I Miss The Cries Of Kueh! Kueh!

This article in the Sunday Metro section reminded me of the old Kueh man who used to cry out kueh!kueh! in my neighbourhood in Ipoh. Mind you the cries can be heard miles away and once you hear it, you would be on standby as he may just jets by on his old heavy bicycle if you did not notice his approach. This despite the large metal container at the back of the bicycle resembling a large tiffin container. Fortunately his route enables him to make a second approach so if you miss him the first time, you really needed to wait him in front of the gates to make sure you catch him as even though you can hear him miles away, due to some weird science perhaps you do not really hear him when he is nearly on top of you.

If you do manage to stop him however, you would still brace yourself for dissapointment once he opens up the top layer of the containers as your favourite kueh may just be sold out. Mine would be the fried popiah and pulut udang and even though he would sell many varieties of kueh that includes even laksa assam, these two kuehs seems to run out very fast even though one whole tray is dedicated to them. Unfortunately as the article paragraph mentions below, they are now an extinct lot and even though my neighbourhood kueh man was a wiry and fit medium aged man that old time ago, I do not think the age he is now would allow him to continue even if the kueh source he gets his kueh from still exist. Adieu Sir and bye-bye to a tasty era.

“We used to wake up at 4am to start making the kuih (a term derived from the Hokkien dialect referring to bite-sized snacks),” relates Mook Hian Beng, 56, whose father started the business at the site almost 70 years ago.

“At that time, a lot of people got their kuih from Indian sellers who rode on motorcycles or moved about on foot carrying baskets or trays of the snacks.”........

“(Coming into the new millennium), there were no more Indian traders out and about,” explains Mook who took over the business when he turned 18.

“The ones who used to go around passed away or were very old and no one stepped into their places. At around 2004, things in the shop became very quiet.”