Post for Chapter eleven: The Cultural and religious Roots of the Lotus.

 My uncle was Pual Nanda, a Buddhist who had walked away from the world for two years to live among the monks of the Theravāda tradition in Ceylon—what we now call Sri Lanka. He had tasted the silence of the Bodhi path and brought its fragrance back with him, quietly folding it into the rhythm of kampung life like a monk hiding a lotus in his robe.

He was fair-skinned, like my grandfather, and both bore an almost European appearance—high cheekbones, aquiline noses, light eyes that rarely revealed what passed behind them. My own skin was darker, closer to my father's, who also hailed from Sri Lanka, though not of the Sinhalese line, or was he?? There was something Tamil in his bearing—a harder life lived behind the eyes, a fire forged by centuries of resistance. Sadly, I never made any effort to find out about his past'

I often felt like a child born between worlds—between shades of skin, between islands, between faiths. The kampung boys teased me for being darker, never knowing I carried the fire of two heritages in me: one that bowed before the Buddha, and one that knelt on the prayer mat.

But it was my uncle’s quiet example that shaped me most. He never preached, never corrected, never insisted. He simply lived. He swept the floor in mindful silence, ate his meals with gratitude, and held his gaze soft on even the harshest days. He taught me not by word, but by presence.

It was in his silence that I first heard the Dharma. Not in Pāli chants, but in the way he paused before speaking, in the way he breathed before answering the anger of the world. He taught me that truth doesn’t need a name, only attention. That kindness is not a doctrine, but a way of walking through this brief life.

My grandfather—his father—had once been a Buddhist too. He was born into the old world of Ceylon, but gave it all up when he crossed the sea to marry my grandmother in Medan. He embraced Islam, took a new name, and wore new prayers. But the Buddha never truly left him.

They say he was once commissioned to paint the murals of Mahindaram Temple in Penang, one of the oldest Hinayana temples in the region. He painted the Jātaka tales—stories of the Buddha’s past lives—along the walls, with the reverence of someone placing memory into color. His brush was his offering. His silence, his devotion.

He came to Penang with his younger brother, who would later become the temple groundskeeper and then a school gardener just across the road at Methodist Boys School in Ayer Itam. They lived simply. Quietly.The way monks live even after they disrobe.

So much was said in silence in those days.
A religion left behind.
A mural painted in devotion.
A boy raised in borrowed arms.
A truth whispered without sound.