The Legend of Batik

When I was ten, my art teacher told me about a legend: A formidable warrior, the admiral of Sultan Mahmud Shah, fought for Johor-Riau during the Portuguese occupation of Melaka (modern-day Malacca). His name was Hang Nadim. Admiring his bravery, Sultan Mahmud had given him a task: sail to India to retrieve 140 pieces of sarasah-cloth decorated with 40 types of the most decadent and intricate flowers and return them to him unharmed. Though the journey to India was possible, the search for the cloth was not. Determined not to return empty-handed, Hang Nadim made his own.

Along the coast of India, he stood with spare pieces of copper and hammered it into a tool with a small reservoir and spout. In this reservoir lay hot, melted wax. With a light hand, Hang Nadim tilted the tool forward until wax spilt from the thin spout and struck a plain cotton stretch. Then, he would begin to draw. With the tool as his pencil, and the wax as his lead, the warrior drew patterns of flowers he remembered from home. When the wax became too thick, he waited until it cooled in the reservoir, and when it flowed too thin, and the lines began to break, he heated it again on his fire. By the end, when the wax cooled and hardened on the cotton, he dunk it into a tub of dye. The colours would seep through where wax had not touched, leaving the flower pattern a stark white in comparison. This is what he brought back. This is what he called batik.

I did not understand the importance of being taught what batik was until I watched it be replaced

Though the legend may differ from regions across Southeast Asia, this was the one I was offered when I refused to touch the hot wax in primary school art class. They no longer teach batik in the school I was at. Instead, they draw an apple atop a table, marked on their accuracy rather than creativity. And though this is a critical skill in art, I must admit, it is not apples that I see families wearing during Ramadan or hanging down the walls of traditional kampung homes. I did not understand the importance of being taught what batik was until I watched it be replaced.

In this garage, she taught me that there is no ‘one way’ to batik

In Malaysia, there is this woman whose house is hidden by rambutan trees. It is a three-story building with handmade batik hanging from every wall. On the bottom floor, where the pavement meets untamed grass, a garage holds plastic tubs of dye and stoves of hot wax. She had no car, as living as an artist is not always forgiving, so instead, she uses the money to buy different batik stamp patterns, meters of silk and cotton, and cantings of all sizes. In this garage, she taught me that there is no ‘one way’ to batik. When the wax dried on the cotton, you could crack it, let the dye seep in, to create a glitch effect. Or, you could tie elastic bands around the fabric, twist and tighten it, and use different colours to create a tie-dye effect. Often, we used paintbrushes to paint between the wax lines rather than emerging it into a tub of dye to have a more control.

Even after her instruction, the flowers I drew and the colours I chose didn’t look right. It did not look like the real batik that I saw my mother wear when she went to work. The lady told me to go to the fabric shop. She said I would find my confidence there.

My grandma brought me to the fabric shop. As the shop assistant unfurled the best-selling roll of fabric, I first noticed that it looked… flat. The lines of wax looked almost pixelated, the lines hazy and blurry. The colours did not have the same richness as one freshly painted, and there were no specks of dye where the artist would have lifted their brush to re-dip. I asked about the artist who made it. The shop assistant told me it was made digitally. Most in the shop was. It was easier for them, this way.

These are my testimonies that the art of handmade batik continues quietly

I thought about the woman who taught me in her garage. I remembered my primary school teacher who went to the length of storytelling to encourage her students. Then I saw the prints. The shop assistant tried to steer us away from the handmade batik, instead promoting the digitally printed fabrics and the soft, pastel florals they imported from Liberty in London. Yes, the Liberty prints were beautiful. They always were. But their flowers were inspired by romantic English gardens under the summer’s sun, pastel and muted. It was not the bold colours that painted our national flag, or the tropical flowers that grew under the gates of my home.

I refuse to mourn the hand-made touch of batik. The simple act of writing this article does its part in reviving the memory of handcrafted materials. There are artists, small and hidden as they are, incorporating batik techniques into their contemporary artwork. There are also teachers. Dotted across South-East Asia, teaching in their garages between rainforest trees, marketing themselves through flyers and posters on streetlamps. These are my testimonies that the art of handmade batik continues quietly. I can only hope that there are many others who carry their own.