A Zen Scatology – The Lotus Out of Muddy Waters
I was born alongside my twin brother, like an afterthought, sometime on the twelfth of August, 1949, in a mangrove tidal swamp on the Sungai Pina River, in a village called Kampung Selut, or Muddy Village.
From the very beginning, my existence was shaped by mud. The river, the swamp, and the thick, gurgling earth beneath our feet defined our early lives. Kampung Selut was no ordinary village. It wasn’t romanticized, and it wasn’t polished—it was raw, untouched by the comforts of the modern world, with its sludge and muck in full view. It was a place where life emerged from the murky depths.
Our house, like all the others, was raised on stilts, built to stay above the muck when the tides came in. The roof wasn’t zinc but atap nipah—palm fronds tightly woven to shield us from the sun and rain. Everything was earthy, basic, and unpolished, a world far from the sanitized, structured society that most people know.
Life in the village was as simple as it was unforgiving. There were no modern conveniences like flushing toilets. Instead, we learned to squat, as was natural, in the most unrefined way. Waste was discarded in the ditches behind the house, a stark reminder of life’s most primal functions. We learned that everything—dirt, water, waste—was cyclical. Nothing went away, but everything had its place.
As children, we looked forward to high tide with a mix of excitement and raw abandon. It was our moment of freedom—when the river swelled up, turning the landscape into our own makeshift playground. We would swim in the murky waters, pretending to be pirates and buccaneers. The sky was our limit, the river our sea, and the muddy waters were our kingdom.
But the river wasn’t just a playground—it was also a repository for the waste of the village. Dead animals—ducks, dogs, cats, even chickens—would float by. It was the natural order of things in our part of the world. Life and death flowed together. Even human feces drifted by, carried by the current, as if life was reminding us that the sacred and the profane were often inseparable.
We didn’t think much of it at the time. To us, it was just part of the landscape. But in hindsight, those moments of carefree swimming in waters filled with the detritus of life were oddly profound. It wasn’t just play; it was a reflection of something deeper: how we swim amidst the muck of life, finding joy and meaning despite the filth that surrounds us. We were pirates on a sea of impermanence, unaffected by the floating reminders of mortality
The Infant in the Water
It was on one such occasion, while we were out playing pirates and paddling about in a canoe, that I saw something strange in the water. I was standing at the bow when I noticed a bundle of Chinese newspapers, tightly rolled and bobbing up and down with the tide. It didn’t belong. Everything else—branches, trash, even animal carcasses—had a certain rhythm in that river. But this thing... it had weight, a stillness, like something trying to hide.
Curiosity got the better of me. I leaned over and started poking at it with a stick, prodding through the soaked and swollen paper. Slowly, the layers came apart—the ink blurred, the news unreadable—and then, something emerged. What I saw next is etched in my memory: a bleached white head, unmistakably that of an infant, pale and lifeless.
We were stunned. Frozen by fear. None of us dared say a word. We didn’t scream, we didn’t investigate further—we just turned the canoe around and paddled home in silence, haunted by what we had seen. And then we did what children do when confronted with something beyond their grasp—we kept it to ourselves.
For the next few days, the village simmered under the heat of the sun. When the tide receded and the land was dry, a foul stench lingered in the air, weaving its way into every breath. The adults muttered about it, but no one knew—or dared guess—what it was.
Eventually, the weight of the secret became too much. I told one of my uncles about what we had seen. His face changed, but he didn’t scold me. He didn’t ask too many questions either. The next morning, he found the bundle. Without a word to anyone, he dug deep into the soft mud, far from where the children played, and buried it.
That was it. Nothing more was ever said. The infant in the newspaper became another ghost of the river, swallowed by the tide and the mud. But not forgotten—not by me. That moment of silence, that decision not to speak, became one of the first unspoken lessons of Kampung Selut.
In the muddy waters of our childhood, there were truths that we touched only once—and then released, letting them sink like stones to the bottom of our subconscious mind.
When you got Shit on your Head.
If the sight of a dead infant wrapped in newspaper taught me something about impermanence and silence, then the next memory taught me about trust, dignity, and the laws of flotation.
One of the second most profound childhood teachings I remember didn’t come from a book, a sermon, or a teacher—it came from a friend’s voice yelling across the water:
"Hey! There’s shit on your head!"
Now, when you grow up diving into tidal rivers full of everything from garbage to rotting chickens, it’s bound to happen. You're swimming around, having a grand old time, when, without warning, you emerge with human feces sitting comfortably on top of your head like a crown of karma.
There’s a code in those moments. A rule. A teaching, if you will:
Never doubt your friend. Never check with your hand.
Because the moment you reach up to verify, now you’ve got it in your hand too. The shit spreads. Doubt spreads. It's no longer just on your head; you've claimed it, made it yours.
