REMEMBERING SUNGAI BERNAM

Sungai Bernam oh Sungai Bernam. I should be particularly thankful to you for so many things in my life as a student in SDAR TANJUNG MALIM.

You had affected so many young lives back then. You brought cheers and joy to so many of my friends.

Rarely, you too brought great sorrow to us all, when a friend lost his life in one of your many deep ends.

I remember how you have taught me how to swim. It was strange how a Terengganu boy, with the open South China sea at his disposal, chose you as his training ground.

Really, I am not joking, I learnt how to swim in Sungai Bernam.

The swimming lessons began with me learning the strokes...first the strokes were so fast that I tired easily...later the stroke became firmer and less frequent...

I crossed the river at the narrowest point, making sure that there were things that I could grab on on the opposite riverbank .

In a few weeks, there I was, a swimmer.

From then on I improved my swimming prowess, from just a swimmer to a free diver, fish hunter and an adventurer in its depth.

I remember spiking a lampam fish using just a simple self-made fish-gun. I remember too playing hide-the-stone-and-you-find-it with my close friend, Ripin.

The game involved one of us hiding a marked stone on the riverbed and the other searching for it and bringing it up.

But, most important of all, its riverbank provided us a retreat from our bullying seniors...it provided us a place to pour out our feelings...

Sungai Bernam...now you are not the same river that I used to know...the water is no more flowing as it used to be...you are the victim of the so-called human development...