I never meant to write this. So much has already been said about P. Ramlee by his friends, his students, his admirers — some of them, I sometimes think, seem to know him better than I do. Most of it is written in good faith, but not all of it is accurate, and for years I held my peace and let it stand. It was only after several of my father’s oldest friends kept pressing me that I finally agreed to set down my own account — not the legend, just the son’s version, from the day I first understood who my father was to the night I lost him. I owe thanks for this, more than anyone, to Cikgu Yusnor Ef, my old tuition teacher and my father’s only true student in screenwriting, who spent months coaxing this story out of me and putting it into shape, and to Datin Dura, who polished the language until it read as it should.
My father was born Ramlee bin Puteh. The world came to know him as P. Ramlee. My own name, Nasir, was not chosen by accident — it was the name of the character he played in Bakti, his first leading role, directed by Dato’ L. Krishnan, alongside S. Romai Noor and Kasmah Booty. Naming his children after his films became something of a habit with him afterward: my foster brother Sazali was named for Anakku Sazali, the film that later won him Best Actor at the South East Asia Film Festival, and another, Sabaruddin, for his own Sabaruddin Tukang Kasut.
My mother was Junaidah binti Harris, once a dancer and extra at Studio Jalan Ampas, and the daughter of the comedian D. Harris, who had been my father’s own screen partner before Ramlee’s career took off — she herself came to the marriage already once widowed or divorced, with a young son, Bacok, whose father I never did learn the name of. They married in the 1950s at a house on Boon Teck Road, among the studio community — S. Roomai Noor, Siput Sarawak, Kasmah Booty all lived nearby — and it was there, as a small boy too young to know any of the faces around me, that I lived my earliest years, piecing the stories together only later from the friends who had actually minded me as a child.
It was not a peaceful marriage. My father’s growing fame drew crowds and admirers wherever we went, and my mother — herself only a bit player — grew jealous watching him receive all the attention. Their fights were frequent, and I was often the one caught in the middle of them: when they quarrelled, my father would walk off alone to clear his head, and my mother, unable to vent her anger at him, would lock me in the bathroom and beat me there until he came home to let me out, after which he’d deposit me for safekeeping at the house of the comedian Ahmad C. before going back to finish the argument. I remember one afternoon he came back from the studio whistling, cheerful, and she turned on him at once: “Ah! ini tentu dah jumpa girlfriends!” There was no way for him to win — sad or happy, she read betrayal into either. Kassim Masdor once told me that after we all moved to a bungalow in Katong, she even had him — then still a young man — tail my father along the seafront, just to report back whether he walked alone or with company.
Out of that jealousy came, I believe, one of his saddest songs, “Hujan Di Tengah Hari,” written with H.M. Rohaizad and used in Perjodohan — a song about a man who thought the sun would shine till evening, only to find rain in the middle of the day, and who would still take his wife back if only she could change. Not long after, my parents separated, and because I was his only child, a custody battle followed. My father, holding fast to his principle that a son belonged with him, won. My mother went on tour with a bangsawan troupe across Malaya and later returned to her father in Jakarta, while my father, now single again, only grew more popular — Indian directors, I’m told, competed to cast him, since his name alone guaranteed a strong box office.
He had, by then, also fallen for an Arab girl named Hamidah, whom I never met and know only through others’ stories. When my mother came back months later to reclaim me on the grounds that a son belongs to his birth mother, my father panicked, and with the help of his friend Salleh Kamil and his half-brother Sheikh Ali, summoned urgently from Penang, essentially had me smuggled away from under her nose. We very nearly failed — my mother had somehow got word and was already waiting at Tanjung Pagar railway station when we arrived. I was hidden in the luggage rack, almost touching the carriage roof, while she searched the train for me right up until the departure whistle sounded. From that moment I was separated from her. I lived for a time in Penang with my grandmother, Cik Mah, and Pakcik Sheikh Ali, visiting my father in Singapore almost every month, until my poor schooling there — I failed my exams outright — sent me back to Singapore for good, and back into my father’s world, a world that, by then, also included his second wife, Noorizan, once of the Perak royal household. By six, I finally understood what it meant to be P. Ramlee’s only son, and felt, for the first time, lucky for it.
I was not entirely spared my mother, though. One afternoon my father came home from the studio looking hollowed out, and finally told my grandmother, in front of all of us, “Jun berada di studio bersama seorang peguam untuk mengambil Nasir.” He drove me himself to Jalan Ampas that day, coaching me in the car — “Kalau orang tu tanya, Nasir nak ikut Jun atau bapa, Nasir nak jawab apa?” — and left me at a coffee shop opposite the studio, where my mother was already waiting, weeping, telling me she was my real mother and that she missed me terribly. An Indian lawyer stood beside her. I gave the same answer to both of them: I did not want to go with her. They could not move me. I walked into the studio alone to find my father, and from that day my mother never came for me again.
Noorizan ran our home at Yarrow Garden, Siglap, like a small palace: chores, curfews, rules for everything — laying the table, watering the flowers, cleaning up after the cats, scrubbing the brassware, washing our own five sets of school clothes ourselves though we had a helper — discipline so strict I sometimes resented it, though I later understood it as her way of protecting my father’s dignity as a great artiste, even if he himself often felt confined by it, driven to and from the studio each day by a chauffeur, Wak Kimin, who left him little room to idle. Sundays were our relief, the one day we were allowed to complain about her to my father, who would only smile, “Senyum ada makna tu cik,” while privately telling her, “You boleh pukul, asalkan jangan berbekas sudah.” It was in that house, too, that I met the recurring cast of my childhood — Mr Singh, the Bengali actor who massaged my father every week and always brought sweets; Kassim Masdor, who taught me scraps of music notation; the tailor Mr Kwong, who displayed my father’s photograph in his shopfront and printed it on his bags entirely for free, because everyone, Malay or not, loved P. Ramlee, and Lucky Strike, which paid him nothing more than a free carton or two for the same privilege.
That marriage, too, broke down — my father, I came to believe, chafed against the very discipline that once steadied him, and rumours of his closeness to Saloma during recordings did not help matters. When Noorizan finally said the words he seemed to be waiting for — “Ceraikanlah I” — he let her go without a fight, telling her, not entirely in jest, that he had once had to bow to her as royalty and would bow to her again now that he’d divorced her. He kept his word in the strangest way possible: even after the divorce, he cast her, tellingly, as a queen in his last film as director, Laksamana Do Re Mi — likely the very last time the two of them ever met.
It was around this time that Saloma first came for me herself, in a sports car outside our gate, driving me past Paya Lebar airport and along Changi’s coast, asking all the while how I felt living without a stepmother, praising my father the whole drive. I already knew exactly what she was doing — “Makcik ni ada udang di sebalik batu,” I thought — but I laughed along anyway. I told my father everything that night, and he only asked, “Kau suka makcik tu?” I said nothing, and prayed hard that he would not marry her — not out of dislike, but out of fear of another upheaval, another stepmother, another disappointment for a man I loved and worried for. He married her anyway, quietly, at the home of Musalmah, known as “Onggek” — herself an unofficial adviser who had, in fact, been largely responsible for later persuading my father to move to Kuala Lumpur — with the wedding photographs kept secret on my father’s own strict orders. I sulked for a long time afterward, once even punished with a thousand lines of “I must love my auntie” and more than one caning, until the day I desperately needed fifty ringgit for my Scout fees and had nowhere else to turn but her door. She only said, “kalau Nasir tak sukakan mama, mama tak kisah — yang penting mama sukakan Nasir dan bapa Nasir,” and gave me the money without a second thought. From that day I called her Mama, and my father, Daddy, and life at our next home, Cedar Avenue, felt genuinely freer than it ever had under Noorizan’s rule.
