Legends

I don’t want to write a movie review – it’s a bit too late for that, and I’m not very good at it – but watching The Water Horse reminded me of Juara Yang Tewas.

The Water Horse, adapted from a novel of the same title, is about a boy who raised the Loch Ness monster. Juara Yang Tewas (The Fallen Champion, if they finally get around to translating it) is a novel by Aripin Said about the mythical dragons of Lake Chini. There are many variations of the Lake Chini legend in local folklore. In Juara Yang Tewas, there were two dragons living in the lake, named Sri Gumum and Sri Pahang. Sri Gumum was the older of the dragons, with scales of gold. Sri Pahang only had scales of bronze. After fighting with an evil sea monster in the Gulf of Siam, Sri Gumum succumbed to its injuries, leaving just Sri Pahang to remain beneath Lake Chini till today.

Juara Yang Tewas remains one of my all time favorite Malay books. The copy I read years ago was borrowed from a library, but I really hope to find a copy of my own to keep. I don’t know if it’s still available, though as the last print was in 1990. Perhaps DBP should print a new edition, preferably in hardcover, I can buy.

__________
PS: During the post-race press conference of last weekend’s Bahrain GP, did you notice they displayed “Kimi Raikkonen, McLaren” on the screen when he was interviewed? What a blunder!