So what do you do? You don’t panic. You don’t make a scene. You slide slowly back under water, let the natural law of flotation handle it.
Shit floats. Let it go.
Then—and this is important—you don’t come right back up. You dive deeper, reach for a good handful of river mud, and scrub your hair clean. That’s your shampoo. That’s your absolution. Only then do you surface, hopefully cleansed—physically and spiritually.
It sounds ridiculous, but that’s village wisdom. That’s Zen in the swamp. Don't react, don’t confirm, just cleanse. This moment stayed with me, long past the childhood games and the stink of the river; the stench may have evaporated, but the lesson remains.
Looking back now, it still feels like a miracle—not one of us got sick from swimming in that cesspool of an environment. Not one that I can remember. No cholera, no dysentery, no skin diseases, at least none that stuck. We were tough little river rats, hardened by the mud and salt and tides. The water may have been filthy, but our immune systems were forged in its fire, so to speak.
It’s the kind of irony that makes you shake your head years later:
Not one child died from that river... but most of my childhood friends died later—from heroin or other form of drug addiction.
The real contamination came later, from a different kind of tide. It didn't stink like the village water, but it took lives more quietly and cruelly. A different poison. One, we didn’t know how to scrub off with river mud for purification.
The men in my lineage.
My uncle, the man who adopted me at birth name 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. There was something Tamil in his bearing—a harder life lived behind the eyes, a fire forged by centuries of resistance. 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 end up marrying my grandmother in Medan. He embraced Islam, took a new name, and wore new prayers. His original name was Paul Mariano, and he changed his name to Abu Taib Bin Adullah when he converted to Islam. But the Buddha never truly left him. 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. His unique feature was that he was always dressed in all white from head to toe like a European Peon at the rubber estate.
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 on Ayer Itam Road. On account of the elder brother becoming a MUslim and the younger finding a Hindu wife and becoming Hindu, they were not very close in their later lives.. 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.
The Women in my lineage:
Medan, where my grandfather crossed faiths and oceans to marry my grandmother, was once the heart of the Sultanate of Deli, a Malay Muslim kingdom established in the 17th century in what is now North Sumatra, Indonesia. Though no longer a sovereign state, its legacy still lingers in the architecture, customs, and stories of the region.
During the Dutch colonial period, Deli rose to prominence for its rich plantation lands, particularly tobacco, giving rise to the term "Deli Tobacco," known globally for its quality. The Dutch supported the Deli sultans in return for access to land and labor—an uneasy pact that shaped the destinies of many, including Tamil and Sri Lankan migrant communities like my own ancestors.
It is within this complex landscape of kingdoms and colonies, faiths and migrations, that my family's roots took hold. My grandfather may have left behind his Buddhist heritage, but he stepped into a land that was itself a living mosaic—Malay courts, Tamil laborers, Chinese traders, Dutch colonists, Javanese farmers—all trying to find their place in the Deli soil.
My Grandfather was said to have been very close to the Sultan in Medan through their love for the Bangsawan and getting drunk. I was aid that through this relationship, the Sultan arranged for my grandfather to marry his cousin, who was my grandmother.
[Historical Note: The Sultanate of Deli]
Medan, where my grandfather crossed faiths and oceans to marry my grandmother, was once the heart of the Sultanate of Deli, a Malay Muslim kingdom established in the 17th century in what is now North Sumatra, Indonesia. Though no longer a sovereign state, its legacy still lingers in the architecture, customs, and stories of the region.
During the Dutch colonial period, Deli rose to prominence for its rich plantation lands, particularly tobacco, giving rise to the term "Deli Tobacco" known globally for its quality. The Dutch supported the Deli sultans in return for access to land and labor—an uneasy pact that shaped the destinies of many, including Tamil and Sri Lankan migrant communities like my own ancestors.
It is within this complex landscape of kingdoms and colonies, faiths and migrations, that my family's roots took hold. My grandfather may have left behind his Buddhist heritage, but he stepped into a land that was itself a living mosaic—Malay courts, Tamil laborers, Chinese traders, Dutch colonists, Javanese farmers—all trying to find their place in the Deli soil.
The East Sumatra "Social Revolution" (1946)
In March 1946, a significant upheaval known as the "social revolution" occurred in East Sumatra. Radicalized pro-independence youths, or pemuda, targeted the traditional Malay and Simalungun aristocracy, including the sultans and their families. This movement led to the dissolution of the sultanates and the deaths of many aristocrats, effectively ending centuries of traditional rule in the region.WikipediaWikipedia+2Wikipedia+2Wikipedia+2
Impact on the Sultanate of Deli
The Sultanate of Deli, centered in Medan, was deeply affected. The sultanate's political authority was dismantled, and its leaders were either killed or lost their influence. The revolution marked the end of the sultanate's formal power, although it remains a cultural symbol in Medan today.Wikipedia
Aftermath and Legacy
Following the revolution, the Dutch attempted to establish the State of East Sumatra in 1947, with Dr. Tengku Mansur as its head. However, this state was short-lived and was dissolved in 1950 when it merged into the Republic of Indonesia as part of North Sumatra province.Wikipedia+1Wikipedia+1
These events led to significant demographic and cultural shifts in Medan and the surrounding areas, as traditional structures were replaced by new political realities.