My father loved collecting foster children almost as much as he loved music — Normah, Betty, Sazali, later Sabaruddin and Zazaloma (my aunt’s daughter, nicknamed by my father himself), and, through Saloma, Armali and Dian. He doted on Sazali so openly I confess I was jealous of it — none of us was ever allowed so much as to flick his ear — while Saloma doted just as fiercely on Dian, so that the two of them would each defend their favourite to the point of real household tension. He never once behaved as though it hurt him to love that widely; if anything, it was one of his great and generous flaws. Legally, under Islam, I remained his only blood child, and it mattered: after his death, the fact that these siblings all carried his name on paper, without carrying his blood, would cause real friction over what little he actually left behind — a small terrace house, an insurance policy in Saloma’s name, and modest royalties, nothing more.
At Cedar Avenue, once Saloma was fully installed as “Mama,” our lives were freer and happier than any before. My father, too, seemed lighter, staying out late, laughing more, filling the house with friends and even stage troupes rehearsing in our own living room. It was here he brought in a young Malay-language schoolteacher, Cikgu Mat Nor — later famous himself as the writer Yusnor Ef — ostensibly to tutor us, though he was, at first, simply an admirer hoping to learn scriptwriting from my father, and waited many weeks just to be noticed. He became something close to family: terrified of my father, hopeless at discipline (Armali’s untidy handwriting drove him to distraction, though Armali never took it to heart), and yet the one who patiently taught the lot of us in the evenings before my father came home. One Friday night, an odd visitor named Mat Ceti — a studio extra who moonlighted as a gravedigger at the Bidadari cemetery and had a habit of appearing suddenly at our window asking only “Ramlee ada?” — sent our helper Ramli Kecik into a screaming fit that had Cikgu Mat Nor fleeing for the stairs and left the poor teacher too spooked to return for nearly a week, cured only after my father recited verses over a glass of water and had Pak Yusof B come to help settle the matter properly.
That, in fact, is the truest answer I can give to a question people still ask me today: was P. Ramlee a bomoh? No. He simply had one small, God-given gift — the ability to draw information out of me while I sat entranced, my face washed, his thumb pressed to the base of my spine, murmuring prayers with his eyes closed until I lost consciousness for a moment. He used it once, half as a joke, to test whether Cikgu Mat Nor’s devotion to him was sincere — “engkau ni betul-betul nak belajar ke atau suka-suka” — and was satisfied with whatever it was I said while under. Beyond that, and the water he blessed for sick friends without ever asking payment or offering, there was nothing to the rumours of magic that followed him after his death; only Pak Yusof B, the songwriter, was ever said to share whatever this particular gift of his actually was.
When my father decided we would move to Kuala Lumpur, it broke something in me — Singapore was the only home I had ever known, having been born there. Cikgu Mat Nor already knew before I did, and I could read the sadness on his face days before anyone told us officially. A farewell dinner was thrown for my father before we left, joyous and a little drunk on nostalgia, with my father teasing his most respectful student for dancing “macam kuda belang.” On the morning we finally drove off in a Dodge my father piloted himself, Cikgu Mat Nor helped pack up my father’s room and found, among the scattered old scripts, a single letterhead reading “Perusahaan Filem P. Ramlee” — proof of a dream, a production company of his own, that never once came true, because, as my father told his closest friends near the end of his life, the people around him in Kuala Lumpur no longer wished to trust or respect him, and some, he said plainly, had stabbed him in the back. We left Jalan Ampas, the studio that made his name, for good that afternoon, its last film under his direction being Tiga Abdul.
In Kuala Lumpur, at Studio Merdeka, I first fell for music instead of school, sneaking off with a three-guitar band instead of attending class, until my truancy caught up with me in the cruellest way: my father, discovering the school’s expulsion letter, made me read it aloud while pretending to be calm — “Nah! Baca kuat-kuat, Daddy nak dengar” — until I broke the tension the only way I knew how, by faking a faint. It worked; his fury dissolved instantly into an apology and a glass of Quranic water dabbed on my face while Saloma scolded him for beating a child “macam pukul lembu.” A week later I told him plainly I didn’t want to go back to school. He agreed at once — “O.K. fine, tapi you mesti ikut Daddy shooting” — half as punishment, half genuine offer, and even joked to Saloma that one less mouth in school meant less pocket money out of his own pocket.
I never loved filmmaking the way I loved music, though those years at Studio Merdeka taught me the mechanics of it anyway — effects, dubbing, editing, learned almost by accident. For a while I drove Saloma around as her chauffeur, washing the car each dawn, before drifting through band after band, each one abandoned the moment novelty wore off: The Beagles, a cheeky echo of The Beatles, fronted by singer Salamiah Hassan and boosted purely by the fact that everyone knew whose son led it; a stint alongside A.R. Tompel’s son Armali that soured badly enough it nearly broke up my father’s own marriage, since Saloma sided with her son and my father sided with me; Pak Kojong’s group, where I earned all of RM30 a month plus meals; and finally my father’s own outfit, “Ben Puteh Lima Merdu,” which I found too old-fashioned for my shoulder-length hair and disco leanings among a band of men my father’s own age — I lasted two weeks before forming my own group, “Ben Ramlee,” playing side by side with my father himself, evergreens on his end and noisy disco on mine, at a club that tried to short-change us on wages until my father marched back and threatened the manager into paying up, at least half of what was owed.
It was a chance introduction through my father, though, that changed things — the bandleader Ahmad Wan Yet, an old studio colleague of his, needed a bassist for the Merlin Hotel, and my father recommended me despite Wan Yet’s visible doubt. I auditioned that same afternoon with my own guitar, sight-reading the sheet music with the ease that came from being properly trained, and was hired on the spot. In 1971, at $1,500 a month with a free room thrown in, I became a house musician there — a fortune at the time — and gave my very first paycheck away almost entirely: RM50 each to my father and Saloma, RM10 each to my younger siblings, RM20 to my grandmother. My father, I’m told, could not stop bragging about it to everyone at the studio.
Money slipped through my fingers as easily as it came, though. Once, desperate for a new guitar priced at RM4,800, I asked my father for a loan of three thousand ringgit, which he happily promised — only to explode at me the next day when I came to collect it, shouting at me to find my own money, because, Saloma quietly explained afterward, he simply had none left to give. I shouted back something I still regret — “jangan buang masa Nasir sahaja” — and stormed out, not speaking to him for a long stretch after. Months later, a waiter at the Merlin told me my father had come in with friends to eat; without hesitation I told them to send the bill to me. I was still hurt, still proud, but that night, watching him unknowingly witness his own son playing on that stage, I felt real pride mixed with real shame at how I’d spoken to him.
My father and Saloma fought their own peculiar wars too — silent for days at a stretch, each too proud to speak first, “besar kepala” as the saying goes, and I profited nicely from it, charging a ringgit each time either of them used me as a go-between to ask the other something as mundane as where a shirt had gone. But behind the comedy of it, I sometimes pitied him: a man who spent his life making others laugh while weeping quietly at home, a truth captured in his own song “Sedangkan Lidah Lagi Tergigit,” and one he expressed to me only once, late at night while Saloma was away singing in a Bangkok nightclub, when I asked if he felt lonely without her. “Terlalu sunyi,” he said. I asked where I would go if he were gone one day. He wouldn’t answer — only promised, absurdly, tenderly, that he’d live a thousand years, before cutting the conversation short and taking me out for fried noodles instead of finishing it. He was, in his own way, a disciplined teacher too: rehearsing harmony vocals with Saloma and me before every recording — he on piano, I on double bass — punishing my mistakes lightly, washing cars or being locked in my room, though what I dreaded most was being made to walk the length of his back whenever he came home from the studio carrying some unspoken trouble, sometimes for hours, until he either fell asleep or I faked tears to be let off.
