That's life

1. A few official documents I found in the Archives had shown that my father was drawing a reduced pension of $222.86 rial per month after he retired in 1937. When he passed away in 1956, my mother was not entitled to his pension on account of the pension rules that existed at that time.
2. Incidentally, revised pension rules of 1981 stipulate that a wife of subsequent marriage is entitled for derivative pension. However, no one in the family ever thought about it. It seemed to have been a forgotten question.
3. As for me, the early 80s was somewhat a new beginning. I got married in March 1981 while I was in my final year at the university. Early the following year it was back to teaching again after finishing my studies coinciding with the birth of my first child.
4. So, my life was occupied with starting afresh at a rural school and beginning to raise a family. We lived in a small rented kampong house less than two kilometers away from the school.
5. After two years I bought a house in the city about 16 kilometers from the school and later moved house. About eight months later towards mid-80s I was offered to work at the state educational resource centre in the state capital 64 kilometers away. So, it was moving house again.
6. Coming back to the question of the pension. I'm ashamed to admit that I knew nothing of the revised pension rules until the day my niece told me that "grandma is entitled to grandpa's pension." A close family friend had told her about it. As far as I recall that was many years ago when my mother was still alive.
7. So, for her sake we tried to pursue a claim for the pension money against obstacles that seemed impossible to overcome. The main obstacle was proof of identity. It was vital to establish that my parents were legally married. A marriage certificate would have sufficed, but the document was lost and forgotten a long time ago.
8. Attempt to search for a duplicate at the Islamic department was futile because we failed to give the exact date of the marriage. A clerk at the department told us that there was no record of the marriage, but I could swear that I once laid eyes on the record of my parents' marriage in a large, fat book many years ago.
9. In those days the imam kept such books to record marriages of people in a mukim (small district). During my teens one of my close friends was working as a clerk at a primary school in our village. As it happened, the imam of our mukim at the time was also a teacher teaching at the school.
10. On one occasion I dropped by the school office on a Saturday to say hello to that clerk friend of mine. It was simply by chance that I spotted the aforementioned book lying on one of the tables. It looked quite old and battered. My friend told me what it was and out of curiousity I flipped through the pages. Eureka! There it was among rows of dates and names etc - particulars of my parents' marriage. It was unfortunate that I did not bother to jot them down for safekeeping.
11. The book might have changed hands through the years, but the incumbent during the course of our inquiry admitted that no such book was handed over to him. It might have gone missing indefinitely and with it the hard evidence that we badly needed was lost.
12. However, the department could issue a marriage document if next of kin were to sign a statutory declaration that the marriage had taken place and testified by two male witnesses. By then more than 60 years had passed since my parents got married and we could not find any surviving close relatives or friends to ask for help.
13. Moreover, at that time attempt to obtain a duplicate of our father's death certificate was futile for want of his exact date of death. It seemed that we had reached a dead end. So, finally we decided to give up the wild-goose chase.
14. Ironically, it was not until 2016 that we found the date in a newspaper story and subsequently were able to obtain a duplicate of his death document from the registration office. That was about three years after my mother passed away. 

A curious omission

1. As fate would have it, I grew up not knowing much about my father’s background especially about his side of the family and about his working life. It was not until very late in life in 2013 at the age of 66 that I began to do research on my father.

2. By virtue of that, I was able to trace my lineage to Mohamad Merican Noordin, a well-known merchant from George Town, Penang. A patriarch of the Noordin clan, he rose to prominence within the first three decades of the 19th century.

3. I have no doubt that Mohamad Noordin was my great-grandfather. In the book The Chulia in Penang (2014), the author wrote that he had six sons, the eldest being Vapoo Merican Noordin who had two sons namely Mohamad Hussain and Mohamad Ismail. The latter was without doubt my father who was a civil servant and worked under the government of Kedah.

4. In my original birth certificate my father’s name was written M Ismail Marikan bin Vappoo Marikan Nordin. (I have mentioned about the misspelling of names in my recent post of 9 July 2019.) A long time ago, my grandfather’s name made me realise that my father was of Indian descent and I thought that Marikan must be a sort of surname, but I could not figure out if ‘Nordin’ (or Noordin) was of any significance.

5. It was not until a few years back that I found out ‘Nordin’ was adopted as a family name after the patriarch. In the above mentioned book, the names of Mohamad Noordin’s male offsprings all bore the family name Noordin. As a matter of fact, the author referred to my father as Mohamad Ismail Merican Noordin (M.I.M Noordin).

