Rare People of MalaysiaFor a second you thought this is an Indian household---pictures of Hindu Gods and Indian names outside a kampung house. Until you meet the owner... His features are a mixture of the people of Malaysia - Malay, Indian and Chinese. In fact, he might look more like a Malay. He wears dhoti and kain pelekat. He greets you in Malay. Ah...he is a typical Chitty or Straits-born Indian. Significance of Chitty Chitty comes from a Tamil word "Chettiar" or money-lender. However Chittys will be quick to tell you not to confuse them with the money-lenders for they are actually descendents of Indian traders who came during the Malacca Sultanate era. Eventually these Indian settlers married Malay, Chinese, Javanese and Batak women and lost touch with their original homes in India. They adopted Malay as their first language with lots of Tamil loan words, naturally. This language came to be called Chitty Malay. Malay language has rooted deeply into Chitty culture that most of them cannot speak Tamil fluently. According to the Encyclopedia of Malaysia, there are fewer than 500 speakers.
If you make it to the small Chitty Museum of Malacca, you are standing at the gateway of traditional Chitty settlement in Kampung Tujuh also known as Kampung Chitty. The castes here are: Pandaram, Pillay, Neiker, Raja, Pathair, Chitty and Padaichi. That is to say, these are the surnames for the Chitty folks. During festive seasons, Chittys who have to earn their living elsewhere congregate in Kampung Chitty. As devoted Hindus, the Chittys celebrate all three days of ponggol, the harvest festival in January, and Deepavali on a grand scale. The Chittys built temples that are of simpler design compared to conventional Dravidian Pallava style, that displays beautifully carved out sculptures of the Hindu gods in many rows. In the Chitty temple, there is only one row of these, or a picture of one single god in each of the three rows.
Like the Chinese people of Malaysia, ancestor worship is important to the Chittys. On the day of Bhogi Parachu, they make offerings to ask for blessings of their forefathers. They also visit each other on this day and serve a type of nasi lemak with salted eggs embedded in the centre along with raddish, banana-leaf style.
Chitty Kebaya As a woman, Wan is naturally interested to compare the kebayas of Nyonyas and Chitty womenfolk. The basic difference is the Nyonya's complexity versus the Chitty's simplicity. Chitty women wears the kebaya panjang or kebaya pendek made of opaque material, with subtle embroidery or none at all. They also use jewelry as the Nyonyas. Some of them sling a handkerchief over their shoulders. There is one adornment which definitely differentiates the Chittys from the Nyonyas, a colourful marking on the forehead for Hindu women. Will They Hang On? A reference article describes the Chittys as " fairly shy and retiring "people of Malaysia. So shy that we can't get much of their documented 600 year history in Malacca. As the younger generations are progressively assimilated into modern Malaysian society, how much longer will Chitty Malay exist?
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