The Merdeka years were not always kind to him. By the 1970s, Malay cinema itself was fading against television and foreign competition, and my father — once the undisputed face of Jalan Ampas — began to feel sidelined, his name no longer carrying quite the weight it once had. Ventures like PERFIMA and, later, Rumpun Melayu with H.M. Shah both failed, even as he still managed films like Dr Rushdi, Gelora, Putus Sudah Kasih Sayang, Jangan Tinggal Daku, and finally Laksamana Do Re Mi. He dreamed of producing his own films independently and found no real backers — even an old friend like Dato’ L. Krishnan, who offered him office space to do as he pleased, could not restore what he’d lost. Saloma went back to singing in nightclubs to help make ends meet, while my father bore the weight of it quietly, the way he bore most things, smiling through his work even as the pressure, according to Saloma, was crushing him privately. It was around this period, too, that a magazine he had once owned, Gelanggang Filem, quietly collapsed into debt under a string of managers — first Rahman B, then the writer Abdullah Hussein (“Cik Lah,” later our National Laureate), whose eventual departure to Kuala Lumpur visibly wounded my father, and finally my own uncle Ahmad Rejab, under whom the losses only deepened, despite the magazine still selling well on newsstands.
I was not living with him by then in any case — my first marriage, to Mariati Abdul Rahman, had displeased him, and pride kept us apart for a long stretch, though I kept in touch through Saloma. It was in that period, working steadily as a house musician, that I once had a small, telling proof of how far his protectiveness still reached: after a shoot for a film not his own, a “chief extra” shorted my pay by half, and when I mentioned it in the car, my father wordlessly turned the vehicle around, marched into the studio, and demanded the man hand over what he owed his son — “duit anak aku pun kau nak potong?” — on the spot.
Trouble found our own household too, in ways none of us expected. One quiet evening at Jalan Bunga Kantan, my sister Normah began acting strangely, packing a bag under the pretence of visiting a friend, and never came home. Not long after, Betty vanished the same way, and we discovered — to my father’s genuine fury — that Nonnah had run off to marry our own helper, abang Ngah, who left for his village the very next morning without a word. My father, deeply hurt, forbade us from chasing after her, insisting that if Ngah truly loved her he ought to have said so honestly from the start. I found Nonnah again myself, years later, destitute and unrecognisable at a fun-fair stop in Pahang, selling keropok to survive after Ngah had effectively abandoned her; it took a second chance meeting before she finally agreed to come home, on the sole condition that she live not with us but with Noorizan, who took her in despite her own initial fury. I never saw Betty again after that, and have always hoped, writing this now, that if she or Nonnah ever read these words, they will finally get in touch.
That is why, when the end eventually came, it came as two officers knocking on my hotel room door before dawn: “bapa Encik Nasir sudah tiada, meninggal dunia.” Then Saloma herself on the phone, calmer than I could manage, telling me he’d actually suffered a heart attack and asking me to meet her at the hospital. I found him on a bare stone slab in the mortuary, and I refused, flatly, to let anyone perform a post-mortem on him, insurance money or not — “Go to hell with that bloody insurance,” I told the friend who pushed me on it, and Saloma herself had to calm me down. His last completed song, fittingly, was called “Air Mata di Kuala Lumpur” — Tears in Kuala Lumpur. He’d meant to build a whole film around it but only lived to finish the song itself. On the day we buried him, it actually rained lightly as his body was lowered into the ground at Jalan Ampang, while the whole country, it seemed, turned out to grieve — Malay and non-Malay alike, ministers and ordinary fans, old Singapore friends like Ahmad Daud and Kassim Masdor standing beside me at the graveside. Saloma herself seemed unable to fully accept it for weeks afterward, slipping and calling out “Daddy” out of pure habit, laughing off my gentle attempts to remind her he was gone.
What followed for us was hardship, plainly stated. My father left no fortune — no land, no grand house, only a two-room terrace house in Setapak that his friend Salleh Ghani had once nagged him into buying, some insurance money registered in Saloma’s name, and modest song royalties that were never the millions people later imagined. Saloma and I both fell on genuinely difficult times; I remember her handing me twenty ringgit from a bag holding only forty, telling me, “kita sama-sama kehilangan orang yang kita sayangi.” My wife and I sold nasi lemak and fruit by the roadside for a time, chased more than once by council officers for lack of a licence. The little house itself later became a quiet point of tension among my foster siblings, until a lawyer confirmed plainly that only P. Ramlee’s biological child had any legal claim to it — meaning me alone — a resolution my siblings accepted, however reluctantly, in a scene I’ve never stopped thinking felt exactly like something out of my father’s own Tiga Abdul.
Recognition, when it eventually came, came almost by accident. At a formal dinner years later, seated far from the VIP tables, the then Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, happened to stop by on his way past and ask, in his Kedah accent, what I did for a living; I told him, plainly, that I sold fruit and nasi lemak by the road, and that even that sometimes got me chased off by the council. Not long after, seemingly out of nowhere, I was summoned by the Minister of Culture, Dato’ Sheikh Fadzir, and given a post as Combo Coordinator at Istana Budaya — a debt of gratitude to both men I still carry to this day. My father’s own honours followed in time: the Darjah Kebesaran PSM and the title Tan Sri from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Azlan Shah, in 1990, and an honorary doctorate in performing arts from Universiti Malaya in 2005, which I received on his behalf alongside Cikgu Yusnor Ef, tears in my eyes, thinking simply, “kalau bapa aku masih hidup, alangkah gembiranya beliau.” Pos Malaysia, too, later made him its first artiste ever honoured on a postage stamp, a kindness I still credit largely to Tan Sri Ahmad Sarji, who has done more than almost anyone to document my father’s music and legacy properly, alongside my old teacher Yusnor Ef.
Not every tribute was handled with the same grace — I remember being seated, at one book launch about my father, at the very back of the hall near the toilets, not as a VIP but simply overlooked, and it stung more than I let on at the time. What I have always asked of anyone still writing his story is simple: consult me first, since I remain the only person left who can confirm, honestly, what was true and what was invented.
There is a great deal I still carry that never made it into any official record. My own birth mother, Junaidah, whom my father never let me see while he lived, I met again only after his death, in Jakarta — an awkward, tender, ultimately unsustainable reunion at her home on Martapura Road that lasted three days before I asked to come home, having simply never learned to feel her as a mother, though the embrace itself, blood answering blood, moved me more than I expected. There, too, I met a half-brother, Arfan, whose paternity had long been whispered about; Salleh Ghani later confirmed to me privately that Junaidah had already been visibly pregnant with him well before any of it could possibly have involved my father. She died still wishing she could visit my father’s birthplace in Penang and live near me; I quietly visited his grave with her more than once while she lived, without anyone ever knowing it was us.
I married three times in all, and each wife gave me children I know, without question, carry P. Ramlee’s blood in their veins, even if the world remembers only his films and forgets his family — Gurlina, Gumawan, and Gumarisaska with my first wife; Natasha and Najua with my second, Rashidah Jaffar; Zakariah Nasir and Zaidee Nasir with my third and current wife, Suria Bakar. At the birth of my first daughter, my father — despite once swearing at me in anger only days before — rushed to the hospital, paced like “cacing kepanasan,” and personally recited the call to prayer into his first grandchild’s ear before I could even hold her myself. “Bawa cucu aku balik ke rumah,” he told me, and I understood, watching him, that whatever else he was — jealous rival, dictator, absent artist, generous fool with money he never had — he was, in that moment and many others, simply a man overjoyed to be a grandfather, delighting, too, in smaller pleasures most people never knew about him: cutting our hair himself until we nearly cried, inviting a passing grass-cutter in to share his lunch without a shred of pride, and cooking on Sundays dishes with names so strange — “kari Bugis,” “lemak London” — that we learned to flee the house before he woke, only to be summoned back to praise food that was, frankly, never very good, and rewarded for our lie with even bigger helpings.
