I imagine that cat’s name must have been Tiger, or its equivalent in Malay (Harimau), but I think of him as Blake’s ‘Tyger’. He was certainly one of the most striking cats that I have ever seen. He lay there, in that long greenhouse, stretching to his fullest extent, on that old wooden table, with the table’s grey only serving to make that animal’s fur even more golden, and his stripes more pronounced. It was as if that aging table, the greenhouse, the plant nursery and maybe the whole hill too - belonged to him, and maybe it did.
I had spent the entire morning, and most of the afternoon, on that hill, at Janda Baik, near Bukit Tinggi, in Pahang. It was an hour’s drive through Selangor, on the way to Genting Highlands. There was a nice little R&R, conveniently situated at the bottom of the hills. Mc Donalds’ had proved a convenient convenience and, after loading the SUV with bottles of wild honey – courtesy of the local Orang Asli, I meandered my way up that hill, up narrow roads and espied countless rest houses, camps, training centres and one or two really charming places, which would not have had to try too hard to seduce me to stay. But stay I didn’t.
That golden cat, stretched in all his furry feline glory appeared after a midday sojourn wandering around the open gardens of that Malay political writer Syed Hussein Al-Attas. There was a hand-painted sign cheekily calling those gardens - Wadi Hussein. After a morning traipsing around Janda Baik, with its similarities to Perak and Cameron Highlands, it was a sheer delight to fall into the gardens of that author’sThe University of Life, and be introduced to one of the most magical and surprisingly serene places that I have, to date, visited. It truly seemed to be an oasis.
Being an Englishman, I was a little wary about just marching through someone else’s gates, and helping myself to their obvious delights, but my companion egged me on and I followed into the most amazing gardens. All my apprehension and pseudo-middle class British pretentions melted away like so much dairy produce in the noon-day heat.
It is needless the say that the day was moist; Malaysia is mostly moist, it is moister still in hills where humidity lurks amongst the dense foliage. I was moist, my shirt was moist, and moistness was creeping in places that I would rather not have a moistness creep.
I wandered hither and thither. I gazed at amazing waters, gawped at surprisingly coloured urns (not Greek), and was charmed by the splendid array of blossoming flora. Within those grounds sprouted houses, guest lodges, small and large ornamentation - organically blended amidst the planted flora until it was difficult to tell which had been placed and which planted. It was a veritable wonder assailing my eyes. Every nook echoed a cranny, and every cranny had a marvel to present.
My eyes darted everywhere. My camera clicked until it could click no more – flat battery. There was so much to see, to take in and to savour. I peered and snooped with, and without, mechanical devices – my mind was enraptured. It is true, I wax eloquent. I ramble like a poet in my writing, but since having entered those gardens it has become difficult not to do so.
The midday sun, berated by Noel Coward, formed painterly patterns on tiles, grasses and statuary. Light, and its tricks, conjured a wonderland replete with giant concrete mushroom. I half expected to see a gigantic caterpillar smoking a pipe. Was I the Mad Hatter? My hat was a little age-worn and discoloured, but did that make me mad? I longed for tea, and a biscuit or three and travelled on.
Food was to come later – down the hill, and after the stroking of that magnificent golden being who appeared to be half-civet and half-cat. Photographs were forbidden in the plant nursery not five minutes drive from Al-Attas’s gardens. The nursery was where ‘Tyger’ rested his golden mane, so I took no photographs. That act of forbidding robbed me of any joy that I may have had in that nursery. It robbed the Helliconia of their sun-kissed glory and made the fruiting Mulberries mere commonplace. That censorship deprived us of the ability to relive the scents and sounds of that nursery, for of that enterprise and their multiplicity of plants I shall say no more.
After a late lunch (which threatened to empty our collected wallets) we tumbled into Bukit Tinggi and the fruit market. Red bananas were bought, as were passion fruit. On the way back, the Al- Attas gardens haunted me, as did the fact that I didn’t get to meet that gentleman himself. I was also haunted by that spectacular golden beast, seen in the plant nursery – calling it a cat is insufficient, and other words seem either too pompous or too belittling.
That day seemed as though an angel had stripped Lou Reed’s song of its negativity, and strove to create a Perfect Day in actuality. It was the sort of day that your mind returns to time after time, dipping its toes in the serenity and the peacefulness of that place and time.
