Even though the danger of mixing durian and alcohol has not been backed up scientifically, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
– mustsharenews.com
Just because I am coming up with a durian story does not mean I am craving the fruit.
Once my busybody colleague put words in my mouth that I had too much of the king of fruits when I was young, which is true. This truth also ties up with several interesting experiences and encounters. The hornet sting in Rian Tukak of Sebirung, Saratok was one of them.
In 1975 on my first Christmas Eve in Penang, we were gathered at the residence of our Social Anthropology lecturer Prof Dr Clifford Sather. Among those present was my late friend ‘Dr Benedict Sandin who was doing a Senior Fellowship at Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Centre of Policy Research.
Sandin, a retired former Curator of Sarawak Museum was accompanied by his wife. I was introduced to Derek Freeman, a professor from Australian National University (ANU); Freeman was during that time a mentor to Dr James Jemut Masing (later Tan Sri Datuk Amar), a man who needs no introduction (now deceased), who was then doing his postgraduate in ANU.
Apart from meeting Freeman (an author of many books on the Ibans), it was the first time I had durians, turkey, beer and brandy – taken in that order – for Christmas.
Sather’s offer was Hennessey a brandy of a very high order. I couldn’t help thinking about the late elder brother of my ex-school girlfriend who succumbed to a mixture of durians and Guinness Stout drink. So I naturally declined the brandy as we already had some beer too. But Freeman was adamant that the Ibans normally would not ‘chicken out’, citing that he had taken durians and brandy together on various occasions while going on his field research in Sarawak’s Baleh and Rajang basins years earlier.
A great-grandson of an Iban warrior has no ‘chicken out’ written in his dictionary, my adrenalin of ‘fight’ barked inside me. So I took the challenge and joined in the ‘fun’ with Sather and Freeman while Sandin kept to his red port wine. It was certainly a dangerous and heated but not fatal mixture as I experienced later throughout the night. I survived but certainly would not repeat such a ‘stupid act of bravery’.
Several years later after graduating from USM, I was posted to head a rural secondary school with about 1,400 boarders. During one durian season I was accompanied by three teachers – two Iban-speaking Chinese, thanks to their Iban spouses and one Iban – for a durian excursion to my hometown Saratok, some 150 kilometres away.
Our destination was our family-owned durian orchard of sorts – these trees were planted many decades ago to mark a settlement called Bila Dua long abandoned – in the upper reaches of the Melupa River, my late father Salok Jembu’s birthplace.
Waiting for us at Munggu Embawang longhouse en route to Bila Dua was my father’s younger brother Nyiring Jembu, then in his mid-fifties, my two cousins, my elder brother Jon and his two teenage sons.
We walked for about two hours and thirty minutes through a flat jungle trek, crossing the knee-deep Melupa River and smaller streams numerous times, stopping for a few minutes to have a closer view of the Letong Naga (Dragon’s Pool) where my late father once claimed to have seen what he thought was a dragon in a swift movement above the water.
My nephews were lucky as they shot one big mousedeer and caught a lot of fish and prawns during a short evening hunt. All were barbequed against the fictitious and mysterious jungle laws of angry spirits.
Strong mid-evening winds rocked the five or so durian trees and their fruits fell aplenty with heavy thuds near us. Our camp was outside the falling zone.
A few times in the past Jon used to brag about having taken newly dropped durians washed up with locally brewed gin ‘chap langkau’ that could content alcohol as high as 60 per cent without any impact. That evening we all became witnesses to durians being taken together with chap langkau gin.
Jon was not alone – my uncle Nyiring Jembu also joined him to be ‘men among equals’. It was not about just taking the two items together nominally but each took no less than two medium-sized durians and a few pecks of chap langkau. Both looked normal to me apart from upping their laughter and chattering some pixels up.
The rest of us enjoyed the barbequed fish and prawns as well as the mousedeer meat with coffee. Uncle Nyiring died a natural death aged 75 many years later … May God Bless his soul. My brother Jon, now 75, is still drinking and kicking.
While having an Elvis show in Bau circa 2017, I came across a Bidayuh pensioner who said his favourite mixture was durian and chap langkau while serving as a dresser (medical attendant) in Saratok for several years. He enjoyed it and did not get any problem but told the gathering not to do what he did.
The moral is to be careful with durians. Some years ago in Kuching another friend died in his sixties while taking durians together with Cola-Cola – his kids joked that he reached his expiry date much earlier than the Cola’s. So, durians and coke can be a fatal mixture too.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
