On the day I moved out of my quaint little rented house in Kangar, Perlis, the landlord walked in to collect the keys.
The house, just a three-minute walk from the back entrance of Kangar General Hospital, had seen me through two years of housemanship and another six months as a floating medical officer while awaiting my permanent placement.
The landlord was a retired English teacher, something that always stayed with me because he shared the same profession as my mother.
That day, I was fully braced for his anger, for a string of gently muttered expletives.
Instead, he burst out laughing.
It was the last reaction I expected because I had spent the previous two years using his house’s walls as one giant coloured board for my thoughts.
Once he was done laughing, he simply said, “Cikgu faham” (Teacher understands).
He told me he knew the job could become stressful because his youngest child was a doctor too.
Then he laughed again and said not to worry about the walls. It was only a small paint job.
My mother quietly pressed some cash into his hands. He never asked for it and initially brushed it off, but she insisted so he could buy the paint he would need.
I have always found solace in writing. When I started the first proper job of my life, one that demanded more of me than anything I had known before, I surrounded myself with words.
Whenever I had a bad day, a frightening day, or simply needed comforting, I would pick up a permanent marker and add another line to the walls.
The very first day I moved into the house, before housemanship had even begun, I wrote my first sentence on the walls.
“This too shall pass.”
I first heard that saying years earlier in one of the famous Tamil serials that aired every evening on Sun TV.
My entire family watched it faithfully, including my father, who was otherwise notorious for his dislike of Tamil movies and serials.
Somehow that one sentence stayed with me. I still find myself writing it every now and then.
By the time my mother left, after helping me settle into the house, I had already begun “tagging” in my first rotation, long hours from 6.30am till well past midnight on some days.
That evening after she boarded the bus to go home – nearly 800km away – after I came back from work, I noticed a new addition. In her neat handwriting she had written, “Love you Boo.”
Above and below it were a few lines reminding me not to make decisions at the height of emotion and that we grow through what we go through.
What struck me most was not what she wrote. It was that my mother is not the kind of person to ever vandalise walls, not even her own, much less somebody else’s.
Yet that day, while I was at work, she had picked up the same permanent marker and written on them anyway.
She understood, somehow, that this was where I would return every evening.
That I would see those words before I fell asleep and again when I woke the next morning.
And for a long time, they sustained me as though she were still there.
Years later, she never once told me to stop writing.
She only made me promise that no matter how stressful life became, I would never write on walls again.
I have kept that promise ever since, although if I ever settle into my own home one day, I cannot promise the walls will remain entirely safe.
These days I settle for Post-it notes instead. They are considerably more space efficient.
Looking back, I realise my mother quietly adapted herself to me.
She wrote on walls she would never otherwise have touched. She paid for paint that nobody asked her to buy.
She is even now acting as honorary grandmother to the cat I left behind when I moved to Britain and was unable to bring along immediately.
She somehow managed to grow alongside her children without ever asking us to become somebody else.
Once, almost in passing, she asked me, “I wonder what you will write about me once I am no more.”
I hope that day is still a very long way away.
For now, this one is for you instead, Amma.
While you are still here to read it, and hopefully have a good laugh.
