Melakan Musings On Mortality

Dear Sir,
During our one-year stay in Malaysia, my husband and I visited the Bandar Bersajarah or Historical City (as Melaka is popularly known) no less than five times. Even as we admired its distinctive ambience, bargained for colourful souvenirs and sampled its unique cuisine, we were constantly confronted with grave (pun intended) reminders of mortality.

“In the midst of life, we are in death.” One place where that unpalatable fact makes itself forcibly felt is Melaka on the southwest coast of Malaysia.

It was hard, for instance, to ignore Melaka’s Chinese cemetery - the oldest and largest outside mainland China. Bukit Cina (China Hill) is the site of more than 12,000 graves - many dating back to the Ming period - spread over a vast expanse of 104 acres. My husband and I were especially struck by some semi-circular tombs which, we were told, were those of leaders of the Chinese community, in Malaysia’s colonial days. Unfortunately, fascinating though we found Bukit Cina (pronounced Cheena), we could not read a single inscription.

That was a problem we also faced in the roofless ruins of St Paul’s Church. Once known as Our Lady of Annunciation, it was part of ‘A - Famosa’ - the mighty fortress of Alfonso d’ Albuquerque. Elaborately carved with titles and achievements, they were intriguing.

However, since the English gained control of Melaka at the end of the 18th century, not all the long-departed at St Paul’s remained strangers. We were moved to note that an army captain’s wife (dead at age 24) lay buried with her three children, all of whom had joined their mother within a fortnight. Our guide-book, which had instructed us to look out for this hapless family, went on to say that they were victims of diptheria - one of the local killer diseases, which proved particularly fatal to Melaka’s European population over the years.

Ordinary too is the Makam (Mausoleum) Hang Tuah. That mighty warrior is the subject of sculpture and song in Melaka and we expected him to lie beneath a magnificent monument. Instead, a simple white structure houses his remains. Perhaps, it is intended to convey the maxim engraved on the gravestone of Mansur Shah - the 15th century ruler who commanded Hang Tuah’s fervent loyalty: “The world is but transitory; the world has no permanence; the world is like a house built by a spider.”

Mansur Shah surrendered to the one enemy he could not vanquish as had the deceased at rest in Christ Church. Built by the Dutch in 1753, this place of worship is an impressive edifice, constructed of red bricks from Holland. The original pews remain intact and a painting of the Last Supper on glazed tiles adorns the altar. Each of the church’s rafters is 15 feet long and carved from a single tree. Commemorative plaques cover the walls and the aisle is paved with tombstones. The latter were as inscrutable to us as the many we had encountered elsewhere in Melaka and just as interesting. Like the others, they cheered us with the knowledge that grave sights need not necessarily inspire fear or dejection, merely quiet reflection.

Suryakumari Dennison,
Bangalore
suru@bgl.vsnl.net.in