Mat Jenin
Once upon a time, in a village nestled among the swaying coconut palms and emerald rice paddies of old Malaysia, there lived an orphaned youth named Mat Jenin. His dwelling was but a crumbling pondok—a humble wooden hut left to him by his departed parents—with walls that leaned like weary travelers and a roof that wept tears of rain during the monsoon season.
Yet Mat Jenin cared not a whit for the state of his inheritance, for he was cursed with the most grievous of ailments: an excess of dreams and a poverty of industry. While honest folk rose with the cock’s crow to tend their sawah rice fields or cast their nets into the village streams, Mat Jenin would lie abed, spinning castles of air and kingdoms of fancy.
The villagers spoke of him thus: “Behold Mat Jenin, who feeds upon dreams and grows fat on imaginings!” When hunger gnawed at his belly, he would wander to the kedai makan—the village eating house—and sit like a patient heron, waiting for some charitable soul to take pity and purchase his meal.
Those who sought entertainment would call out, “Ho, Mat Jenin! What grand visions dance in your head today?” And Mat Jenin, as eager as a child with sweets, would spin his tales until the water buffalo returned to their pens, the chickens to their roosts, and the oil lamps flickered to life in the gathering dusk.
Even when the wind spirits howled through the night, shaking his poor pondok like a leaf in a storm, Mat Jenin would merely pull his kain selimut closer and dream: “Should my house fall, surely my neighbors will build me a palace in its place!”
When no benefactor appeared to feed him, Mat Jenin would seek work—but only the work that pleased him. He would not toil in the rice fields under the scorching sun, nor fish the rivers that made him seasick. Only one labor suited his nature: climbing the tall coconut palms, for there he found shade and cooling breezes.
Now it came to pass that on one particular day, fortune frowned upon Mat Jenin. No generous soul appeared to buy his meal, and no villager required coconuts to be harvested. As he wandered the village paths, his stomach crying out like a lost child, he spied an elderly nenek gazing up at a coconut tree, her weathered hands shading her eyes.
“Grandmother,” called Mat Jenin, “do you wish for coconuts? I can climb and fetch them for you.”
The old woman turned, her face creased like ancient bark. “Indeed, child, I seek coconuts for my cooking. Can you help this old woman?”
“Certainly, Grandmother. But what can you offer in return for my service?”
The nenek smiled, revealing gums bare as a baby bird’s beak. “I have little to give, child. But if you will climb for me, you may share my meal, and I shall give you some hen’s eggs besides.”
“What use are eggs to me?” Mat Jenin asked, though his mind had already begun to wander.
“These eggs, if you warm them with care, will hatch into chickens. Then you may raise a flock of your own.”
Mat Jenin’s eyes gleamed like stars reflected in still water. “Very well, Grandmother. I shall climb your tree.”
As he began his ascent, hand over hand up the rough trunk, Mat Jenin’s mind soared higher than his body. “When these eggs hatch,” he mused aloud, “I shall have fine chickens running about my pondok. When they grow fat and full, I shall feast like a sultan!”
“Grandmother!” he called down, “When the eggs hatch, I may eat the chickens, yes?”
“Yes, child,” the old woman replied, her eyes twinkling with mischief.
Higher climbed Mat Jenin, and higher soared his dreams. “But if I let the chickens lay more eggs, I shall have an entire flock! Yet too many chickens are trouble to tend. Better to trade them for goats—yes, goats that can graze around my house without care!”
“Grandmother!” he shouted down, “I can trade chickens for goats, can I not?”
“Indeed, child!” came the distant reply, barely audible now.
Up and up climbed Mat Jenin, his fantasies growing grander with each foot of height. “Goats I shall trade for cattle! Cattle for water buffalo! And with great herds, I shall hire others to tend them while I rest in comfort!”
“Grandmother!” he cried to the tiny figure below, “When I am rich with many buffalo, I shall marry a princess—the Sultan’s own daughter!”
The old woman’s answer was lost in the wind, but Mat Jenin heard only what his heart desired. His smile grew wide as the crescent moon. “Ah, yes! My princess bride will bear me many children who will run and play about our palace. But she will surely demand golden jewelry and silken kain, always wanting more, more, more!”
His face darkened like a storm cloud. “But I shall be firm with her! When she makes her foolish demands, I shall slap her thus—”
And with these words, Mat Jenin released his grip to strike at the coconut fronds, crying out, “Do not pester me for baubles, woman!”
But his angry gesture startled a squirrel that had been sleeping in the palm leaves. The little creature leaped away with a chittering cry, and Mat Jenin, shocked from his reverie, lost his hold upon the tree.
Down, down he tumbled, like a ripe coconut shaken loose by the monsoon winds, and struck the earth with a sound like thunder.
The old nenek rushed to his aid, but alas—Mat Jenin’s dreams had carried him too high, and his fall had been too great. There beneath the coconut palm, the dreamer’s journey ended, a victim of his own soaring imaginings.
And so the villagers learned this lesson: that he who builds castles in the air may find himself with no solid ground beneath his feet. They would tell the tale of Mat Jenin for generations hence, as a warning to those who would rather dream of riches than work for their daily rice.
Thus ends the tale of Mat Jenin, who climbed too high on the ladder of his own fancies.