of God and nothing else on earth, never lost any sleep over that.

They’d never understood why so many today cannot distinguish between the true principles of their faith, and those parts that have been bureaucratised, tribalised and politicised, and ultimately trivialised.

Really famous Penang food

My father later switched to selling “apam balik” peanut pancake (See? Serial entrepreneur!). For many years he made and sold them in front of a pawnshop in Jelutong. They were the best “apam balik” you could ever have.

I could be biased on behalf of my father, of course, but in those days, people sold food, whether “apam balik” or “char kuay teow” or “puttu mayam”, because they were good at making them, and hence could earn a living from them.

Some food items were made by many generations in the same family. Nowadays every Tong, Vig and Mamat would sell Penang “nasi kandar” or Penang “char kuay teow” where the only thing Penang about them is the word Penang in their names.

My father certainly innovated – he used hard, dry crushed “sailor’s biscuits” to loosen up the sticky peanut crumbles used in the “apam balik”, and I’m pretty sure he was the first to add sweetened corn in it, too.

My mother handled the back-end operations. I guess that made her the Chief Operating Officer, running the factory and the supply chains all by herself to produce the raw materials.

We children were part-time staff under the Chief Operating Officer, a strict disciplinarian who occasionally escalated matters to the CEO on some serious productivity issues, and our backends would feel as if they’d been operated on.

The straight-thinking Umno man

My father continued his “apam balik” pushcart business for a year after I started working and began supporting my parents purely out of pride, to show to the kampong people that he was not dependent on anybody.

Around us were fishermen and farmers and rubber tappers who worked as hard as we did to make ends meet, and who often didn’t. Bad crops, stormy seas, and poor prices for rubber and other crops were just some of the regular nasty surprises.

My mother prayed so I’d have a salaried job – any salaried job with a pension. Government clerk would have been great, teacher would have been a miracle and, no, not an engineer, that was beyond people like us.

Politics? My father was in the kampung’s Umno committee, but he was the outspoken one who always felt he needed to stand up for something or other. The type that never got anywhere because he wouldn’t compromise.

Silly old man. He didn’t get the memo on that one, either. He had no problems feeding us buns with no halal certificates, but he’d never feed his family with anything from money that was not earned in ways that God would approve.

That’s a definition of halal you don’t see much of any more these days. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.