Pulau Jong Batu is based on a Brunei folk tale, and we know the end of the story; The jong bearing a returning Nakhoda Manis turns into stone and stands as an eternal warning against filial amnesia. But is it so?
This is a tale of why a charming and cherished young seafarer leaves home with the blessings and good wishes of his kin to follow dreams and to seek betterment. And how his return ends in wreck and ruin.
More than that, it is a tale of community who raise and nurture the young to discipline and to dream, sheltering them strengthening their fibre to face storms and make sacrifices, but also to play and to laugh.
This is a story of a people who live on the sea-rim of the Malay archipelago. Whatever foraging in the forests or sailing the seas, their lives and dreams are as myriad and exotic as the rainforests and the continental shelf that sustain these lives and dreams.
How does one tell such a story - in English, a non-native language - of a people whose tongue is gentle and lyrical, that even plural markings are musical. How to encapsulate the aural richness of assonance and alliteration in scribed telling. A people whose idioms trawl at the depths of wit, humour and knowing. One would have to take liberties in letting the characters live as one imagines they would have done.
This, then, is one version of Pulau Jong Batu.
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