6. As I’ve mentioned in my recent post of 9 July 2019, I had obtained a copy of my birth certificate from the registration office on 1 July 2019 because the original was in tatters. But much to my surprise, I noticed certain omission in the copy in that my grandfather’s name was simply printed Vappoo instead of Vappoo Marikan Nordin as written in the original.

7. I consider this a curious omission due to the fact that the duplicate of my birth record should tally with the original in my possession. But then the duplicate might have been in bad condition that had caused the omission.

8. I need to go back to the registration office to settle this problem. It won’t be easy because the original document is also in bad condition and the writing is barely legible.

The name issue again

1. During my school days my surname ‘Marikan’ was quite an embarrassment to me. Its otherness often exposed me to ridicule by mischievous classmates. Consequently, I got used to writing my name without the surname ‘Marikan.’

2. Later I realised that the usual spelling was ‘Merican.’ My father wrote his name Md. Ismail Merican or simply M. I. Merican on almost all of his books. A birth announcement in a local paper had my name printed Mohamed Sheriff Merican.

3. Incidentally, my birth certificate had my name written M. Sharif Marikan bin M. Ismail Marikan. Obviously my father had entrusted someone to register my birth without giving the person proper instruction regarding the writing of our names. Thus, Mohamad was simply abbreviated to M and Merican was spelt Marikan.

4. It was not until recently that I had decided to rectify what was erroneous for a very long time. I thought of requesting for a correction of my surname in my birth certificate. It would involve changing a vowel and a consonant to replace Marikan with Merican.

5. To go about it I thought the first thing I should do was to obtain a copy of my father’s death certificate - the only available evidence that could serve my purpose. So, last week I drove to the registration department accompanied by my wife.

6. We were there about 15 minutes before ten. I told the receptionist that I wish to obtain my parents’ death certificates. She gave me a couple of forms to fill and told me to make two copies of my IC.

7. Having completed the tasks, I was given a queue ticket. I settled back beside my wife and waited my turn. There were several clerks at the counter attending to their clients. It was quite wearisome, but at long last my turn came.

8. I handed the forms and duplicates of my IC to the clerk at the counter. Then I gave her my IC when she asked for it and she checked my particulars in the forms against it.

9. Having done that she turned to her computer and started keying data to search for the documents. After a while it seemed that she had noticed dissimilarity between my parents’ names in their death certificates and their names in my birth certificate.

10. She consulted an officer seated at a table against the wall of a room just behind her. Then she told me to wait for a while and went into the room.

11. Minutes later she came back with two declaration forms for me to fill in and have them certified by a commissioner for oaths. I had to make separate declarations to affirm that both individuals whose death certificates I sought were my natural parents.

12. In front of a small office several people were already waiting their turn to see the commissioner. I placed the declaration forms into a rectangular plastic tray basket on the counter and waited my turn.

13. As time ticked away, the waiting had just begun to get wearisome when I heard my name called out through a small loudspeaker. I greeted the commissioner and handed my IC to him.

14. He checked the declaration forms to see that everything was in order. Then he asked me to put my signature on both documents and afterwards he certified them. I paid him RM8 for his service and then hurried back to the registration office.

15. I got a fresh queue ticket and noticed that the clerk who attended to me was already gone. When my turn came I was attended by another clerk.

16. As she busied herself with the computer, I asked her if I could get a copy of my birth certificate because the original document was in tatters.

17. She responded affirmatively and advised me on the procedure. I got another form from the receptionist, completed it, made another copy of my IC and then handed them to the clerk.

18. I paid RM5 for each search. After waiting for a while I finally got my parents’ death certificates as well as a fresh copy of my birth certificate.

19. I was so glad and felt a great relief on account of having accomplished my purpose for the day. It was well past two and past lunchtime, so I decided to call it a day.

20. But my wife insisted that I inquire about my ultimate purpose of changing the spelling of my surname from Marikan to Merican.

21. So, I reluctantly approached the receptionist again and explained my purpose to her and she gave me a queue ticket and I waited my turn.

22. Time seemed to pass very slowly, but finally my turn came. Yet another clerk attended to me and after explaining my purpose to him I was told to make duplicates of my father’s death certificate and my birth certificate.

23. Upon submitting the duplicates to the clerk he asked for my phone number. He told me that my request along with the documents would be submitted to the National Registration Department headquarters in Putrajaya for processing.

24. I think the processing will take a month or so. Let’s hope it goes well. But if nothing happens within a couple of months, then I would have to go back to the registration office to inquire about my request.