Where cat got the fruit

Yes, that is cativating Kuching, though it could also be captivating Kuching. In this snug, warm, Malaysian town, there are statues of cats at a traffic roundabout, others gracing an impressive column and also a museum dedicated to cats. All because a creative PR-minded official realised that if the name of the town is mispronounced, slightly, it could refer to the furry feline that has charmed people from before the Pharaohs to long after Andrew Lloyd Webber. The image of a purring tabby is certainly more catchy than that of the wild fruit after which the town was really named. But if you’re one of those people who have a phobia about cats, worry not. They are, at best, a superficial embellishment.

Malaysia’s Kuching, in the forested state of Sarawak, is a contented little riverine town basking in its history. And what a history! From the seventh floor, our picture window in the Riverside Majestic looked down at the slow flow of the jade green Sarawak River. Up that river, in 1841, had come East India Company trader and adventurer James Brooke. Like Stanford Raffles, the man who carved out Singapore, Brooke was a quick-witted, strong-willed, leader. In quick succession, he put down piracy, curbed headhunting, and established the rule of law while respecting local tribal customs and traditions as long as they did not violate his sense of right and wrong.

The people revered his innate fair-mindedness and conferred on him the title of Rajah. He was the first of a dynasty of three White Rajas of Sarawak. The Brookes, clearly, left a lasting impression on Sarawak and its capital, Kuching.

We walked down a palm-lined street where descendants of traders from India still sold fabrics and spices. A polished brass plaque said that it had been named India Street by one of the Brookes because of the prevalence of merchants from the Subcontinent. A towering granite pillar in a square marked the spot where a White Rajah met his subjects informally. On one side of it is the old court house. Its high-pillared colonial presence would have fitted into the past of Bombay... though not, perhaps of Mumbai … Calcutta, Madras and Bangalore.

We moved on, deeper into the past, into the era of Charles Darwin. The Sarawak Museum had been set up by Darwin’s contemporary who had pre-empted Darwin’s ideas on evolution. His name was Alfred Russel Wallace and he must have been an extremely talented taxidermist. We don’t, generally, like to see exhibits in glass ‘boxes’, but these were so lifelike that they riveted our attention. Here was a pair of beautiful wild cattle, the Banteng, possibly extinct now. Here, too, was the story of a major petro-chemical giant. It was in Sarawak that a company of shell collectors had turned their attention to digging oil wells. They, however, retained their original name: Shell.

Taoism’s way

From fuel we drove to faith. Chinese temples reared in crimson and incense. Though there are strong Buddhist influences in them, they are, essentially, shrines to an older faith: Taoism. Essentially, Taoism seeks to harmonise the individual with the rhythm of nature: The balance of light and dark, activity and passivity, and the immutable laws that govern this balance. These laws have been deified as personalities who need to be placated. If we had done the same for our traffic laws, for instance, we’d have created a God of the Left Hand Drive. He would punish us with an accident if we drove on the other side. When we visited one of the temples we saw a man shaking a container of I Ching sticks. We were told that he was trying to find The Way, which is what Tao means, that would lead to good fortune, much like consulting a road map to the future.

Interestingly, in Tao temples, very often, the presiding deity or ‘host deity’, was a human who was deified because of the exemplary life he had led. In the Hong San Si temple, the host deity was a very intelligent farm boy who, because of his association with a seer, became a savant in the mystic earth science of geomancy. The location and alignment of this temple would delight the hearts of all Feng Shui believers.

Another Taoist temple is the Tua Pek Kong in which the host is the Earth Deity. The official pamphlet of the temple, however, makes a very interesting point. It says: ‘Chinese people used the Earth Deity as symbol for worshipping excellent agricultural officers who had taught farmers good methods of cultivation while they were alive.’ Mahayana Buddhism, particularly the type practiced by Tibetan Buddhists, seems to have made inroads into this Tao temple. There is an idol of the Buddhisattva Avalokiteshvara, also known as the Goddess of Mercy Kuan Yin, an aspect of the Buddha reincarnated as His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The deeper one digs into the entwined roots of religions, all religions, the more complex they become!

And then we visited the Sarakraf Pavilion housed in a beautiful, old, double-storeyed colonial building with a pillared porch. It would be easy to describe this as a ‘tourist trap’ but then every centre that has native artisans displaying their crafts can carry the same tag. And since most of us have no intention of penetrating deep into the interior of the lands we visit, in quest of crafts in their ‘authentic’ settings, we must be thankful for such institutions as the Sarakaf Pavilion where one can see a number of craftspeople at work. Here we saw woodcarvers and decorators and weavers swiftly, skillfully, creating their unique handicrafts.

Our attention was caught by an Iban woman weaving her tribe’s Pua Kambu fabric. According to legend, this predominantly red fabric was used to wrap the decapitated heads of their enemies. More significantly, however, the patterns woven into this fabric are often inspired by mystic revelations and when tribal elders agree that a particular design is of great spiritual value, then the weaver is accorded the honours generally reserved for a great warrior. Since headhunting has been banned and weaving is being encouraged there are likely to be more honoured weavers than warriors!

Late afternoon was settling gently on the warmly contented town of Kuching when we boarded Equatorial for a leisurely cruise down the Sarawak River. It was very serene, very relaxing, as we chugged past soaring highrises and crowded marinas, fishing villages and the mansions of the hyper-rich, and even the historic old Brooke Dockyard. A musician playing the very soothing Sape, with a tone that was a cross between a harp and a guitar, serenaded us. We were so enchanted by its sound that we bought a CD of it.
Then, finally, we went to the City Hall North Kuching, which looks a bit like a parked UFO.

There we stepped through the open jaws of an enormous, yellow-eyed cat, and into the Cat Museum. It’s probably the only one of its kind in the whole world and it is chock full of feline lore along with a rich assortment of other information over and beyond purring, furry, felines.

And that, as you may possibly recall, is where we came in...