THE EURASIANS, THE MISSING CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF PENANG.

EURASIANS HELPED BUILD PENANG FROM DAY ONE. SO WHY ARE THEY ALMOST MISSING FROM ITS STORY? When we speak about the founding of modern Penang, one name usually dominates the story: Captain Francis Light. But standing close to the beginning of that story was another community, one that rarely receives equal attention. The Eurasians of Penang. Their history did not begin as a comfortable tale of colonial privilege. It was shaped by migration, religious persecution, cultural mixing and the constant search for somewhere to call home. According to Datuk Eustace Anthony Nonis, author of The Eurasians: A Founding Community of Penang, some of Penang’s earliest Eurasians descended from Portuguese-Asian Catholic communities connected historically to Malacca, Phuket and Kedah. When Siamese forces reasserted control over Phuket in the late eighteenth century, Catholic families of Portuguese-Asian ancestry fled to Kuala Kedah. Historical accounts record that religious services there were conducted alternately in Portuguese and Siamese. Francis Light already knew this community. His partner, Martina Rozells, was described in historical accounts as a “Portuguese of Siam”, a woman with connections to the Kedah court who became closely involved in Light’s life and the early history of Penang. When Light took formal possession of Penang for the East India Company in August 1786, he turned to these Catholic families for help in establishing the new settlement. Nonis writes that members of this community witnessed the ceremony near the site of present-day Fort Cornwallis. Shortly afterwards, Light sent the Speedwell to bring more Catholic families from Kuala Kedah. They arrived on 15 August 1786, the Feast of the Assumption. That date was remembered through the Church of the Assumption, initially a simple timber-and-attap building constructed on stilts over marshy ground. This community settled around what later became Church Street and Bishop Street. Nonis explained to the Malay Mail that Church Street received its name because the community built its church there while Bishop Street was associated with the bishop’s residence. He described the Eurasians as a “buffer community” living between the European quarter and the Asian settlements of early George Town. ⁠ In other words, the Eurasians were not late arrivals to Penang. They were present during its earliest formative years. But that was only the first chapter. In 1811, another group of Thai-Portuguese Catholics left Phuket under the leadership of Father John Baptist Pasqual. His own church record, Liber Defunctorum, Ecclesiae Districtus Pulo-Ticus Ad Anno 1811, recorded that war and devastation had forced him to move his parish to Penang. These families settled in Pulau Tikus. There they established the Church of the Immaculate Conception and developed the settlement that became known as Kampung Serani. The term “Serani” is generally associated with the Malay word Nasrani, referring to Christians. Researcher Choo Ming Ding explained that religion became one of the community’s strongest identifying characteristics while later generations increasingly became English-speaking. But Penang’s Eurasian community was never one uniform group. Nonis emphasised that some families carried Portuguese ancestry while others had British, Dutch, French, German or Irish connections. Academic Kirsty Walker similarly argued in her 2012 study, Intimate Interactions: Eurasian Family Histories in Colonial Penang that Eurasian identity was complex, diverse and often debated even within the community itself. Their contribution however is much clearer. Nonis observed that although Eurasians made up far less than one per cent of Penang’s population, their contribution was far greater than their numbers suggested. Education was one of their strongest legacies. Eurasian teachers such as Robbie Robless, Arthur de Cruz, Joe Cornelius, Jimmy Boyle and Colin Rozells became influential figures at St Xavier’s Institution. Eurasian women including Ruth Coombs, Minette Foley, Olive Andrews, Marina Beltram, Charlotte Reutens and Joan Nonis served generations of students at the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. Joan Nonis taught shorthand, typewriting and commercial correspondence helping hundreds of Penang women acquire the skills necessary to enter offices and professional workplaces. Eurasian women also worked extensively as nurses, civil servants and employees of commercial firms. Eurasian men contributed to the port, postal service, municipal administration, marine engineering and Penang’s water-supply system. They were teachers, technicians, musicians, athletes, doctors, lawyers, engineers and public servants. They were not merely living in Penang. They were helping Penang function. In 1919, the Penang Eurasian Association was established to promote the community’s social, welfare, moral and intellectual advancement. Kirsty Walker noted that it also attempted to represent Eurasian political interests during a period when colonial society was heavily divided by racial classification. Then came the Japanese Occupation. Because many Eurasians were associated with the British administration or possessed European