My Chulia roots

1. If you were to wander around the old part of George Town, the capital of Penang, you would possibly come across one of the oldest roads in the city, Chulia Street. In the 19th century, the road used to be part of the enclave of Tamil Muslim traders where businesses throve.

2. In 1786, Captain Francis Light acting for the East India Company established a British settlement at the eastern tip of Penang island facing the mainland. The new port had attracted the influx of immigrants seeking greener pastures, particularly from southern India.

3. The South Indian immigrants from the Coromandel and Malabar coasts settled along a road built by the British as early as the development of the port itself. It was initially named Malabar Street but later changed to Chulia Street because at that time Europeans used the term Chulia or Chulier for South Indians, the family roots on my father’s side.

4. My great-grandfather, Mohamed Merican Noordin, the patriarch of the Noordin family, was a prominent Chulia merchant during the first three decades of the 19th century until his death in 1870. His mausoleum is situated in Chulia Street in the vicinity of the famous Kapitan Kling Mosque.  

5. My grandfather, Vapoo Merican Noordin, the eldest son of Mohamed Noordin, was a merchant in his own right. He established his own company under the name V. M. Noordin around mid-1800s and ran his business in Chulia Street until his unexpected death in 1884.

6. Vapoo left two sons; Mohamed Hussain, probably a young man at the time of his death, and Mohamed Ismail, then aged two. The latter, who was my father, left George Town towards the end of 1910 aged 28 to make a name for himself as a civil servant in Alor Star.

7. Apparently, my father’s emigration had affected his relationships with close relatives over time. I only have very dim childhood memories of occasional trips to Penang to visit his relatives but nothing really come to pass. I was nine when he passed away in 1956 and for us, namely my siblings and I, it marked the end of family ties with his side.

8. When he died, my father took the Noordin lineage with him. Thus my siblings and I were severed from the merchant lineage. However, I knew that my father was well remembered by his younger relatives; probably his nephews or nieces or more likely their children.

9. For instance, there was a piece of comment I read on the internet in praise of my father written by someone who claimed to be his nephew. And in another instance, my father’s services as a civil servant under the government of Kedah were highlighted in a blog on the history of the Noordin family.

10. It was an irony of life that my father didn’t have any children from his earlier marriages and only be blessed with a firstborn in his mid-60s after marrying my mother. They got a second child about a year later and a third and the last child when he was 68. 14. I suppose that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

11. I guess the youngest of my cousins, if any of them are still alive, would be octogenarians by now. The older ones would be nonagenarians or centenarians. In actual fact, their children and I very probably belong in the same age group.

12. And there is off course the question of paternity that has arisen from a simple matter of variations in the spelling of names in our vital records. On account of the mistakes, I had to submit a statutory declaration form in order to obtain a copy of my father’s death certificate.  

13. Despite the anomalies, I am fortunate enough to become aware of my paternity during the first nine years of my life.

14. I suppose that’s the way the cookie crumbles.