He is gone now, but not forgotten — not by the country that finally gave him its highest artistic honours, not by the scholars who have spent years documenting what he built, and certainly not by me, who still hears, sometimes, that same call echoing in my ear: “My boy! Come here, my boy.” All I ask of anyone still writing his story is the same thing I have always asked: come to me first, since I am the only one left who can tell you, honestly, what he was actually like as a father — not the legend on the poster, but the man who once made me read my own expulsion letter aloud, treaded gently around a jealous first wife and a disciplined second one, married a third out of genuine love, and who, in a hospital room near the very end of his own fading fortune, cried openly with joy over a grandchild he’d waited his whole life to meet.
May Allah bless his soul.
Saya tidak pernah berhasrat menulis ini. Sudah terlalu banyak yang ditulis tentang P. Ramlee oleh sahabat-sahabatnya, anak muridnya, dan peminat-peminatnya — sesetengahnya, saya rasa, seolah-olah lebih mengenali beliau berbanding saya sendiri. Kebanyakannya ditulis dengan niat baik, tetapi tidak semuanya tepat, dan bertahun-tahun saya membiarkan sahaja. Barulah setelah beberapa sahabat karib bapa terus-menerus mendesak, saya akhirnya bersetuju untuk menulis versi saya sendiri — bukan legenda yang dikenali orang ramai, tetapi versi seorang anak, dari hari saya mula memahami siapa bapa saya sehinggalah malam saya kehilangannya. Saya terhutang budi khususnya kepada Cikgu Yusnor Ef, bekas guru tuisyen saya dan satu-satunya anak murid bapa dalam bidang penulisan skrip, yang berbulan-bulan mengorek cerita ini daripada saya dan menyusunnya semula, serta kepada Datin Dura yang menggilap bahasanya sehingga sebegini.
Bapa saya bernama sebenar Ramlee bin Puteh. Dunia mengenalinya sebagai P. Ramlee. Nama saya sendiri, Nasir, bukanlah kebetulan — ia diambil daripada watak yang dilakoninya dalam Bakti, filem pertama yang memberinya watak hero, arahan Dato’ L. Krishnan, bersama S. Romai Noor dan Kasmah Booty. Menamakan anak-anak sempena filemnya kemudiannya menjadi semacam tabiat bapa — adik angkat saya Sazali dinamakan sempena Anakku Sazali, filem yang kelak memenangkan beliau Pelakon Lelaki Terbaik di Pesta Filem Asia Tenggara, dan seorang lagi, Sabaruddin, sempena filemnya sendiri, Sabaruddin Tukang Kasut.
Ibu saya, Junaidah binti Harris, pernah menjadi penari dan pelakon tambahan di Studio Jalan Ampas, anak kepada pelawak D. Harris yang pernah menjadi rakan lakonan bapa sebelum nama Ramlee melonjak naik — dia sendiri sudah pernah berkahwin dan bercerai sebelum itu, membawa seorang anak lelaki bernama Bacok yang bapanya sendiri saya tidak pernah tahu siapa. Mereka berkahwin dalam tahun lima puluhan di sebuah rumah di Boon Teck Road, di tengah-tengah komuniti studio — S. Roomai Noor, Siput Sarawak, Kasmah Booty semuanya tinggal berdekatan — dan di situlah, sebagai kanak-kanak kecil yang tidak mengenali sesiapa di sekelilingnya, saya menghabiskan tahun-tahun pertama hidup saya, mengumpul cerita-cerita itu kelak hanya daripada mereka yang pernah benar-benar menjaga saya semasa kecil.
Perkahwinan itu tidaklah aman. Populariti bapa yang semakin meningkat menarik orang ramai dan peminat ke mana sahaja kami pergi, dan ibu saya — sendiri hanya pelakon tambahan — mula cemburu melihat segala perhatian tertumpu kepadanya. Pergaduhan mereka kerap berlaku, dan sayalah selalunya yang terperangkap di tengah-tengahnya: apabila bergaduh, bapa akan keluar bersiar-siar seorang diri melepaskan geram, sementara ibu, tidak dapat melepaskan kemarahannya kepada bapa, akan mengurung dan memukul saya di dalam tandas sehingga bapa pulang membuka pintunya — selepas itu bapa akan menghantar saya sementara ke rumah pelawak Ahmad C. sebelum pulang menyambung pertengkaran. Saya masih ingat satu petang bapa pulang dari studio bersiul-siul riang, dan ibu terus menyindir, “Ah! ini tentu dah jumpa girlfriends!” Tiada jalan untuknya menang — riang atau sedih, ibu tetap membaca pengkhianatan pada kedua-duanya. Kassim Masdor pernah memberitahu saya, selepas kami berpindah ke sebuah banglo di Katong, ibu pernah menyuruhnya — ketika masih muda — mengekori bapa di tepi laut, semata-mata untuk melaporkan sama ada bapa berseorangan atau bersama wanita lain.
Daripada kecemburuan itulah, saya percaya, lahir salah sebuah lagu paling sedih ciptaan bapa, “Hujan Di Tengah Hari,” lirik oleh H.M. Rohaizad, dimuatkan dalam filem Perjodohan — lagu tentang seorang lelaki yang menyangka panas akan berkekalan hingga ke petang, rupanya hujan turun di tengah hari, namun tetap akan menerima kembali isterinya sekiranya dia sanggup berubah. Tidak lama kemudian, ibu bapa saya berpisah, dan kerana saya anak tunggal, timbul pergaduhan tentang hak penjagaan. Bapa, yang berpegang teguh kepada prinsipnya bahawa seorang anak lelaki mesti bersama bapanya, akhirnya menang. Ibu mengikut rombongan bangsawan menjelajah Tanah Melayu, dan kemudian pulang ke Jakarta kepada bapanya, manakala bapa saya, kini bujang semula, semakin popular — pengarah-pengarah India, kata orang, bertelagah untuk mengambilnya berlakon, kerana namanya sahaja sudah menjamin pungutan box office.
Ketika itu bapa sudah pun terpikat dengan seorang gadis Arab bernama Hamidah, yang saya sendiri tidak pernah temui dan hanya kenal melalui cerita orang lain. Apabila ibu pulang beberapa bulan kemudian untuk menuntut saya, dengan alasan seorang anak lelaki adalah hak ibu kandungnya, bapa panik, dan dengan bantuan sahabatnya Salleh Kamil serta abang tirinya Sheikh Ali yang segera dipanggil dari Pulau Pinang, saya hampir-hampir “diculik” begitu sahaja daripada ibu. Hampir gagal — ibu rupanya sudah mendapat tahu dan telah pun menunggu di Stesen Keretapi Tanjung Pagar sebelum kami sampai. Saya disembunyikan di ruang bagasi, hampir menyentuh bumbung keretapi, sementara ibu mencari-cari saya di dalam keretapi itu sehinggalah wisel bertolak berbunyi. Dari saat itulah saya terpisah daripadanya. Saya tinggal seketika di Pulau Pinang bersama nenek, Cik Mah, dan Pakcik Sheikh Ali, turun ke Singapura hampir setiap bulan menemui bapa, sehinggalah kegagalan saya dalam peperiksaan di sana menghantar saya pulang ke Singapura buat selama-lamanya — dan kembali ke dunia bapa saya, dunia yang ketika itu turut ada isteri kedua bapa, Noorizan, bekas kerabat diraja Perak. Pada usia enam tahun, barulah saya benar-benar faham apa ertinya menjadi anak tunggal P. Ramlee, dan buat pertama kalinya berasa bertuah kerananya.
Namun saya tidak terlepas sepenuhnya daripada ibu. Pada suatu petang bapa pulang dari studio dengan wajah kosong, lalu memberitahu nenek di hadapan kami semua, “Jun berada di studio bersama seorang peguam untuk mengambil Nasir.” Bapa sendiri yang memandu saya ke Jalan Ampas hari itu, mengajar saya di dalam kereta — “Kalau orang tu tanya, Nasir nak ikut Jun atau bapa, Nasir nak jawab apa?” — sebelum meninggalkan saya di sebuah kedai kopi berhadapan studio, tempat ibu sudah pun menunggu, menangis, memberitahu bahawa dialah ibu kandung saya dan amat merinduinya. Seorang peguam India berdiri di sisinya. Saya memberi jawapan yang sama kepada kedua-duanya — saya tidak mahu ikut ibu. Mereka gagal mengubah pendirian saya. Saya masuk ke dalam studio seorang diri mencari bapa, dan sejak hari itu ibu tidak pernah lagi datang menuntut saya.
