The end of World Wars 1 & 2 saw an influx of Syrian Christian migrants from Kerala into Malaya to work in rubber estates scattered all over the country. This included my parents who eventually found themselves at the Prang Besar rubber estate, where Racket Boy’s story takes off.
By 1949 the community had grown considerably for them to register the Jacobite Syrian Christian Union with the Registrar of Societies. They soon obtained the approval of the then Sultan of Selangor for a piece of land in Brickfields to build their church. Upon its completion in 1956, the church became the first Orthodox Syrian church outside of India. Up to the present time the church conducts worship in Malayalam and English.
The consecration service was conducted in the name of Mother Mary, hence its name the Orthodox Syrian Church Cathedral of St. Mary the Theotokos. It was here that I was baptized as a child – and which my family and I attended without fail, me in sullen mood whenever I had to miss a badminton final that invariably fell on a Sunday.
One of the biggest highlights of the church was a visit in 1968 by His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia. The memory of me shaking the emperor’s hand remains ever so fresh!
*photograph used is from Philip George’s private collection