Whispers Beneath the Palm Fronds
(Deli and the Silence of Empire)
My grandfather was born in Deli—a name that once belonged not to a city but to a kingdom, a sultanate shaded by palm groves and wrapped in courtly silence. The Sultanate of Deli had stood for generations, its heart beating in Medan, where the Malay nobility once lived in palaces adorned with golden domes and whispered prayers.
But all of that would change after Sukarno's revolution swept across Indonesia like a fever burning off the old skin of the empire.
In 1946, while the Dutch still tried to claw their way back into the archipelago, a tide of radicalized pemuda—youths aflame with the spirit of Merdeka, independence, rose up in East Sumatra. They called it the Social Revolution. But for many families, including those of noble or mixed descent, it felt like a purge. Sultans were dragged from their palaces, their bodies broken, and their titles burned. The aristocracy was deemed collaborators, relics of colonial rule, and they paid dearly for it.
The Deli Sultanate—once a beacon of wealth and power in the plantation belt of Sumatra—collapsed almost overnight. Its court musicians were silenced. Its gardens are untended. And those who survived did so by shedding their titles and melting into the anonymity of the kampung, or by crossing seas, as my grandfather did.
He fled not only the political storm, but a deeper unraveling—a fracturing of faith and identity. Though born into Buddhism, he converted to Islam when he married my grandmother in Medan. Yet the Buddha never quite left him. He carried the Dharma like a hidden talisman, tucked into the folds of his new prayers.
By the time he reached Penang with his brother, the world they came from had ceased to exist. They brought with them no royal trappings, only brushes and quiet dignity. One painted temple. The other swept schoolyards. No one asked about sultans in Penang.
And yet, something of that fallen world echoed in the way my uncle paused before speaking. In the silence, he carried it like an heirloom. A silence deeper than language—like the hush that lingers after a dynasty falls.
The Ladies in Batik and the Shadow Watchers
What made me wonder—what truly stirred the dust of old memories—was how every Ramadan, without fail, a group of finely dressed Indonesian women would visit my grandmother. They arrived with quiet dignity, bearing gifts wrapped in silk and stories untold: jewelry that glinted like whispers, batik cloth dyed with the patience of tradition, and sometimes small containers of fragrant oils or incense from their homeland.
They never stayed long, but their presence lingered like perfume after a passing embrace. I never knew their names, only that they spoke with grace and a formality that seemed out of place in our humble kampung setting. There was deference in how they greeted my grandmother, and something like reverence in the way they watched her, as though she were someone more than just a village matriarch—perhaps a remnant of something royal, something sacred, hidden beneath the folds of time and exile.
It wasn’t until much later that I learned our family had once been under the watchful gaze of the Penang Special Branch. It seems strange now, almost absurd—our small house shadowed by the long arm of state surveillance. But in those days, the ghosts of revolutions did not rest easily. The revolution in Indonesia had not only toppled Dutch colonials and sultans but had scattered their families like seeds across the Malay Peninsula.
And we, apparently, were one such seed.
Whether my grandfather had fled merely the loss of status or something more—perhaps a political entanglement, a forbidden allegiance, or simply the sin of being born into the wrong bloodline at the wrong moment—I still do not know. What I do know is that our family bore the silence of survivors. We spoke little of the past, but it lived in the pauses between words, in the way gifts were received with bowed heads and unspoken understanding.
I sometimes wonder if those ladies were emissaries of memory—sent to remind my grandmother of who she once was, or who she was still seen to be in the eyes of those who had not forgotten. Perhaps they came with gratitude. Or perhaps, like monks bringing alms to an elder nun in hiding, they came with offerings of quiet loyalty.
Whatever truth lies buried beneath those Ramadan visits, it was never unearthed. My grandmother never spoke of it. My uncle never said a word. And the women, like the Deli Sultanate itself, vanished into the shadows of time.
And so I let it be.
The past, now softened by time and silence, no longer asks for answers. The visits, the whispers, the glances of watchful eyes—all of it fades like old ink on batik cloth. Perhaps it was never mine to unravel, only to witness. I carry the memory as one carries a faded photograph in the wallet of the soul—not for the details, but for the warmth it still holds. What was hidden remains hidden, and that too is a kind of grace. And as is said, 'The Devil is in the details!"
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