ancestry, some were imprisoned, interned or executed. Community histories record that more than 200 first-generation Eurasians with British, American or Australian fathers were held in Taiping Gaol until the end of the war. Yet perhaps the most visible loss came decades later. In 1992, elderly residents Regina Pasqual Sibert and Mary Scully Joseph joined descendants and supporters in peacefully defending Kampung Serani in Pulau Tikus. Their efforts could not save it. In 1994, Kampung Serani was demolished for redevelopment. The houses disappeared. The physical village vanished. Today, fragments such as Leandro’s Lane, the Church of the Immaculate Conception and the Penang Eurasian Association’s Heritage House remind us that an entire community once flourished there. Historian and community writer Anthony E. Sibert documented this painful ending while a later sociolinguistic study by P. A. Ramachandran and colleagues concluded that the destruction weakened the community’s geographical unity and made preserving its cultural identity more difficult. Former Penang Chief Minister Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu once said that Eurasians had contributed significantly to goodwill and harmony among Malaysia’s different communities. He described them as offering “glimpses of Malaysians of the future.” Perhaps that is their greatest legacy. The Eurasians of Penang demonstrate that Malaysian identity has never been simple, singular or confined to neat racial boxes. It was created through movement, encounter, marriage, faith, adaptation and belonging. Penang’s Eurasian community may be small today but it is not a footnote. It is one of Penang’s founding communities. Its churches shaped the island’s streets. Its teachers educated generations. Its nurses cared for the sick. Its musicians filled schools and churches with music. Its civil servants, technicians and professionals helped keep Penang moving. A community does not need to be large to change the history of a place. It only needs to be remembered. How many Penangites today know that the Eurasian story began alongside the story of modern Penang itself? 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Reminiscing a part of my good old school days.

THE SEVENTIES – THE DEFINING DECADE It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, so said Charles Dickens. But I am taking this oxymoronic phrase out of context. The best of times implied that in 1970, we had just entered a new decade. I was in Form Three in La Salle School Sentul, Kuala Lumpur. It was an exam year and little did I know, this will be the beginning of the start of a new academic journey for me because after this year, all of us in Form Three will have to move on to another school and from there continue our education till as far as we want to go. And from 1970, things were about to change both at home and globally. Music, fashion, hairstyle. Decades of rock and roll music were to be replaced with heavy metal and disco with the advent of music from Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, KC and the Sunshine Band, Donna Summers, Kool and the Gang and of course the Bee Gees. The mop hairstyle from the Beatles era saw the switch to Afro and drain pipe pants made way for the bell bottoms but hot pants and mini-skirts stayed for a while. The late Sixties saw the Beatles shoes, as they were called back then slowly being replaced by the Travolta style high heels usually accompanied with bell bottoms. The Flower Power era was slowly fading. The evolution of fashion was one of the most fun and exciting experiences. The most popular clothes were big collared shirts, white disco pants, corduroy pants, extra wide ties, or even a full white leisure suit for the guys. The girls’ costumes were usually go-go dancer outfits, colorful hippy clothes with lots of flowers, or just about any brown and orange based clothing. Also, tie dye shirts and peace sign jewelry worked great for everyone. These were the overflow fashion from the flower power era. As the Seventies embraced heavy metal and classic rock music, disco was not very welcome though it did make an impact. With disco, emphasis was more on personal appearances and the style of dress. If you went to the Disco in the Seventies, you had to dress to kill. Disco was not macho, it was more trendy or ‘dressy’. But whatever the implications, we grew up in that era. During parties, there was plenty of lively and catchy music to dance to other than disco. They included many of great Motown classics, as well as the top rock songs of the decade. The famous and most notable dances of the Seventies were the Disco, Shindig, Fox Trot, and of course the old favourite, the Cha Cha. The Shindig A-Go-Go of the late Sixties spilled over into the Seventies and became the standard dance in parties before Disco took over.. House parties were beginning to be the flavour of the day in the Seventies. Parties mainly to celebrate birthdays were organized in houses with vinyl records and cartridges (befoe the cassette came along) being the main source of music for dancing. Even for house parties, there was this need to get dressed up. Boys would comb their hair with Brylcreem or Tancho hair cream and spray Old Spice while girls would wear mini-skirts paired with