Terkejut Badak

Familiar with the word terkejut badak? It is similar to terkejut beruk atau terperanjat katak atau tekejuk ga.Terkejut badak means terkejut besar or in other words sangat-sangat terkejut.

I had this helper (looong time ago ) from Petani named Hasnah. She was 17 years old and already a divorcee. According to her she was forced to marry at the age of 16 ie she was kidnapped and forced to marry. Her marriage lasted only for a few months .Then she came to KB to work for me.Those days people in Kelantan always had maids from Southern Siam. Before Hasnah there was Kak Mah who worked for me  for about 1 year.

All my children loved Hasnah. She  looked after the children when they played every evening, thus they became good friends.She will join them playing hide and seek, cycling or main batu selemban or main kejar-kejar ( it was everybody's favourite ).Her favourite word was tekejuk ga.Whenever she told stories she will always say ....  tekejuk ga kak Nah bila........ And my children will laugh with her.Eventually all of us used the word kejuk ga ( except for my husband,being a Kedahan he can't follow other twang as he is very thick with his loghat utagha. )

Hasnah was a good cook. She was the one who taught me how to cook nasi kerabu Siam which is quite different from nasi kerabu Kelantan.But when she was gone I cook nasi kerabu Siam kahwin nasi kerabu Kelantan.My family love them,because being orang luar they can't really differentiate between the two types of nasi kerabu.

She also taught me how to cook masak pad ped and kesom which is quite similar to asam pedas but it is much much hotter because of cili padi.Kak Mah was a better cook because she used to work in restaurant.She cooked restaurant style food like mee or kuayteow ladna, daging bakar,daging paprik and so on.But she was not children friendly as she was quite elderly ( about fifty at that time ).

One day Hasnah was down with sore throat and she had high fever.She told me she wanted to go home to see bomoh. I scolded her why did you want to see tok bomoh, let me send you to the clinic for treatment. She said yelah kak serupo tu jugoklah tok bomoh dengan doktor. Then only I knew that doctor is bomoh to orang Petani!I supposed when she was sick she became homesick and she wanted to go home.