UJANG - THE REAL BUDAK MINANG
It is hard to believe that 20 years had passed. We finally had the chance to pick the brains of this genius as dinner stretched well to more than three hours in two venues.
If you had follow the Aku Budak Minang, Aca series in the late 80s, a lot of the characters had passed on. Atuk, Ujang’s Father, his Kak Ngah had all passed away. I felt that it was only yesterday that I discovered Ujang’s works. The fact that it was more than 20 years ago but is still fresh in my mind shows how powerful the storylines were.
However, what surprised us most when I asked him about his beloved mentally challenged brother, Aca:
Poncho : So how’s Aca?. How old is he now?
Ujang : (looks at me calmly)..Oh, Aca dah meninggal…..dia meninggal dua raya lepas. Motor dia kena langgar dari belakang dengan Lori Tangki.
But what was more heartbreaking was this:
Aca, who at that time expecting his first child (yes, he had married!) was in coma for twelve days in GHKL before passing. When the first person came to his aid in the accident, he managed to tell the good Samaritan to tell his family to name his child ‘Nasrullah’ before falling unconscious.
And so, his son who was born a week after his demise was named ‘Nasrullah’ by his widow. And the name means ‘pertolongan dari Allah’ (help from God).
It is true that a true artist lives for his art. He would have no interest in making big bucks nor is the lure of ‘selling out’. As what Ujang told us that night ‘Betul ke kartun aku ni ada effect yang mendalam? Aku cuma nak melukis je. Aku tak tau pun kartun-kartun aku ni ada message’.
After leaving Creative Enterprise to join another publishing company, the world was at his feet.
However, all that did not last.
It’s the typical Malaysia Corporate ‘Kena Kapur’ story. He ventured in a publication business with a partner in the early 90s to launch a Comic under his name. The sales of this comic went up the roof with more than 300,000 copies sold a month. Being a simple man that he is, he signed a agreement without reading it (although the draft was read by him and he assumed that the final copy was similar – but it wasn’t). After some aggressive coup by the other partners, he decided to bail out and that was when his troubles started.
He only realized that he had signed off all his rights of his cartoons when he was served an injunction for publishing his new cartoons.
As a result, he has been served injunction after injunction (up to eigthteen at the last count) to stop him from ever publishing his caricatures in print. Tired of all the legal wrangle, he had come to point of giving up drawing but I guess that once a cartoonist, always a cartoonist. We told him what happened for the past twenty years in his life warrants a new cartoon series and he is musing over it. To him age is definitely not just a number and how many people truly lived their lives at the age of 41?
Ujang, married with four kids now runs a boathouse in Tasik Kenyir and spends most of his time doing one of things that he loves most – fishing. Besides that, he also mans his stall doing live sketches for theme parties, private functions and trade show and he can be contacted at:
Ujang
U7, Ground Floor, Central Market
Oh, and Grand Brilliance Production is going to produce a movie based on his novel “Jibam”. So things are starting to look up again.
While going separate ways after dinner, we asked him if he had seen the movie “Cinderella Man”. He replied negatively. So we told him to watch it.
We know that not many people get a second chance in life. But he is definitely our Cinderella man.
Words of the Ponchoman
posted by Maine at 1:08 PM
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