Hazy memories about bright red seeds

Last week’s photo theme was childhood.

So I thought of these batu seremban… haven’t touched them in years!

I knew exactly where I kept them, though. ;)

There’s an anecdote behind these “seven stones”... At that time, people in school were using pouches filled with beans or grains of rice. I remember one girl who picked up every grain of rice that fell from her pouches while we were playing, and kept them in her pocket. We joked that she would cook a bowl of rice with them when she got home. :D

Oh, and at school in Kuantan we played with five stones… it was my mother who told me that they played with seven stones, picking up one, then two, then three. The games with five stones went by levels…first picking them up one by one, then two by two, then three plus one, then four altogether. Then came a variety of “weird” levels that, come to think of it, had nothing much to do with the basic game of throwing up one stone and picking up others. :P

Anyway, back to the anecdote (no, it wasn’t the ones mentioned above…though those are anecdotes in their own right as well!). As I was saying, the others at school used beans or rice grains in their pouches. If I remember correctly, my mother told me that in Penang, they used saga seeds, which were bigger than those grains. (and therefore better…no slipping out between the stitches!) But those seeds weren’t found in Kuantan, so we planned to look for them during our next trip to Penang. (again, if I remember correctly)

Then in Penang, my aunt was one of those who went picking the seeds for me. I can’t remember who she went with (maybe my parents went as well? Maybe it was by herself? Or with my cousins?), but I remember her telling us (I can’t remember who was included in “us” either) when she came back that they were hunting for seeds on the ground and people who passed by must have been looking at them curiously, wondering that “gold” they were looking for. :D

So in the end, I got my batu seremban with saga seeds inside. :) I can’t remember either who sewed the pouches for me…probably my mother. The main anecdote was the one about picking saga seeds! (Okay, so there’s lots of things that I don’t remember…but I’ve got a good excuse, this was thirty years ago!)

(Note: I searched up the saga tree, turns out that it is called sandalwood in English)