Bukit Wang in the district of Perlis is a place well known to Aryan and his daughter Puteri. They had travelled there to escape a troublesome Komodo Dragon, who had threatened to find and eat Puteri. Today Puteri and her father had been taken to visit a relative of the family. Once there Aryan went off to work in the paddy fields with the family, leaving Puteri to entertain herself at the family homestead. Puteri soon became bored and decided to explore, she wandered from house to house, but it seemed that everyone had gone to help bring in the harvest.

Then she found the small plain grave stone, with its simple inscription, once you were lost- now rest in peace- puteri. She almost fell over in fright, what did it mean, she hurried back to the families homestead where she spent the rest of the day watching and listening to a bulbul, with its distinctive call,  kink-a-joo – kink-a-joo that is until she fell asleep.

“Father there’s a strange grave stone at one of the farm houses and it says once you were lost- now rest in peace- puteri” Aryan smiled as he told Puteri that water buffalo’s did not read human writing, but dream we do.

I first wrote about Puteri in a story called ‘The Young Water Buffalo’  2014.