Home Sweet Home

 My love hate relationship with Kota Bharu begins as far as my first memory takes me.  A town that, in my younger eyes, offers me nothing (friends were mostly in KL and since most of my school holidays was spent in KL the huge difference between these two places were enormous) a town where everything is in slow paces and the hippest place where me and my teenage friends hang out was this supermarket called Hankyu Jaya. Supermarket...when did u last used that word?!
Ask any 90s teenagers of Kota Bharu, they'll speak of Hankyu in this reminiscing, nostalgic tone. We had Grandy's there back then, a very cool porridge outlet, I don't remember Mac D or anything like that and MIDORI, an ice cream parlour. Kinda reind me of Pop's from Archie.My first date was at this particulour eating outlet called "Rasanak" ( Rasa Nak). Can u imagine that? Make sense for an eatery, but way too humiliating for a  dating scene. The word Rasa Nak alone would take away any sense of romance and if you eventually marry the guy whom you dated at Rasa Nak (lucky for me I did not), that's not gonna be the story you want to tell the guests at your wedding. They would probably laugh, thinking that you're joking. Unless that's the effect that you want.
Anyway, back to my earlier point, It's love -hate for me because, often enough I compared Kota Bharu to KL and because of that I lost any sense of wonder that I have of that place. Plus, the Kelantanese, we are loud, and we speak in a language that can only understood by another fellow Kelantanese and known to be very cliquished. All those things,as  pointed by my non-kelantanese friends, caused me to want to detach myself more from Kelantan. I never denied that I was a Kelantanese but I never really allowed myself to think of Kelantan/Kota Bharu in that sort of way. To me it was just the town I grew up in.Other that that,  I don't have anything to do with it. Putting it bluntly, I can't really help where I grew up right?
Memories are funny aren't they? Things that u are not aware of would one day creep up slowly into your subconscious and there..it becomes one of your most significant memory. It's funny how certain time at mid afternoon (around 2ish) that specific time would alwiz bring me back to the afternoons I spent at my late grandparents house in Jalan Telipot KB. Or some breeze could touch my face as I watered the plants in my house's  compound in Selangor  and that, that very moment, that breeze, that moment, would just take me back to my childhood days in Kota Bharu.
Now, that KB becomes the town I 'visit' during holiday breaks, the town that awaits the arrival of me and my siblings come Hari Raya, and dutifully waved us away after a week, I sense myself craving, pining for its recognition of me as its 'people'. As I passed by the little old shops along its streets, memories of me with my late grandad, him holding my arm (a very funny way to hold someone's hand i thought, but here was a loving man who had trouble expressing his emotions) as we crossed the streets, as I drove pass some old eatery outlets my parents had brought me and my brother Bo to when there was only the two of us, or passing by the streets that are now being turned into a parking space for some hypermarket, I can't help feeling lost and yearning at the same time. My years of displacement that I brought onto myself have turned its table. It wasn't only memories that causing me to get all nostalgic.They don't get called roots for nothing. Hometowns are like mom's cooking or parents' old big  bed. They give you comfort no matter what life throws at you.
Yes, we can't help where we grew up, I'm sorry KB that it took this long for this cik mek to come home.