... notable events : Reclaiming our house

"Kit Meng, go up to KL and get our house back." my father said.

It was late 1999 and Southeast Asian economies were still struggling to recover. Crime was rampant, bankcruptcy numbers were at an all time high. A frantic call late one night from our old neighbours in Petaling Jaya prompted that strange request from my father. Apparently something dreadful had happened with our house and our tenants.

It all started 6 months ago. The signs were there. Payments were late. Excuses were becoming repetitive. But my father was perhaps too kind and he allowed rental payments to slip. A month of deferment became two, and two became three, cheques would arrive in partial amounts, then they would arrive not at all. Then came the call from the old neighbours from across the monsoon drain. "You better come and see.", they said. "Your house is a mess and your tenants are gone."

So up I went, fearful of what to expect. Taking a night bus I travelled overnight and reached home early the next morning from Singapore. Standing outside the gate, I could see rubbish strewn all over the place and a great pile cloggin up the carporch. The lights were all on and it was obvious that the house had been abandoned in great haste.

Wisely, I headed next door and called to my neighbour. He came out and explained that the the tenants were in a frantic burst of activity a few days ago and then silence from the house. It had been like that for days before he called us in Singapore. Then he popped back into his house and returned with his shotgun in one hand, and a cellphone in the other. "Ok, you go in, I'll be watching." he said.

So in I went.

Under the watchful eyes of my neighbour who was peering intently over his side of the fence, I circled the house. There was rubbish everywhere. Almost every light I could see was on. Almost every ceiling fan was on too. It was a wonder that they didn't leave the airconditioning on as well. The electricity meter gauge was racing round so fast I didn't even know it could go that fast, but what really worried me was the sound of water gushing somewhere inside the house. Interestingly enough, none of the doors were open. The tenants at least had the presence of mind to lock up the house. That must be a good sign at least. But the bad news was that none of our keys worked either, and those that worked had wooden doors bolted from the inside.

I trotted over to the fence and yelled across the monsoon drain. "Can't open the doors." I said. "I'm going up onto the roof." I explained and my neighbour nodded, looking very serious with the shotgun propped on his hip.

Scaling the wooden creeper wall, I clambered onto the porch roof and from there it was a simple matter of popping open the front room window glass and grill. The scene that greeted my eyes was too incredulous to describe. Mosquito netting was all over the place, furniture was in various states of dissessembly, and again, rubbish was all over the place.

I leaned back out the window and waved to my neighbour. This was the tricky part. If there was still someone inside the house, I would be in trouble since my neighbour wouldn't know until perhaps too late. I moved cautiously, opening doors one after another. It pained me to see my house this way. This one was my room. This one my sister's. That was where I played and lined up my toy soldiers all over the floor... but now the whole place seemed... alien. To top it off, I did find evidence that someone else had been in the house and perhaps even sleeping here after the tenants had left. I had the urge to dial my neighbour had hold an open line just in case, but thankfully, the house proved empty, at least the upstair rooms were empty. I had yet to check downstairs.

I found the gushing facet. The bathtube was draining water at a rate that made my conservationist heart cringe, but the bathtube was as yet thankfully only half full and would probably have begun to clog in another couple of days. That would have been a disaster as it would have meant having to deal with water damaged timber flooring. All the mosquito netting had been ripped out and the mesh strewn all over the floor. Apparently someone had decided the aluminium used in the netting frames was worth the effort to remove and steal. With a total of something like 16 window panels upstairs and an equal number downstairs perhaps all that aluminium made for a tidy sum on the recycling market, but the greatest shock was yet to come.

Gingerly picking my way through the incredible amount of rubbish, I switched off lights and ceiling fans as I went along, checking and double checking that everything was shutdown before moving on. Then, when I was satisfied that the upper floor was secured, I threaded myself down the stairs to the ground floor. The same scenes of chaos greeted me downstairs with strange stains on the kitchen floor and obvious burgler damage to the rear kitchen door and gate. Puzzling though, was the fact that the burgler damaged kitchen door and gate shown no signs of entry. The locks had held and bolts were still bolted, yet someone else other than my tenant looked to have entered to rip out all the aluminium screens.

Again I went around shutting electrical switches and stoppering the flow of yet another faucet on the groundfloor toilet. I was feeling a lot more relieved having found the entire house empty and having signaled to my neighbour the all clear after re-exiting the house from the main door out in front. He gave me the thumbs up and disappeared back into his house, shotgun and all. That was when I noticed the stack of letters on the top step of the front door entrance. They were all utility bills stamped with big red words meaning "Overdue". Water and Electricity bills both. Ripping open the latest ones for each utility I read the contents and promptly sank to the ground on weakened knees. Not only did the tenant owe us an accumulated 5-6 months of rental, he apparently also owed the electricity company about RM7000 and the water company a further RM5000, bills we would have to pay if we failed to find that ingrate, and even if we find that ingrate, we probably wouldn't be able to get any money out of him. Last we heard, he had gone back to his kampung and that was the only clue we had left to go on to trace him. What really surprised me was the fact that both the electric and the water companies didn't shut down services when the bills became unreasonably overdue. This was something we needed to take up with the authorities, but not yet. I still had a house to secure.

As best I could, I cleared up the most obvious piles of rubbish so as to make the house look less empty and abandoned. I walked out to the nearest hardware shops and bought whole sets of new padlocks as well as arranged for a locksmith to come over to remove all the other lock which my keys couldn't open. I also bought self-timers and lights to give the house the appearance of being lived in but all this was only temporary stop-gap measures. My family and I would have to make another trip at another time to really clean up the house and to get another tenant, a more responsible one hopefully.

It was both bitter/sweet as I went through my old house, the childhood memories now somewhat smeared. Over there was where I had my hammock, and here was where the piano used to stand, or just across the patio was the spot where I had spent a few nights outdoors sleeping under a coconut-tree-leaf shelter I had built, or that now-blackened slab of flooring was a minor extension my grandfather had helped us build with his own hands...

But at least, it was back in our hands. Mine.