Noorizan menguruskan rumah kami di Yarrow Garden, Siglap, seperti sebuah istana kecil: kerja rumah, jam malam, peraturan untuk segala-galanya — menyusun meja makan, menyiram bunga, membersihkan najis kucing, menggosok tembaga sehingga berkilat, membasuh sendiri lima pasang baju sekolah walaupun kami mempunyai orang gaji — disiplin yang begitu ketat sehingga kadang-kadang saya membencinya, walaupun kelak saya faham ia caranya menjaga martabat bapa sebagai seorang seniman besar, meskipun bapa sendiri sering merasa terkongkong olehnya, dihantar dan diambil dari studio setiap hari oleh pemandu Wak Kimin yang tidak memberinya banyak ruang untuk berlengah. Hari minggu menjadi kelegaan kami — satu-satunya hari kami dibenarkan mengadu tentang Noorizan kepada bapa, yang hanya akan tersenyum, “Senyum ada makna tu cik,” sambil berbisik kepada Noorizan pula, “You boleh pukul, asalkan jangan berbekas sudah.” Di rumah itu jugalah saya mengenali watak-watak yang berulang dalam zaman kanak-kanak saya — Mr Singh, pelakon Benggali yang mengurut bapa setiap minggu dan selalu membawa buah tangan; Kassim Masdor, yang mengajar saya sedikit sebanyak nota muzik; tukang jahit Mr Kwong, yang memaparkan gambar bapa di kedainya dan mencetaknya di beg jahitan tanpa sebarang bayaran, kerana semua orang, Melayu atau tidak, meminati P. Ramlee — dan syarikat rokok Lucky Strike, yang hanya membayar dengan sekotak dua percuma untuk keistimewaan yang sama.
Perkahwinan itu juga akhirnya retak — bapa, saya percaya, mula rasa terkongkong oleh disiplin yang dahulunya menstabilkan hidupnya, dan khabar angin tentang kerapatannya dengan Saloma semasa rakaman tidak membantu keadaan. Apabila Noorizan akhirnya melafazkan kata-kata yang seolah-olah dinanti-nantikan bapa — “Ceraikanlah I” — bapa melepaskannya tanpa sebarang bantahan, malah berkata, separuh bergurau, bahawa dahulu dia terpaksa menyembahnya sebagai kerabat diraja, dan kini akan menyembahnya lagi selepas perceraian. Dia menepati kata-kata itu dengan cara yang paling luar biasa — selepas bercerai pun, dia memberikan Noorizan watak sebagai seorang permaisuri dalam filem terakhir arahannya, Laksamana Do Re Mi — mungkin pertemuan terakhir mereka berdua.
Ketika inilah Saloma mula datang sendiri menemui saya, dengan sebuah kereta sport di hadapan pagar rumah kami, membawa saya bersiar-siar melepasi lapangan terbang Paya Lebar dan sepanjang pantai Changi, bertanya sepanjang perjalanan bagaimana rasanya hidup tanpa ibu tiri, memuji-muji bapa tanpa henti. Saya sudah dapat mengagak apa yang sedang berlaku — “Makcik ni ada udang di sebalik batu,” fikir saya — tetapi saya ketawa dan mengiakan sahaja. Malam itu saya ceritakan segala-galanya kepada bapa, dan dia hanya bertanya, “Kau suka makcik tu?” Saya berdiam diri, dan berdoa bersungguh-sungguh agar dia tidak berkahwin dengannya — bukan kerana benci, tetapi kerana takut satu lagi pergolakan, satu lagi ibu tiri, satu lagi kekecewaan buat seorang lelaki yang saya sayangi dan saya risaukan. Dia berkahwin jua dengannya, secara senyap, di rumah Musalmah, digelar “Onggek” — yang sebenarnya penasihat tidak rasmi bapa dan banyak berperanan memujuknya berpindah ke Kuala Lumpur kelak — dengan gambar-gambar perkahwinan itu dirahsiakan atas arahan tegas bapa sendiri. Saya merajuk lama selepas itu, pernah dihukum menulis seribu kali “I must love my auntie” dan pernah dirotan, sehinggalah pada suatu hari saya amat memerlukan lima puluh ringgit untuk yuran pengakap dan tiada tempat lain untuk mengadu selain pintu biliknya. Dia hanya berkata, “kalau Nasir tak sukakan mama, mama tak kisah — yang penting mama sukakan Nasir dan bapa Nasir,” lalu memberikan wang itu tanpa berlengah. Sejak hari itu saya memanggilnya Mama, dan bapa saya panggil Daddy, dan hidup di rumah baru kami, Cedar Avenue, terasa jauh lebih bebas berbanding di bawah pemerintahan Noorizan.
Bapa memang gemar mengambil anak angkat, hampir seperti kegemarannya kepada muzik — Normah, Betty, Sazali, kemudian Sabaruddin dan Zazaloma (anak makcik saya, digelar sendiri oleh bapa), dan melalui Saloma pula, Armali dan Dian. Dia begitu memanjakan Sazali sehingga saya sendiri mengaku cemburu — tiada seorang pun antara kami dibenarkan menjentiknya walau sedikit — manakala Saloma pula memanjakan Dian dengan cara yang sama, sehingga kedua-dua mereka sering bertelagah membela anak masing-masing. Bapa tidak pernah kelihatan terbeban dengan kasih sayangnya yang meluas itu; sebaliknya, itulah salah satu sifatnya yang paling murah hati. Dari segi undang-undang Islam, sayalah tetap anak kandungnya yang tunggal, dan ini penting — selepas kematiannya, hakikat bahawa adik-beradik angkat ini semua berbin namanya di atas kertas, tanpa berkongsi darahnya, mencetuskan sedikit ketegangan tentang harta yang sedikit sangat ditinggalkannya — sebuah rumah teres kecil, wang insurans atas nama Saloma, dan royalti yang tidak seberapa.
Di Cedar Avenue, setelah Saloma diterima sepenuhnya sebagai “Mama,” hidup kami jauh lebih bebas dan ceria berbanding sebelumnya. Bapa sendiri kelihatan lebih ringan, pulang lewat malam, lebih banyak ketawa, memenuhi rumah dengan kawan-kawan malah rombongan drama pentas yang berlatih di ruang tamu kami sendiri. Di sinilah beliau membawa masuk seorang guru bahasa Melayu muda, Cikgu Mat Nor — kelak terkenal sendiri sebagai penulis Yusnor Ef — asalnya sekadar seorang peminat yang berharap belajar penulisan skrip daripada bapa, menunggu berminggu-minggu sebelum akhirnya disedari. Dia menjadi seperti ahli keluarga sendiri: takut bukan kepalang dengan bapa, kurang berkesan sebagai penguat disiplin (tulisan Armali yang bersepah membuatnya kerap marah, walaupun Armali tidak pernah ambil hati), namun tetap sabar mengajar kami setiap petang sebelum bapa pulang. Pada satu malam Jumaat, seorang tetamu pelik bernama Mat Ceti — pelakon tambahan studio yang turut menjadi penggali kubur di tanah perkuburan Bidadari, sering muncul tiba-tiba di tingkap kami hanya untuk bertanya “Ramlee ada?” — menyebabkan pembantu kami Ramli Kecik menjerit histeria sehingga Cikgu Mat Nor lari ke tangga, dan guru itu terlalu takut untuk kembali hampir seminggu, sehinggalah bapa membacakan ayat-ayat suci ke dalam segelas air dan memanggil Pak Yusof B membantu menenangkan keadaan.
