Hugh & Colleen Gantzer discovered that Sarawak is an amazing example of enlightened rule by one British family
FROM the moment we first drove through green and watered Kuching, we felt it. Harmony, sufficiency, a palpable blitheness of spirit as if all the abrasive edges had been smoothed down and meshed together seamlessly. And when we looked down from the seventh floor window of our hotel, we saw the conical roof of a pagoda-like restaurant at the edge of the slow flow of the Sarawak river. On the other side, nestling among spreading Malaysian trees, was a fishing village. It was a very idyllic and serenely peaceful scene.But it had not always been so. Surging down that river, pouring out of those forested villages, marauders had once spread: pirates, headhunters, cannibals and warring tribes. Desperate, the beleaguered governor had turned to an Englishman, a young man trained by the East India Company: James Brooke.
If Brooke could restore law and order in this fertile land called Sarawak, he would gift him a sizeable chunk of it. Brooke prevailed, the Governor kept his promise and, later, made Brooke a Rajah.
The White Rajhas of Sarawak ruled their kingdom for three generations till Rajah Vyner Brooke felt that a personal Asian kingdom owned by an English family was an anachronism. He abdicated in 1946 and the tsunami of the great freedom movement swept over the land.
But the Brookes' even-handed treatment of all communities has left a lasting impact on Sarawak. In a pedestrian Mall there is a polished brass plaque saying that Rajah Vyner had renamed it India Street because a large number of shops on it were owned by traders from the sub-continent. A spice merchant told us that he was a Malaysian Tamil. A young vendor cooked adaptations of Kerala's appams using Malaysia's popular peanut paste. The maternal grandfather of one of the Malay Muslim tourism officials was a Sikh wearing the five Ks.
The tribal people, too, had been particularly happy with the Brookes. While curbing their more violent customs, the White Rajahs had allowed them to retain their customs and traditions. In the Sarakraf Pavilion we saw tribal artisans weaving, carving and offering native cuisine: tapioca, chicken and rice baked on an open fire in a hollowed out bamboo.
We were even entertained by a man playing on a traditional guitar called a sape, during an evening cruise on the river. High-rises and fishing villages, the Brooke Dockyard, and the Brooke's Astana manor which is now the residence of the governor, co-existed as if such crosscultural nodes were natural partners in Kuching's tolerantly blurred timelines.
The Brookes, however, had not frozen Sarawak in its tribal past. In the Sarawak Museum we learnt that they had persuaded Charles Darwin's colleague, Alfred Wallace, to set up his superbly-mounted exhibits. So, the Theory of Evolution and a knowledge of English came early to the people of Kuching. In the same museum we also learnt of another evolutionary development. One of the Brookes had persuaded a former shell collecting company to prospect for oil in Sarawak and that black-gold still flows out of its wells. The petrochemical giant, however, retained the emblem of its first venture: Shell.
We had now begun to accept the effortless age-bridging culture of Kuching. In the superb Sarawak Cultural Village we visited the re-created homes of various ethnic communities in their authentic settings, became part of their traditional festivities, even learnt how to fire a blowpipe : it calls for a very slight puff of breath. Malaysian blow-pipes are considered to be such lethal weapons that their import into neighbouring Singapore is banned!
Much of the happily tolerant, unityin-diversity ethos, could be sustained by a deep-seated well-spring of belief. We visited two temples rich with gold icons against striking, scarlet, backgrounds. These were shrines of a very ancient faith: Taoism. This religion seeks harmony in all things: a balance of darkness and light, good and evil, active and passive.
Sheng Fui and I Ching are disciplines seeking to tap into this essential flow of harmony: or so a Taoist fellow guest in our hotel explained to us. And then he added: "Look at the cat. It moves effortlessly with the flow of nature. Even when it is angered, its body is like a battery drawing power: back arched, hairs erect, and then, quick as a wink, it leaps out of danger. "
Some people said that the large cat statues in the roundabouts, and Kuching's Cat Museum, were Public Relations gambits. Possibly. But it could be more significant than that. There is so much pervasive harmony in Kuching that when we had to fly out, our hearts ached.
Even now, sitting in our cottage in the high oak woods of the Himalayas, we feel nostalgic about the warmly reassuring, purring, contentment of Kuching.
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