fish-net stockings to look sexy and adorable. Playing games during a house party was an important part of the programme for the night. We had to provide the guests something to do when they were not dancing to the terrific tunes like ‘Knock Three Times’ by Tony Orlando and Dawn and ‘Sweet Caroline’ by Neil Diamond.. The boys would feel awkward and steal glances at the girls. In the other corner the girls would be self-conscious and giggle excitedly. There was always this difficulty to get couples onto the dance floor. So something had to be done to ensure that the dance floor was filled with couples. A simple ‘Pick the Shoe’ game would do the trick. The girls were required to put their left shoe in the center of the hall. The boys would pick a shoe at random and find the owner of the shoe. She would then become his dance partner! This game would normally get the ball rolling. Sometimes a ‘Name the Song Title’ contest was held between the boys and girls, where you play a snippet of a song and ask the partygoers to guess the title of the song. All shyness would usually be gone after this. I attended a few parties during my formative years in secondary school. While waiting for the Form 3 examination results, we broke tradition amongst mission schools when La Salle Sentul Boys and Convent Sentul Girls had a joint party. It was around November, if my memory does not fail me. It was bliss and we were on cloud nine while it lasted because we were meeting up with girls! The favourite music for most parties were instrumentals from Los Indios Tabajaras, Procol Harlem’s “A whiter Shade of Pale’ and the Jane Birkin passionate song Je t’aime were a must. It was an opportunity to snuggle and cuddle for the very first time. It was so thrilling for us boys! Its was success this gathering of the two mission schools that we had one more before the Form 3 examination results were out. Since we were still teens and therefore underaged, there was no booze. And if these parties were held at homes, our parents were in the kitchen while the party was in the hall. Parents were watching over us like hawks. The food menu was mainly sardine and egg sandwiches, fried noodles, jelly and of course, the crowd pleaser - rose syrup. Decorations were mainly colourful balloons and streamers hung across the ceiling. Our combined school parties had all these elements which were the highlights of our teenage years. And to cap the night, the camera would be pulled out to click couples holding their partners tightly and waltzing on the floor or couples chatting cozily in dark corners. Frustrated faces of boys who could not get the partner of their choice to dance to the music of Je t’aime were also captured. Sigh sigh… It was at these parties that many of us had crushes for the first time. Call it puppy love or infatuation. Whatever it was, it was heavenly….clammy hands…pounding hearts… We managed to get the phone numbers and addresses of the girls we fancied. After a few phone calls, made from public telephone booths of course, we would meet them in town for a drink in places like Salad Bowl, Bilal Café or maybe for a movie which was quite rare. A few of my daring friends wrote love letters to their newfound girlfriends too. We did not mail them but had relatives studying in the same school being our ‘postman/woman’. What a thrill!!! The Seventies was not only a decade of disco music, classic rock, bell bottoms and Afro hairstyle. It was also a decade when my schoolmates, friends and I socialized with girls and experienced a rollercoaster of emotions - first infatuation, first sweetheart, first date, first kiss, first fight and first heartbreak…..Along the way through pleasure and pain, we grew up. And while we danced the evening away during those parties, the worst was yet to come….the results of our Form Three Lower Certificate of Education examination. Those days, failing to advance beyond Form Three was unthinkable. It must happen, it should happen, and it did happen that we managed to move on to Form Four, Form Five and some to Form Six and then to University. After leaving school, we went our separate ways, never to meet again - both our classmates and those Convent girls we met at our parties. Yet, after five decades had rolled by, the majority of my schoolmates who attended those parties have regrouped and reconnected. We are in our sixties and most of us are retired and enjoying life in our twilight years. Recently we even located our old flames of yesteryear and have kept in touch. We have formed a chat group and very often reminisce the past events of our school days and growing up in the Seventies which more often than not bring fond memories and smiles to our faces and warmth to our hearts. The Seventies were truly the defining years for most of us. Tony Gayondato - November, 2021

YOUR SCHEDULE DON'T LIE - ROBIN SHARMA....... You can say that your primary value is putting your family first, BUT if TIME with your family is not all over your schedule, well then the truh of the matter is that your family life isn't your priority. You can say that being in top physical condition is your top value but if there are no five or six workouts in your weekly schedule, then in relity, your health is not as important as you claim to be. Because SCHEDULES DON'T LIE.