Kampung Boy shares childhood tales in New York

By FOO YEE PING

NEW YORK: The Kampung Boy is now in the big city of New York, enthralling Americans with stories about his childhood in Ipoh where he grew up listening to Bob Dylan and watching westerns by John Wayne. 

Lat, Malaysia’s top cartoonist, also reminisced about the two songbooks he had when he was a teenager, where he would scramble to jot down lyrics of songs while they were played on the radio. 

“But I got the lyrics all wrong,” he quipped during a talk on Monday to a small group of cartoonists at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. 

Peer pointers: Lat explaining parts of his ‘Kampung Boy’ series to a group of cartoonists at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York on Monday.

He thought Elvis Presley’s Devil in Disguise was “Devil in the Sky”. 

When Cliff Richard sang about “caress your waiting fingertips” (in It’s All In The Game), he wrote it down as “crush your wedding fingers”. 

The songbooks have gone missing through the years.  

“I hope somebody will feel guilty someday and come to my house and return them to me,” he said. 

Lat, or Datuk Mohd Nor Khalid, 56, said he found the 1970s rather dull compared to the 60s. “Thank God for Jaws and Saturday Night Fever.”  

His Town Boy has just been launched here, the second in the Kampung Boy series which began selling last year at US$16.95 (RM57.63). 

During question time, someone described his Kampung Boy series as nostalgic and asked if he had focused just on the positive aspects about his friendship with the non-Malays. 

Lat stressed that the beauty of his friendship with them was indeed true. He spoke of how he ribbed his Chinese friend for not mentioning about having a sister. 

“As a Malay boy, I had lots of questions for the Chinese girl,” he said.  

As a teenager, Lat often wanted to impress the opposite sex. 

When he was asked about Internet usage among Malaysians, Lat used his wife as a barometer. 

“My wife uses the Internet, so I think everybody uses it. She was reluctant at first but she changed her mind when she saw me ordering things from eBay. Within days, the orders would arrive at our home,” he said.