Sunday, May 1, 2016

The Late Granny's Heartache (先祖母的心痛)


James was quite a famous jockey worked in Ipoh Turf Club about two decades ago. He was making a lot of money because he could make just any horse he rode on win in weekly horse racing. So you have guessed it that with such a talent on horses, James was quite a loaded fellow. One day, I met James in the turf club to get some tips on possible horse that would win the weekend’s horse race…

After chatting for a while, when I was about to leave the club; James pulled me to aside and asked me to decipher his odd dreams. Well you see, James was having the same dream for a consecutive 3 nights. In the dreams, James’s late granny appeared in his dream and said in a sorrowful voice while using both of her hands to press on her own heart:

“James… please help granny… my heart is aching… something is piercing into my heart…”

We pondered for a while and none of us has any clue on those strange dreams. So I suggested that we go to his granny’s grave to investigate. Perhaps something was wrong with James’s granny’s grave. Since the granny’s grave was situated in Kampar and James has an important horse race that weekend; we proposed to visit the grave after James’s race.

Then the night before the horse race, James had another dream again. But this time the granny came with a warning:

“James… granny’s heart is pierced by something. I am extremely painful… if you don’t help me; you will fall from your horse tomorrow afternoon!”

James gave me a ring in the morning, I advised him to quit the horse race for the day but he has too much to lose if he quitted that day; the outside bookies will take his life for sure if he missed the race that day. So in a half joking tone James said that he had rather die from falling from the back of the horse than being beaten to death by those bookies. After all, a dream is just a dream…

Soon James was in the afternoon’s race… as expected, his horse was taking the lead. As James’s horse was approaching the terminal; he suddenly saw a black shadow rushed out from nowhere and the horse was startled. It tried to avoid the shadow by standing on its hind legs and as soon as the horse did the stunt, poor James fell onto the ground and he was knocked out cold.

James was rushed to the Ipoh hospital and luckily that he just fainted due to shock. The good doc kept him in the hospital for observation for a day before discharging him. As soon as James was discharged from the hospital, he immediately rushed to my place and dragged me to Kampar to audit his granny’s grave.

There we were, standing in front of the old grave and trying to figure out what had happened. After pondering for a long time and taking a couple of measurements, I said to James:

“There is nothing suspicious about your granny’s grave. The direction is okay and you can feel it yourself… there are no big trees around which roots can penetrate into the grave… If you don’t mind; it is best to dig out the grave to find out what had happened…”

Well, digging up an ancestral grave is a big thing, James couldn’t give his decision there and then, so we decided to return and come back when someone can make the call.

Just as James was indecisive about the digging of his granny’s grave, a few days after returning from the grave; James had another dream from his granny… This time his granny gave a stern warning to James that more serious incident will happen if he does not act fast.

This time James woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me to make arrangements to dig out his granny’s grave.

On the selected date and time, we hired a few grave diggers to the site and when the time was right, the workers start digging. Soon, James’s granny’s casket was unearthed and to everyone’s surprised, there are some fragments of glass fallen onto the bone remains of the old lady. Coincidentally, a large and sharp piece of glass was piercing into the ribs of the skeleton.

Apparently, the coffin James’s granny used was the type with a glass cover. This glass cover should be removed during burial service but someone had apparently neglected to do so. Hence after years of temperature fluctuations and soil pressures onto the glass, it eventually broken and one piece just so happened to pierced into the heart of James’s granny.

After the granny’s grave was dug up, it can no longer be used; so all of the remains were collected and cremated. With this change, James’s luck also changed along with the cremation of his granny. Since his skills with horses wasn’t as good as before, James had to find another job. Incidentally speaking, James wasn’t too bother with earning less, he rather he and his family stay healthy and safety always.

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