Pelikat Tales
One day during a hot summer afternoon in Melbourne, I stood in the middle of the living room of my apartment and suddenly realized that I had been doing something rather unusual by Melbourne standard – wearing a pelikat, a type of sarong (Malay /ˈsarʊŋ/ or English /səˈrɒŋ/) typically worn by Malay men in Malaysia. I then became extremely aware of the fact that I was not living in one of the hot and humid tropical countries in Southeast Asia (it must bizarre to bump into someone walking with a pelikat in the middle of Melbourne streets during winter!). Despite the possibility that this poor pelikat had violated the modern concept of fashion and civilization, having it wrapped around the lower part of my body was surprisingly comfortable. It just felt so nice to have some other options besides my favourite shorts and boxers. As I was walking conveniently around my apartment feeling dignified with warm air freely circulating around and between my legs, I began to suspect that there was a bigger force behind this physical comfort. I began to think about the history of my life that had been so well ingrained with this seemingly timeless and powerful garment called Mr Pelikat.
PELIKAT BOY
I must be so young when my father first taught me how tie a pelikat. It must have slipped down before it began to hold securely around my tiny waist.
“Make sure it’s tight enough!” my father must have warned me.
“Yes, Ayoh. I don’t want people to see my little willie,” I must have replied innocently, running around the house thinking that it must have been a great achievement to be able to learn the fine art of tying a pelikat. The next thing I knew, this piece of fabric had been stuck with me for as long as I could remember, like Anuar Zain’s voice in Kain Pelikat that kept playing in my mind and teasing me into the nostalgic labyrinth.
Over the years, I had witnessed all men around my kampung (and the country) wearing a similar type of woven plaid designs and checkered patterns for religious and other (more casual and pleasurable) purposes that it was almost heretic even if I had a passing thought of putting on my modern trousers or jeans during a Friday prayer at a mosque. These people prayed and played and slept and woke up with their pelikat (still tucked or gone) that it was hard to pull pelikat and their lives apart. It was as if Mr Pelikat had turned into a giant monster and had been granted a super power to lead the weak mass and announce in the radio: “I am your All-Powerful Zahir. Just put me on or go to hell!”
As I was growing up, I saw an interplay of religion and culture in the pelikat department, which subtly implied that one was not religious or manly enough if one did not follow the strict rules laid down by the Pelikat Manager. The results of Piety and Manhood were endorsed through the authority given to the Management of Pelikat Affairs. Indeed, Mr Pelikat was an unquestionable being that had defined the lifestyle of many people and had made me who I was.
Many times, I had these sinful thoughts that pelikat carried a stigma of third-worldness or backwardness or primitiveness, so I tried very hard to switch to modern materials that could fit me into whatever modern lifestyles I was trying to deal with at that moment. It was, however, hard to resist Mr Pelikat’s great superpower that had deeply permeated into my blood and soul, and it was even harder to battle against the great force that had successfully established its long-standing tradition and reigned its sovereignty around the world for many centuries.
PELIKAT WORLD
It was an uncontroversial fact that this pelikat guy had been around for a long time, long before it threw its spells on my body. The word “pelikat” itself came from Pulicat which reflected a long history since the seventeenth century, when the Dutch exported the fabric from India to Southeast Asia. Most of the pelikats that I had worn were designed in Indonesia with famous brands like Gajah Duduk (literally means “seated elephant”) which is very popular in Malaysia. It was a great relief to learn that many boys and girls around the world had also become “victims” to pelikat’s malicious strength that had been silently hiding behind many fancy local names and various foreign faces around the globe: wizaar in Oman; dhoti in West Bengali; phanek in Manipur; mundu in Kerala; kanga in East Africa; lamba in Madagascar; chitenje in Malawi; sampot in Cambodia; longyi in Myanmar; malong in the Philippines; pa kao mah in Thailand; etcetera etcetera etcetera. All these names, in the end, spoke one simple and plain language shared by all human beings – Culture. It was hilarious to notice how we are all being conditioned by similar experiences and get connected through many eccentric ways. Just because we do things differently, it doesn’t mean we are different, does it? Come to think of it, we are not so different than we think we are.
Sitting comfortably in my apartment and still analysing the remnants of pelikat in Melbourne, I was thankful to know that I was not the only one who had fallen prey to this pelikat regime. Pelikat, or sarong or whatever you want to call it, had been part of people’s lifestyles regardless of races and religions in many parts of the world (in the western world, you can already see its secretly-fused modus operandi at a beach behind swimwear!). For all the comfort or misery that pelikat might have brought into my life through its many versatile functions, these pelikat experiences would always be part of the rich episodes of my childhood. And I wished summer this year was long enough so I could be close to Mr Pelikat and be supplied with physical and spiritual fuel I badly needed to keep on driving this challenging car of life.
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Kain pelikat la la la la….
Kain pelikat la la la la….
You know what Cekmi, my Mama prefers wearing pelikat than the batik sarong normally worn by women. It’s more comfortable, she said. And, just recently discovered Tenun Bugis, pelikat as soft as silk….woven by the people of Celebes. purrr…meow!
Women’s batik sarong is another story altogether! Thanks for sharing
suka suka suka
Thanks!