Putu Mayam (or Stringhoppers, in English) is a close relative of the Iddiyappam, a native of the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, as well as Sri Lanka. It is a dish of rice flour served with coconut and jaggery or date palm sugar.
My first encounter with the Putu Mayam was back in 1976 when I was living at the quarters which is now part of the Tun Razak Memorial on Jalan Perdana (formerly Venning Road). An Indian man would cycle and cry out, “Mayaaaaaaaammmmm!” followed by by four honks of his rubber air horn sounding “Pek! Pek! Pek! Pek!” Those were the days when there were lots of government quarters in the area where the Taman Orkid and Taman Rama-Rama are now. On top of that were the workers quarters at the residence of the late Tun Abdul Razak, our house, more quarters where the present Royal Malaysian Police Museum is when it was the Officers’ Mess.
Over the years would see the number of people living there get lesser and lesser. After Tun Hussein Onn stepped down in 1981, they started constructing the Taman Orkid and Taman Rama-Rama. The Venning Road Officers’ Mess was abandoned awaiting reconstruction as the police’s museum. Only my family remained there until July 1994, six months after my father’s retirement, before we all moved to USJ (well, I was still in Kedah/Thailand then). But that old Indian man, never failed to do his rounds, with that familiar cry and horn…all 18 years that we were there.
That old man is no more. There is no more Putu Mayam in that woven basket. No more police personnel from the Guards & Escort branch that were guarding my father’s house stopping that old man to buy Putu Mayam.
Then today, as my daughter Fazira and I walked to the Ramadhan Bazaar to buy food for the breaking of the fast, I heard a familiar cry with a somewhat cheery musical tone added to it crying, “Puttu Mayyam!” The Puttu with a rising and falling tone in the respective syllable, and a mid-tone and rising tone in the Mayyam part. That caught my ears as well as the ears of several more people that kids were mimicking him. I took a detour and went to this Indian chap standing next to his motorcycle.
“Berapa?” I asked him.
“Lima Dua Ringgit, boss, tapi boss punya saya kasi Anam!” with the typical head-shake-roll.
“Wokeh,” I replied, also with the head-shake-roll I learnt through my years working at the nation’s most favoured multinational company. “Kasi dua Ringgit juga kalu.”
I looked at the Putumayam on the clear plastic sheet and smiled to myself: “One up for tradition.”
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