…below is a lesung batu (stone mortar & pestle) a common kitchen implement… when I was a kid at home because I went to the afternoon shift of primary school, our mother’s helper used this every day and so did all the neighbourhood womenfolks all at the same time to prepare lunch…they created this distinct ting tak tek sound all across the hood which I think was how they communicated with each other with codes only they knew and shared…thus was the spread of snippets of neighbourhood gossip and latest news: who just bought a new furniture, whose daughter was slated to marry so-and-so’s son, what are you cooking today…not unlike the smoke signals used by the native americans to communicate across to their neighbours…or how neighbours in high-rise flats signal to each other in that song ‘knock three times’, some of you might remember…
…mine pictured here had been with me for yonks which I bought in dickson, canberra…and one memorable story attached to it was when, at 2am, I was using it to pound belacan (shrimp paste) and chillies on a foam rubber base so as not to wake the neighbours…then frying the fragrant nasi goring…a neighbour did knock on my door not complaining of the sound but to ask me 'do I have a dead body in there’...because of the belacan stink...
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