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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 December 2020
ACKNOWLEDGING “PAST CONTINUITIES”
Examining the past experiences of coolie women in colonial histories illuminates connections and entanglements between past and present histories. I close this volume with a brief excursion into the present-day experiences of coolie women on estates of Malaysia, suggesting how certain trends in gendered dynamics in migration and labor politics echo past colonial designs.
Today, many ex-coolies, who toiled through the colonial period on estates, have escaped estate life and are proud of the socioeconomic mobility they have achieved. Here, I once again return to Pachaimmal's story. Pachaimmal was first a child coolie, then graduated to becoming a coolie woman at Sungai Buaya estate, Selangor. At the age of eighty-four years, Pachaimmal narrated to me how she had migrated to Malaya with her parents as an infant in the 1930s. She insists, “Life was good but difficult on the estates. It will always have a place in me, which I cannot explain. I have spent most of my life on the estates.” Gesturing around her large and well-decorated living room in a double-storied house in Kelana Jaya, she said:
All this is new. My sons and daughter insist. We are accustomed to simpler ways of life. But, I am happy. You know, when you see your children not having to labor through the day in the hot sun, in the rain, under the fear of being fined, it gives you happiness. It makes you feel you have done your best and I can now go in peace.
Selvaraju Sandrakasi (Raju), who was born in Perak in 1985, hails from a family of ex-estate coolies. Today he is well-known for his role as a midfielder in the Malaysian Hockey League. While playing hockey, Raju also earned an engineering degree from Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysia France Institute. Many hockey clubs in India, Australia, and Europe have sought to recruit him. Currently, he lives in Malaysia, but travels to Italy every year to play for the Pistoia Hockey club, which he refers to as his “second home.” Unlike many others who try to ignore their family histories of laboring on the estates of Malaysia, he takes pride in acknowledging the hard work and persistence through daily struggle that got him and his family where they are now.
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