Itulah sebenarnya jawapan paling jujur yang boleh saya berikan kepada soalan yang masih ditanya orang sehingga kini: benarkah P. Ramlee seorang bomoh? Tidak. Dia hanya memiliki satu kelebihan kecil kurniaan Allah — kebolehan mengorek maklumat daripada saya ketika saya duduk terpukau, wajah dicuci, ibu jarinya menekan penghujung tulang tungging saya, membaca doa dengan mata terpejam sehingga saya hilang kesedaran seketika. Pernah digunakannya, separuh bergurau, untuk menguji keikhlasan Cikgu Mat Nor — “engkau ni betul-betul nak belajar ke atau suka-suka” — dan berpuas hati dengan apa sahaja yang saya jawab ketika itu. Selain itu, dan air penawar yang dibacakannya untuk kawan-kawan yang sakit tanpa sebarang bayaran atau pengkeras, tiada apa-apa lagi di sebalik khabar angin tentang ilmu ghaib yang tersebar selepas kematiannya — hanya Pak Yusof B, pencipta lagu, yang dikatakan turut memiliki kelebihan yang serupa.
Apabila bapa memutuskan kami akan berpindah ke Kuala Lumpur, sesuatu di dalam diri saya seolah-olah patah — Singapura satu-satunya tempat yang pernah saya kenali sebagai rumah, tempat saya dilahirkan. Cikgu Mat Nor sudah tahu lebih awal daripada saya, dan saya dapat membaca kesedihan di wajahnya berhari-hari sebelum kami diberitahu secara rasmi. Satu jamuan perpisahan diadakan untuk bapa sebelum kami bertolak, meriah dan sedikit nostalgik, dengan bapa mengusik murid kesayangannya kerana berjoget “macam kuda belang.” Pada pagi kami akhirnya bertolak dengan sebuah Dodge yang dipandu sendiri oleh bapa, Cikgu Mat Nor turut membantu mengemas bilik bapa, dan terjumpa di antara skrip-skrip lama yang bersepah sehelai “letterhead” bertulis “Perusahaan Filem P. Ramlee” — bukti satu impian, syarikat perfileman miliknya sendiri, yang tidak pernah kesampaian, kerana, seperti yang diceritakan bapa sendiri kepada sahabat-sahabat rapatnya menjelang akhir hayatnya, orang-orang di sekelilingnya di Kuala Lumpur sudah tidak lagi mahu mempercayai atau menghormatinya, malah ada, katanya terus terang, yang menikamnya dari belakang. Kami meninggalkan studio Jalan Ampas, studio yang membesarkan namanya, buat selama-lamanya petang itu — filem terakhir arahannya di sana ialah Tiga Abdul.
Di Kuala Lumpur, di Studio Merdeka, saya mula terpikat dengan muzik, bukan sekolah, ponteng kelas untuk berlatih bersama sebuah kumpulan tiga gitar, sehinggalah ponteng saya terbongkar dengan cara paling kejam: bapa, menjumpai surat buangan sekolah, menyuruh saya membacanya kuat-kuat sambil berlagak tenang — “Nah! Baca kuat-kuat, Daddy nak dengar” — sehingga saya memecahkan ketegangan itu dengan satu-satunya cara yang saya tahu, berpura-pura pengsan. Ia berkesan; kemarahannya serta-merta bertukar menjadi permintaan maaf dan segelas air Quran disapu ke muka saya, sementara Saloma memarahinya kerana memukul anak “macam pukul lembu.” Seminggu kemudian saya berterus-terang tidak mahu bersekolah lagi. Bapa bersetuju serta-merta — “O.K. fine, tapi you mesti ikut Daddy shooting” — separuh hukuman, separuh tawaran ikhlas, malah sempat berseloroh kepada Saloma bahawa satu mulut kurang di sekolah bermakna kurang perbelanjaannya sendiri.
Saya tidak pernah menyintai dunia perfileman seperti saya menyintai muzik, walaupun tahun-tahun di Studio Merdeka tetap mengajar saya selok-belok kerja itu secara tidak sengaja — effect, dubbing, editing. Seketika saya menjadi pemandu peribadi Saloma, mencuci kereta setiap pagi, sebelum berpindah-randah dari satu kugiran ke satu kugiran, setiap satu ditinggalkan sebaik hilang keseronokannya: The Beagles, gurauan nakal kepada nama The Beatles, dengan penyanyi Salamiah Hassan, mendapat banyak tempahan semata-mata kerana semua tahu siapa pemimpinnya; satu penglibatan bersama anak A.R. Tompel, Armali, yang berakhir dengan perselisihan cukup serius sehingga hampir memecahkan perkahwinan bapa sendiri, kerana Saloma membela anaknya dan bapa membela saya; kumpulan Pak Kojong, di mana saya hanya menerima RM30 sebulan berserta makan minum; dan akhirnya kumpulan bapa sendiri, “Ben Puteh Lima Merdu,” yang saya rasakan terlalu kuno untuk rambut sebahu dan cita rasa disko saya di kalangan pemuzik sebaya bapa — saya bertahan dua minggu sahaja sebelum menubuhkan kumpulan sendiri, “Ben Ramlee,” bermain bersebelahan bapa sendiri, lagu evergreen di sebelahnya, disko bising di sebelah saya, di sebuah kelab yang cuba menipu gaji kami sehingga bapa sendiri kembali mengugut pengurusnya, memaksa sekurang-kurangnya separuh bayaran dikeluarkan.
Namun satu perkenalan melalui bapa yang benar-benar mengubah keadaan — pemimpin kumpulan Ahmad Wan Yet, bekas rakan sekerja bapa di studio, sedang mencari seorang pemain bass untuk Hotel Merlin, dan bapa merekomenkan saya walaupun keraguan jelas pada wajah Wan Yet. Saya diuji petang itu juga dengan gitar sendiri, membaca nota muzik dengan mudah kerana latihan sebenar yang pernah saya terima, dan terus diterima bekerja. Pada tahun 1971, dengan gaji $1,500 sebulan dan bilik percuma disediakan, saya menjadi pemuzik tetap di sana — satu jumlah yang amat lumayan ketika itu — dan menghabiskan gaji pertama saya hampir sepenuhnya untuk orang lain: RM50 masing-masing kepada bapa dan Saloma, RM10 kepada setiap adik, RM20 kepada nenek. Bapa, saya diberitahu, tidak habis-habis bercerita tentangnya kepada semua kawan-kawan di studio.
Wang tetap sahaja mudah lesap daripada tangan saya seperti mana ia mudah datang. Suatu ketika, kerana inginkan sebuah gitar baru berharga RM4,800, saya meminta bapa meminjamkan tiga ribu ringgit, yang dijanjikannya dengan senang hati — hanya untuk memarahi saya keesokan harinya ketika saya datang mengambilnya, menyuruh saya mencari duit sendiri, kerana, seperti yang dijelaskan Saloma kemudian secara senyap, dia sememangnya sudah tiada wang untuk diberikan. Saya membalas dengan kata-kata yang masih saya sesali — “jangan buang masa Nasir sahaja” — dan meninggalkan rumah tanpa bertegur sapa dengannya untuk waktu yang lama. Beberapa bulan kemudian, seorang pelayan di Merlin memberitahu saya bapa datang makan bersama kawan-kawannya; tanpa berlengah saya menyuruh bawakan bil itu kepada saya. Saya masih terluka, masih berbangga diri, tetapi malam itu, melihatnya tanpa disedarinya menyaksikan anaknya sendiri bermain di pentas, saya rasa bangga bercampur malu dengan cara saya berkata-kata kepadanya.
