Kari Ayam; A Review

In' 'Grandma’s Gangsta Chicken Curry and Gangsta Stories from My Sixties' Azly Rahman writes of memories. It is another he, another place, as Rahman reveals mankind's  similarities from across the globe, while simultaneously opening up his culture's dissimilarity to others. This memoir proves to be the creation of an epicurean event with experience of cautious mixing and satiation of the hunger created.

In 'Snippets from my memory palace' the author explains..."Our mind is like a palace, goes the metaphor, and in it lie these rooms, enchanting spaces that we enter through exquisitely designed doors and in which are objects and thoughts we call memories."

As with the wistful poems of a young Muhammad Haji Salleh, one of Malaysia's National Laureates (and fellow Malay), when he too was sequestered abroad, missing his homeland, Azly Rahman, in his fond remembrances of the land which gave him "union,", "birth" and eventual "separation", fosters fond images of that vert, equatorial land made complete within our own individual mind's eyes, and helps his reader "get high" with thanks to the author's carefully crafted narrative.

Malaysia tugs at my heart strings too. After spending fifteen years writing there and, at present, unable to return, my mind too drifts back to halcyon days of my own retrospective illusions, engendering an empathy with writer Azly Rahman and his recollections of "Ais Kachang" "Cendol" and, of course  'Kari Ayam' (Chicken Curry) "Gangsta" or otherwise, but not the stink, unless you include 'Petai' (Stink Beans) or 'durian' (king of fruits).

I only came to know Malaysia (and its kampongs in Kedah and Perak), later than the author (early 1970s), a decade later, on my first journey to Malaysia, in 1981. I doubt whether village life would have changed that much in that time as I witnessed many of the things the author talks about, in Sungai Petani, Kedah.

Strong images spring from this celebratory meal of a book, from recalling P. Ramlee who, through film, epitomized Malaysian everyman, and LAT who lampooned and cartooned for the local worthy paper The New Straits Times (NST).

The jumping from Malaysia to America, explaining the culture clash is interesting as the book is tailored more to a US audience than, say, a British one. And that is entirely understandable, as are the cultural comparisons and explanations of the differences. It is never going to be easy explaining what is heartfelt and soul deep, to others. Yet this book, quite heroically  attempts just that. 

Overall, having fed upon (the book) ''Grandma’s Gangsta Chicken Curry and Gangsta Stories from My Sixties' the reader will have ultimately gained an inkling into Rahman's recollections and explanations. They will have experienced the taste(s) of Malaysia and gained a soupcon of insight into both the author and the tropical place of his birth.

Azly Rahman's memoir is a gastronomic platter of short stories, poems and short form extracts of memory, giving samples of another cultural reality. One can only hope that he is able to expand upon these tasters for those whose appetites are surely whetted by this book's Pages.