The Untold Story

There are many untold stories out there,
buried in the boundless wastes called life,
by the sweeping winds of complacency,
an inability to reflect back on experience,
a failure to see the worth of acts and words;

It is as if a life is meant to be lived only
on the experiential plane unreflected back
by words put to paper, thus passing by
as if it is meant to be lived surreptitously, stealthily,
just like another rain drop same like any other;

Luckily there are also many told stories
through which we can share the lives of others -
to learn from them, be inspired by them,
and to enrich our own;

Here is one story rescued from the blackhole of the untombed untold -
First the reasons why it remained untold for so long - 75 years:

The principal cast of characters preferred it to be a secret,
They were poor and illiterate and had more
pressing priorities to tend to their days;
Ideas such as the pursuit of the afterlife
which unfortunately does not make the three
Rs - reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic - a perquisite,
Were more important than such worldly concerns
which were nothing more than an ego trip, a waste of time,
Excusable perhaps if it pertained
to the lives of society's upper crust,
But unheard of and completely unintelligible
when it came to their own ordinary lives.

The descendants of the principal players,
Marrying out and interlocking with other family sets,
Scattered far and wide in a grid of ever expanding diasporas;

This is a story of a woman who will never know her true roots -
She was born into a family of a particular ethnic group
who was in dire straits; she was given away for adoption
Presumably in her very first year of life to a family
from a different ethnic group.

(tbc)

but the oddity remains for and sundry to see
and dark whispers and even undisguised, raw jeers, ridicule
were the order of the day
she walked the extra mile to be the people who ridiculed her
She neglected her duties
she developed a victim mentality
was no angel
given away to be married off
many similar cases in kemaman
most notorious being the natrah story
Poverty pushed her biological parents
from southern China
Ending up in the Kemaman Bandi
iron ore mine
via Singapore.
She was presumably born in 1932.