BY CAROLINE JACKSON
Book Title: The Pensioner
Author: Adam Said
Publisher: Gerakbudaya Enterprise
Funny, he thought, how so many of his old memories were triggered by tunes, which, like smells, took him back to a particular time, place or occasion. Like a bird hunter trying to flush out his quarry, he would beat around the bush hoping for some helpful piece of information to pop out.
BABY boomers of the early 1960s, having now reached their retirement age, will surely resonate with “The Pensioner”, an easy-to-read work of fiction penned by Penang born author Adam Said, a retired civil servant.
The fabric on which it is written without a doubt makes it a truly Malaysian novel and as the main character, Khalid Arshad, finds out retirement is not the end of the world but a new phase of life to pursue and enjoy new experiences and achieve new goals in life.
One is introduced to Khalid, who lives in retirement with his wife Azizah, a retired school teacher, in a suburb of George Town, Penang, and had a disappointing career in the civil service due to adverse circumstances at work and innocent missteps on his own part.
In most ways Khalid and Azizah are an unremarkable couple. They go about their lives unnoticed, had very few friends with whom they exchanged regular visits, belonged to no social clubs, and had no political involvement other than holding views on important matters and casting their votes whenever elections came around.
“They simply had no desire to keep up any appearances and were not envious of others,” the story divulged.
In fact, they are a contented couple and their needs are modest, without having any worries to manage on their pensions aside being entitled to free medical attention at government hospitals as this takes care of the only eventuality that can otherwise have caused them any serious worry.
A scientist by profession, having majored in Chemistry at the University of Malaya then located in Singapore, Khalid nevertheless begins to show signs of boredom in retired life until he runs into Bala, a friend from his old days.
What he does not realise at the time is that this chance meeting with his old classmate is destined to change his life in a way that he can never had predicted.
“Being retired doesn’t have to mean that you also have to be idle. Here is my advice to you get into the habit of reading. The world is full of good books, Khalid, and there is no better way for you to spend your time than to keep their company. You will be surprised how much pleasure you can get by just sitting in your chair and reading a book at leisure,” his friend chided him.
One then learnt that the more he reads, the more he begins to realise that reading in fact gives him many different pleasures.
Most important of all, he now comes to savour the use of language in ways that has escaped him previously. Some novels lifted his spirits through their quirkiness and freshness of language, while others held him in their grip because of their intricately woven plots or because of the characters in them.
What Khalid may have sensed but had not thought through in his own mind is that he has become a different person as a result of his now five-year-old reading habit. It was not only that he has found an antidote for his boredom, but there has also been a transformation in the way he looks at things. Throughout his adult life he has seen the world as being made up of observable things, geometric space and logical outcomes.
Science, on the other hand, is totally different. You read it not for pleasure but in order to learn. When he did four years of chemistry at university, all that had happened was that he got to understand more and more about the same things and learned to probe deeper and deeper into the same phenomena.
He is realistic enough to know that ageing retirees like the two of them tend to see in everything a squandering of the legacy that they have left behind, when in fact what ails them is their own loss of status and their resentment at having been made useless.
Hence, his many ponderings, typically occurring as Khalid sits by himself on his veranda, give readers insights into the lead character’s personality, revealing him to be a person who is sensitive, level headed and intellectually curious.
Like for one instance in the novel when Khalid is serving as an assistant district officer, it has always been his view that you can tell more about a country from its drains and sidewalks than from its bridges and highways.
It might be a good idea, he had told himself, to have a staff position in the office dedicated specifically to the maintenance of drains, culverts, sidewalks, rubbish bins, and so on.
As the author puts it candidly via the main character, it is the small things that really matter to most people, but these are the very ones that frequently got ignored and the safest response to problems is not to solve them but to pretend that they do not exist.
Although inclined by nature to mind his own business and to remain private in his ways, the thoughts that go through Khalid’s mind make it clear that he is a person, who in fact, has a deep interest in public affairs and is an astute observer of political trends in the country.
Unsurprisingly, not all of Khalid’s musings turn out to be significant thought-provoking, some being those of any ageing person with a memory and a fondness for the old days.
In its own way, the time he spent pottering about in the garden, helping Azizah with her household chores, walking down to the shops to buy small things, relaxing with his newspaper and a leisurely second cup after breakfast, and even just doing nothing, was all too valuable to be traded for anything else.
As Khalid summed it up, “Believe me, I am not just another sour old retiree with a grudge.”
While the novel is about the life of one individual, it also shows readers how easily a country’s politics, administration and culture can change within a single lifetime. The story by itself may not require a particular national context for its telling, but the fabric on which it is woven here makes this a distinctively Malaysian novel.