Bapa dan Saloma juga berperang dengan cara mereka sendiri — berdiam sehingga hampir seminggu, masing-masing “besar kepala,” tidak sanggup bertegur dahulu, dan sayalah yang untung — diupah seringgit setiap kali salah seorang mereka menggunakan saya sebagai perantara menanyakan hal sekecil ke mana perginya sehelai baju. Tetapi di sebalik kelucuan itu, kadang-kadang saya kasihan melihatnya: seorang lelaki yang menghabiskan hidup membuat orang lain ketawa, sedangkan dia sendiri menangis senyap-senyap di rumahnya, satu kebenaran yang tergambar dalam lagunya sendiri, “Sedangkan Lidah Lagi Tergigit,” dan hanya pernah diluahkannya kepada saya sekali, lewat malam, ketika Saloma sedang bekerja menyanyi di sebuah kelab malam di Bangkok, apabila saya bertanya sama ada dia berasa sunyi tanpa Mama. “Terlalu sunyi,” katanya. Saya bertanya ke mana saya akan pergi sekiranya suatu hari dia sudah tiada. Dia tidak menjawab — hanya berjanji, entah bagaimana, dengan penuh kasih, bahawa dia akan hidup seribu tahun lagi, sebelum memendekkan perbualan itu dan mengajak saya makan mee goreng. Dia juga, dalam caranya sendiri, seorang guru yang berdisiplin — melatih vokal harmoni bersama saya dan Saloma sebelum setiap rakaman, dia di piano, saya di bass besar, menghukum kesilapan saya dengan ringan, mencuci kereta atau dikurung di bilik, walaupun yang paling saya takuti ialah disuruh memijak sepanjang badannya setiap kali dia pulang membawa masalah dari studio, kadang-kadang berjam-jam, sehinggalah dia tertidur atau saya berpura-pura menangis untuk dibenarkan berhenti.
Tahun-tahun di Studio Merdeka tidak selalu memihak kepadanya. Menjelang tahun 70-an, kegemilangan filem Melayu sendiri mula pudar, disaingi televisyen dan filem asing, dan bapa — dahulu wajah nombor satu Jalan Ampas — mula merasa dipinggirkan, namanya tidak lagi seberat dahulu. Usaha seperti PERFIMA dan kemudian Rumpun Melayu bersama H.M. Shah, kedua-duanya gagal, walaupun dia masih sempat mengarahkan filem seperti Dr Rushdi, Gelora, Putus Sudah Kasih Sayang, Jangan Tinggal Daku, dan akhirnya Laksamana Do Re Mi. Dia bermimpi menerbitkan filem sendiri secara bebas dan tidak menemui penaja sebenar — malah sahabat lama seperti Dato’ L. Krishnan, yang menawarkan ruang pejabatnya untuk digunakan sesuka hati, tidak dapat memulihkan apa yang telah hilang. Saloma kembali menyanyi di kelab malam untuk membantu menyara hidup, sementara bapa memikul beban itu dengan senyap, seperti kebiasaannya, tersenyum menjalankan kerja walaupun, menurut Saloma, tekanan itu menghancurkannya secara diam-diam. Pada waktu inilah jugalah sebuah majalah yang pernah dimilikinya, Gelanggang Filem, perlahan-lahan runtuh dilanda hutang di bawah beberapa pengurus — mula-mula Rahman B, kemudian penulis Abdullah Hussein (“Cik Lah,” kelak Sasterawan Negara kita), yang pemergiannya ke Kuala Lumpur nyata melukakan hati bapa, dan akhirnya pakcik saya sendiri, Ahmad Rejab, di bawah pengurusannya kerugian semakin mendalam walaupun majalah itu masih laris di pasaran.
Saya sendiri tidak lagi tinggal bersamanya ketika itu — perkahwinan pertama saya dengan Mariati Abdul Rahman tidak direstuinya, dan keegoan memisahkan kami untuk waktu yang lama, walaupun saya tetap bertanya khabar melaluinya Saloma. Dalam tempoh itu jugalah, sebagai pemuzik tetap, saya sempat menyaksikan satu bukti kecil tentang betapa jauhnya sifat melindungi bapa masih terjangkau — selepas satu “shooting” untuk filem bukan arahannya, seorang “chief extra” memotong separuh bayaran saya, dan apabila saya sebut sahaja dalam kereta, bapa tanpa berkata apa-apa terus membelok kereta kembali ke studio, memasuki pejabat, dan mendesak lelaki itu memulangkan wang anaknya — “duit anak aku pun kau nak potong?” — di situ juga.
Kesusahan turut singgah dalam rumah tangga kami sendiri, dengan cara yang tidak seorang pun jangkakan. Pada suatu petang tenang di Jalan Bunga Kantan, kakak saya Normah mula bertingkah pelik, mengemas beg dengan alasan hendak bermalam di rumah kawan, dan tidak pernah pulang lagi. Tidak lama kemudian, Betty turut menghilangkan diri dengan cara yang sama, dan kami mendapati — dengan kemarahan bapa yang sebenar — Nonnah rupanya melarikan diri untuk berkahwin dengan pembantu kami sendiri, abang Ngah, yang pulang ke kampungnya keesokan pagi tanpa sepatah kata. Bapa, terluka sungguh-sungguh, melarang kami memujuknya pulang, menegaskan jika Ngah benar-benar menyayangi Nonnah, sepatutnya dia berterus terang sejak awal. Saya sendiri terserempak dengan Nonnah bertahun-tahun kemudian, daif dan tidak dikenali di sebuah pesta ria di Pahang, menjual keropok untuk terus hidup setelah ditinggalkan begitu sahaja oleh Ngah; hanya selepas pertemuan kedua barulah dia bersetuju pulang, dengan satu syarat — tinggal bukan bersama kami, tetapi bersama Noorizan, yang akhirnya menerimanya walaupun mulanya amat marah. Saya tidak pernah lagi bertemu Betty sejak itu, dan sehingga hari ini masih berharap, sekiranya salah seorang daripada mereka terbaca tulisan ini, akan terus menghubungi saya.
Kerana itulah, apabila saat itu akhirnya tiba, ia datang dalam bentuk dua orang pegawai polis mengetuk pintu bilik hotel saya sebelum subuh: “bapa Encik Nasir sudah tiada, meninggal dunia.” Kemudian Saloma sendiri di telefon, lebih tenang daripada saya, memberitahu bahawa bapa sebenarnya diserang sakit jantung, dan menyuruh saya menemuinya di hospital. Saya menemui jasadnya terbujur di atas katil batu di bilik mayat, dan saya tegas menolak sesiapa pun membedah siasat jasadnya, wang insurans atau tidak — “Go to hell with that bloody insurance,” saya balas kepada seorang kawan bapa yang mendesak saya, sehingga Saloma sendiri terpaksa menenangkan saya. Lagu terakhirnya yang selesai dicipta, ironinya, berjudul “Air Mata di Kuala Lumpur.” Dia pernah berhasrat membuat sebuah filem penuh berdasarkan lagu itu, tetapi hanya sempat mencipta lagunya sahaja. Pada hari pengebumiannya, hujan renyai-renyai benar-benar turun sewaktu jasadnya diturunkan ke liang lahad di Jalan Ampang, sementara seluruh negara, seolah-olah, turut berkabung — Melayu dan bukan Melayu, menteri-menteri dan peminat biasa, sahabat lama dari Singapura seperti Ahmad Daud dan Kassim Masdor berdiri di sisi saya di tepi pusara. Saloma sendiri seolah-olah tidak dapat menerima hakikat itu selama berminggu-minggu, tersasul memanggil “Daddy” kerana kebiasaan, ketawa sahaja setiap kali saya cuba mengingatkannya dengan lembut bahawa bapa telah tiada.
