The Rice That Never Cook
In the old days of the 50-60s era, many people were still very much
pan tang (taboo in malay), even for the modernised, cultured
peranakans. This incident happened way before I was born and when
my grandmother was still a young maiden. This was what she heard
from a relative.
Apparently, someone in our extended family had passed away and as
usual, there should be no celebrations of any sort for the next 1yr
( or was it 100 days? This I am unsure of) as a respect to the
dead. No festival celebrations, no weddings, etc... However, the
daughter-in-law of the deceased was a modern and practical woman.
The bak chang (Dumplings) festival was round the corner and she
didn't believed in the traditional taboos. A lot of disagreement
and argument carried on and in the end, the mother-in-law gave up
hope of talking the daughter-in-law round. Prior to a few days
before the Dumpling Festival, the daughter-in-law had bought the
necessities needed to make the bak changs and went about to prepare
it. The main and most important procedure is to have the seasoned
rice cooked first before it could be used to fill up the banana
leaves. The daughter-in-law washed and seasoned the rice as it
should be and left it to cook in the cooker pot. By right, a large
pot of rice wouldn't take an hour to be done but not in this case
this time. A few more hours was waited and still, the rice failed
to cook. The cooker's fire was on and burning endlessly, the water
boiled but there was no sign of a single grain cooked to even half
the desired done-ness. The daughter-in-law had put the rice to be
cooked on the stove early in the morning and dinner time, it was
still uncooked! Thats an estimated 8 over hours at least.
Now, this unexplainable, freaky incident had already struck fear in
the girl that her mother-in-law's words might very well be true.
Her husband rang his mother up and told her all about it. The old
lady came down that night, peered into the cooker pot, shook her
head and said:
" I told you right? You never want to listen to me. Now you have
angered your father-in-law. The fact that your rice never cooked is
a sign that he is very angry for your disrespect. Turn off the fire
now. Go to the altar, light some joss sticks and ask for
forgiveness. Tommorow I want you to accompany me to the temple and
give further prayers and offerings."
The daughter-in-law did as she was told and never ever anymore did
she became a skeptic in any traditional superstitions.
