Lessons in Impermanence: The Pondok Nelayan Jelutong

 

uthor’s Note

For more than fifteen years, I have been a quiet witness at the Pondok Nelayan Jelutong — sketching, painting, and listening to the pulse of a vanishing world. What began as casual visits to a friend’s jetty became, over the years, a meditation on impermanence and belonging. My friend, the late Rosli Bakoi, or Mamu Li as the younger fishermen called him, was the heart and soul of this place. He built many of the huts that once stood proudly along the water, and through his friendship, I was accepted as part of the jetty’s extended family.

When he passed, something in the rhythm of the place changed. The laughter faded, the old quarrels turned cold, and the sea seemed to grow quieter. The restaurant owners at the far end of the jetty, who had long harbored tensions with Li’s family, now look upon me as one of “his camp.” Yet I remain — not out of defiance, but remembrance. The jetty, with all its human dramas and daily struggles, has become my living classroom in compassion and impermanence.

As the developers advance and the old huts crumble into the mud, I paint and record what remains. These drawings and reflections are not nostalgia, but testimony — a reminder that every wave that takes something away also leaves behind a story, waiting to be heard.

                                           My late friend, Rosli Bakoi, or Mamu Li

Lessons in Impermanence: The Pondok Nelayan Jelutong

The mornings at Jelutong Jetty have their own kind of silence — not empty, but full of quiet stories. Before the light settles on the sea, the air hums with the faint echoes of engines starting, nets being hauled, and the unspoken prayers of men who have known the sea all their lives. It is here, among these fragile pondok nelayan, that I have spent years watching, listening, and painting — one brushstroke at a time — as life itself slowly ebbs away.

I have called this my Lessons in Impermanence, for what unfolds before me is more than decay; it is the slow erasure of a way of life. One by one, the wooden huts — the very heart of this community — give way to mud and tide. Built by my late friend, Li Bakoi, they once stood as proud shelters for fishermen who rose and slept with the rhythm of the sea. Now they lean and splinter under the weight of time and neglect, their owners waiting not for the next catch but for compensation and closure.

                                                         What is left of their heritage?

The developers are near. The outlines of a new skyline already glimmer on the horizon — promises of modernity drawn over the bones of a simpler world. And so, like the tide, change comes relentlessly, swallowing history in the name of progress.

                                                               This is progress at its best.

I paint not to resist it — for nothing resists impermanence — but to remember. Each brushstroke carries a silent prayer for those whose lives are bound to these waters. In my own way, I try to keep the pondok alive, if only on canvas, as a small act of devotion to the spirit of Jelutong’s fishermen — proud, weathered, and forgotten.

In the quiet hours before dawn, when the sea still whispers to the shore, I often remind myself that nothing truly belongs to us — not even the places we love most. The Pondok Nelayan Jelutong has been my mirror for many years, reflecting both the outer world of change and the inner work of acceptance. As the huts fall and the tides shift, I, too, learn to let go, a little at a time. What remains is not sorrow, but gratitude — for having witnessed, for having been a part of this fleeting beauty.

To live is to learn to let go with an open heart, and to paint while the light still allows.

                                               My son, Timo, is visiting from Switzerland.

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