Apa yang menyusul buat kami ialah kesusahan, secara terus terang. Bapa tidak meninggalkan sebarang harta — tiada tanah, tiada rumah besar, hanya sebuah rumah teres dua bilik di Setapak yang dahulunya dipujuk sahabatnya Salleh Ghani untuk dibeli, sedikit wang insurans atas nama Saloma, dan royalti lagu yang tidak pernah sampai berjuta seperti yang diheboh-hebohkan orang. Saloma dan saya sama-sama melalui saat-saat sukar; saya masih ingat dia memberikan saya dua puluh ringgit daripada begnya yang hanya berbaki empat puluh, sambil berkata, “kita sama-sama kehilangan orang yang kita sayangi.” Saya dan isteri terpaksa berniaga nasi lemak dan buah-buahan di tepi jalan untuk seketika, lebih daripada sekali dikejar pegawai majlis kerana tiada lesen. Rumah kecil itu sendiri kemudiannya menjadi punca sedikit ketegangan antara adik-beradik angkat saya, sehinggalah seorang peguam mengesahkan dengan jelas bahawa hanya anak kandung P. Ramlee yang berhak ke atasnya — bermakna saya seorang sahaja — satu penyelesaian yang akur diterima adik-beradik saya, walaupun dengan berat hati, dalam satu adegan yang sentiasa terasa seperti keluar terus daripada filem bapa sendiri, Tiga Abdul.
Pengiktirafan, apabila akhirnya tiba, datang hampir secara kebetulan. Pada satu majlis makan malam rasmi bertahun-tahun kemudian, duduk jauh daripada meja VIP, bekas Perdana Menteri ketika itu, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, singgah bertanya, dalam loghat Kedahnya, apa pekerjaan saya; saya jawab dengan jujur bahawa saya menjual buah-buahan dan nasi lemak di tepi jalan, dan itu pun kadang-kadang dikejar pihak berkuasa. Tidak lama selepas itu, entah bagaimana, saya dipanggil oleh Menteri Kebudayaan ketika itu, Dato’ Sheikh Fadzir, dan diberikan jawatan sebagai Penyelaras Kombo di Istana Budaya — satu jasa yang saya tanggung sehingga kini kepada kedua-dua tokoh ini. Penghormatan buat bapa sendiri menyusul kemudian — Darjah Kebesaran PSM dan gelaran Tan Sri daripada Seri Paduka Baginda Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Azlan Shah pada tahun 1990, dan ijazah kehormat Doktor Seni Persembahan daripada Universiti Malaya pada tahun 2005, yang saya terima bagi pihaknya bersama Cikgu Yusnor Ef, air mata berlinang, sambil berfikir, “kalau bapa aku masih hidup, alangkah gembiranya beliau.” Pos Malaysia turut kemudiannya menjadikannya seniman pertama diabadikan dalam bentuk setem, satu jasa yang saya kaitkan banyak dengan Tan Sri Ahmad Sarji, yang telah berbuat lebih daripada sesiapa untuk mendokumentasikan muzik dan warisan bapa dengan teliti, bersama guru lama saya Yusnor Ef.
Tidak semua penghormatan dikendalikan dengan penuh kepekaan — saya masih ingat, pada satu majlis pelancaran buku tentang bapa, saya ditempatkan di bahagian paling belakang dewan berhampiran tandas, bukan sebagai VIP tetapi sekadar diabaikan, dan ia melukakan hati saya lebih daripada yang saya tunjukkan ketika itu. Apa yang saya sentiasa minta daripada sesiapa yang masih menulis kisahnya ialah perkara yang sama: rujuklah saya dahulu, kerana sayalah satu-satunya yang masih tinggal untuk mengesahkan, secara jujur, apa yang benar dan apa yang direka-reka.
Ada banyak lagi yang saya simpan, yang tidak pernah tercatat dalam mana-mana rekod rasmi. Ibu kandung saya sendiri, Junaidah, yang tidak pernah dibenarkan bapa saya temui sepanjang hayatnya, saya temui semula hanya selepas kematiannya, di Jakarta — satu pertemuan yang janggal, penuh sentimen, namun akhirnya tidak dapat diteruskan, di rumahnya di Martapura Road, hanya bertahan tiga hari sebelum saya minta pulang, kerana saya tidak pernah belajar merasainya sebagai seorang ibu, walaupun pelukan itu sendiri, darah bertemu darah, menyentuh saya lebih daripada yang saya sangka. Di sanalah juga saya bertemu seorang adik lelaki tiri, Arfan, yang keturunannya lama menjadi bualan; Salleh Ghani kemudiannya mengesahkan kepada saya secara peribadi bahawa Junaidah sudah pun jelas mengandung jauh sebelum apa-apa yang mungkin melibatkan bapa saya. Ibu meninggal dunia masih berhajat untuk mengunjungi tempat kelahiran bapa di Pulau Pinang dan tinggal berdekatan saya; saya pernah beberapa kali diam-diam menziarahi pusara bapa bersamanya semasa hayatnya, tanpa sesiapa mengetahuinya.
Saya sendiri berkahwin tiga kali, dan setiap isteri mengurniakan saya anak-anak yang, tanpa syak, mewarisi darah P. Ramlee, walaupun dunia hanya mengingati filem-filemnya dan melupakan keluarganya — Gurlina, Gumawan, dan Gumarisaska bersama isteri pertama; Natasha dan Najua bersama isteri kedua, Rashidah Jaffar; Zakariah Nasir dan Zaidee Nasir bersama isteri ketiga dan yang masih bersama saya kini, Suria Bakar. Sewaktu kelahiran anak sulung saya, bapa — walaupun baru sahaja memarahi saya beberapa hari sebelumnya — segera ke hospital, berjalan mondar-mandir “macam cacing kepanasan,” dan sendiri mengazankan cucu pertamanya sebelum sempat saya dukung sendiri. “Bawa cucu aku balik ke rumah,” katanya, dan saya faham, melihatnya ketika itu, bahawa apa jua sifatnya yang lain — pesaing yang cemburu, diktator, seniman yang selalu tiada di rumah, seorang yang murah hati dengan wang yang selalunya tiada padanya — dia, pada saat itu dan banyak saat lain, hanyalah seorang lelaki yang benar-benar gembira menjadi seorang datuk, gembira juga dengan kesenangan-kesenangan kecil yang kebanyakan orang tidak tahu tentangnya: menggunting rambut kami sendiri sehingga kami hampir menangis, mempelawa seorang mamak pemotong rumput yang lalu masuk makan bersama tanpa sebarang rasa “gah,” dan memasak setiap hujung minggu masakan bernama pelik seperti “kari Bugis” dan “lemak London,” sehingga kami belajar untuk keluar rumah sebelum dia bangun — hanya untuk dipanggil balik memuji makanan yang, sejujurnya, tidak pernah sedap, dan diberi tambahan lebih banyak sebagai ganjaran atas bohong kami itu.
Beliau sudah tiada kini, tetapi tidak dilupakan — bukan oleh negara yang akhirnya menganugerahkan penghormatan seni tertingginya, bukan oleh para pengkaji yang bertahun-tahun mendokumentasikan apa yang dibinanya, dan sudah tentu bukan oleh saya, yang masih sekali-sekala terngiang-ngiang panggilan yang sama di telinga: “My boy! Come here, my boy.” Semua yang saya minta daripada sesiapa yang masih ingin menulis kisahnya sama seperti dahulu — datanglah kepada saya dahulu, kerana sayalah satu-satunya yang tinggal untuk memberitahu, secara jujur, siapa dia sebenarnya sebagai seorang bapa — bukan legenda di poster, tetapi lelaki yang pernah menyuruh saya membaca surat buangan sekolah saya sendiri dengan kuat, yang cuba berlembut dengan isteri pertama yang cemburu dan isteri kedua yang berdisiplin, yang berkahwin dengan isteri ketiga kerana cinta yang sebenar, dan yang, di sebuah bilik hospital menjelang hujung nasibnya yang semakin pudar, menangis terbuka dengan penuh kegembiraan atas seorang cucu yang ditunggunya sepanjang hayat.
Semoga Allah mencucuri rahmat ke atas rohnya.