The Bridge at Berendam

Its the cause!

Its curious how a seemingly innocuous event from years ago can suddenly turn up in the oddest places. It comes like a light of vision … faint … almost appealing for dismissal … like the early morning mist on the river at Berendam. Its a place here in Malacca … close to the state's reservoir. I was Operations Manager for what seemed at that time like … the most beautiful woman in the world. And she had got a contract to build a bridge across the river Berendam.

The river is a small tributary that flows from the Bukit Beruang ( bear hill ) range before joining up with the main Malacca river. It then flows to the straits of Malacca … considered one of the narrowest channels in international shipping … between Peninsular Malaysia and the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.

The company had never built a bridge before. But that's the way she ran the company. The way she had brought the company up as a property developer in Malacca was based on sheer logic and thinking things through. Prior to that she was purchasing clerk at another property developer and figured it wasn't too hard. She built her company with housing projects in the vast jungles of Pahang … where the government program for settlers in new schemes for the cultivation of rubber, palm oil and cocoa was a thriving success.

However a bridge was another matter. The blueprint had called for concrete reinforced beams to be positioned across the river at the defined point and thereafter to lay over with concrete. Simple. However before the project was completed we had checked out quotations on a Sikorsky helicopter for rent, contacted a civil consultant in Kuala Lumpur who had set up here from the Baltic, poured over the blueprints together and spent many hours by the side of the river contemplating on the most cost-effective methods for doing the job.

Okay … so I had mentioned about the Sikorsky in passing … and from my vast repertoire of knowledge … had pointed to people with good bridge expertise from the Southern Urals. But how on earth did she swallow up everything and in all earnestness had told me she wanted quotes on a Sikorsky and to contact the Russian embassy for technology on bridge building? It was as I recall … simply business … and the mists on the river in the early morning sun was a sight to behold … especially after we had breakfast together on the way there.

It eventually became dream like … as the project dragged on for a month without doing anything on the site. I realized then that she actually had a great posture and her skin would sparkle in the misty golden light beside the river. Her teeth … like vertical pearls on a shelf … would block the light from my eyes as she stressed on a point she was making. She designed all her own blouses and had the tailor sew it up … but for slacks … her preference for the thigh hugging catsuit cottons that came in jungle colors … was extraordinary.

She had paused one time in the office … amidst the other 6 or 7 projects we had going … to ask why the bridge was on an asinine delay with nothing to show for. It was a question about our own efficacy … normally precise and get-the-job-done-mentality … but on this occasion was sailing on the sheer breath of the spoken word … as it tumbled from our mouths … and promised more in the way of achievement … even to conquer the world … if we could just come to unite in such a cause … across the conspicuous institution of our own marriages … social norms … self respect and the dignity of the human condition.

I figure we took a moment to think about that … and then decided it wasn't going to happen. When we snapped out of it we rented a crane, hoisted the beams across the river and poured the concrete on top. It took a few weeks. About two years ago I had passed the bridge on my way to touring the district in a little get-to-know-your-environment-thing. The trees by the road had grown and I didn't get to see the bridge that day … but I figured it had to be there … straight and reinforced … over a meandering river tributary that begins near the house where I live today. Time flies … coincidences speak.