Chay-bah! and Other Obsolescences

A friend's recent triumph—in locating a Malaysian restaurant in London that I'd recommended and having "the best chicken rice" of his life there—elicited from me the happy interjection "Chay-bah!"

I fell then to thinking of my late father, who said "Chay-bah!" or sometimes simply "Chay!" when something good happened that made him happy. At these moments, he would raise a loosely formed fist and shake it in the gentlest, mildest manner you could imagine.

For my dad, chay-bah wasn't for the big moments of pride in his life, as when my brother was accepted into medical school or when we learned of my good result in my university finals. It was for the little triumphs like winning a board game or proving he could still carry off a smash with a badminton racquet.

His was the generation that also said, with no self-consciousness whatsoever, gostan to mean "reverse (a car)". Gostan is, of course, one of those words seized upon by early observers of Malayan English and since written about extensively—originating in the nautical imperative "Go astern". I can still see him directing a three-point turn from the sidewalk (I mean, the pavement), winding his arm around at the elbow and shouting "Gostan! Gostan!" in a slightly desperate tone of voice.

Though the Singlish Dictionary lists gostan as current, it has certainly been many years since I heard anyone say it except as a lexical curiosity. Even my dad seemed to cease saying it in the last couple of decades of his life, as if aware the word had passed from widespread usage. Chay-bah, on the other hand, is marked with the dagger of obsolescence. Latterly, we resurrected it to celebrate my father's good haemoglobin test results, while he struggled with the blood disorder that would eventually steal his life.

Languages change. Words and phrases fall out of use as new ones come along. As a student, I was taught to view these processes with scientific dispassion. But when old words vanish along with the people we care about, their ghosts hang around to disorient us and catch at the heart.