My neighbour who was next door to my house was a single father with 4 kids. When his wife gave birth to their fourth child,she passed away. This single father, after his wife's death did not get married but played the role of a father , mother, nanny and as a guardian to his four kids.
Gopal thats his name, came to Malaysia from Tamil Nadu, during his teenage years and worked as a blue collar worker. At the same time cooked food for his kids and washed their clothes and took care of them, send them to school and grew vegeis for the family's consumption in a vacated land in front of his house.
Bananas, tapiocas, long beans, okra, aubergine, " "vetrillai valli kilanggu" a fruit in the form of a tuber which is found on a creeping plant with leaves like betels.
He also had chickens and turkeys other than ducks for his family's consumption. I had never seen him sitting or chatting with any one. There were two huge tree infront his house. One was a jackfruit tree which bear juicy huge fruits and another one was a "drumstick" "Murungai" tree.
A mother can play the role of a father, but a single father, to take care of the children and to educate them is very difficult, but as a father this single parent send his kids to school and prepared food for them, not only that, he also preserved vegetables and tapiocas which he grew in his garden.He dried the boiled tapiocas and kept in a air tighht bottle for months, which is known as "vadam" or crackers.
A father who had also stitch his kids clothes and cleans the house every evening after coming home from work. Once I still remember, he advised me about keeping the house clean and how to maintain the cleanliness of ones home. I was only fourteen at that time and learnt nothing from my sisters about keeping the house clean, so I was not good at cleaning and maintaining the cleanliness of my house.
Gopals wealth was only the house in which he lived with his four kids and his grand child..
I still remember , in his house only old metal boxes which he brought from India were used to keep the family members clothes. The floor of his house was a rough concrete floor. His eldest daughter was my second sisters classmate. After her form five exam she was married off to some one from suffolk estate , which is at present known as Kg Kamaruddin in Sri Manjung.After married, his daughter followed her husband to Taiping where he has been living and working.
Sunday is the only day Mr.Gopal to be at home fully and that is the day he collected and dried the firewood as much as he can afford. Because during rainy season it is very difficult to get fire wood, or to cook, so in advance Mr. Gopal stored the firewood in the shack which he built to keep the fire wood and the less used things.
Those days almost all the families owned a shack opposite their house. My family's shack was used to keep all our bicycles and the fire wood.
