Accidental love in the kampung

Social intercourse in the kampung can often be a stressful and complicated affair. For example, if a Malay girl has a crush on a man and she works as a waitress in a warung.

She will laddle so much rice on his plate that everyone in the village will begin to ask of her – what are you doing?

Since kampung girls are generally assumed to be naive, good natured and innocent creatures – they are likely to keep quiet or reply dunno. Dunno in Singapore simply means dunno lah. No mystery there. No Da Vinci code. However in a kampung – the parlance dunno is a perpetual labyrinth of mystery and intrigue.

Usually the bomoh or Pawang (shaman) is summoned to shed more light into this mystery. Nine out of ten, the shaman will conclude – a love hex has been put on the poor and defenceless girl by a evil and manipulative man who dabbles with malevolent spirits.

When the villagers ask for proof – the shaman will advise that girls family, when this man comes before the girl again, serve him one metric ton of rice this time.

If the man is able to polish off a mountain of rice and still walk out of the warung without shitting in his pants or dying (which ever comes first), then it’s divine proof, he is innocent and destiny meant for them to be united as man and wife.

So the poor man ends up marrying the two metric ton kampung internal beauty escorted by two stout men armed with shotguns.

However if the man dies whilst eating the mountain of rice. Or worst still is unable to eat all of it. Then he is the evil one who has placed the love hex on the girl and all the villagers will do him in a la kampung red neck style.

Either way the man loses lah. Cannot win one lah!

The moral of the story is seemingly benign and innocent things can very easily do a man in, in a kampung.