A loan of 500 rial

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1. I still have a very vague memory of occasional car ride with my father on his way to work and then his driver would drive me to the market place to buy some pancakes. I remember that it was a black car but I could never tell what make of car it was until recently.

2. It was a Chrysler 6. Its number plate was K 285. Its engine number was 19922. These details were obtained from a document that I had retrieved from the Archives.

3. According to a letter dated 28 Muharram 1356 (9 April, 1937) addressed to the Under Secretary of Kedah State Government, my father bought the car while he was holding the post of Acting Superintendant of Education and paid for it out of his own savings.

4. He wrote in the letter that he had an outstanding amount of 500 rial(= ringgit) to pay for the car insurance. So he asked a loan of that amount from the Government and the payback would be monthly deductions of 100 rial(= ringgit) from his salary until the loan were settled.

5. There was a remark I’d read in an article that my father was ‘a scion of a well-to-do family’ but I believe my father was a self-made man. In her book The Chulia in Penang (2014), Khoo Salma Nasution wrote:

“Vapoo’s eldest Mahomed Hussain Merican Noordin (M. H. M. Noordin) became a municipal commissioner, while his second son Mahomed Ismail Merican Noordin (M. I. M. Noordin) made his own career instead of relying on the family estate.”

6. If he had not detached himself from the family estate, his financial position would have been better off. His father had passed away when he was two years old and he was taken care of by his uncle. Whether he had received an inheritance or not you never can tell ...