One day, a friend called me up, told me to wear the baju kurung and selendang to work the next day, because after Maghrib, we were going to visit a holy man. She had had a bit of a haunting recently, and it was affecting her marriage. While I digested the fact that she, a quantity surveyor and her husband, an accountant, actually believed in mumbo-jumbo, she turned up at my office and kidnapped me for the night. The holy man's home was just an hour away.

It became more apparent to me, as we headed towards nowhere, that we were not going to meet a Datuk Harun Din type in a Darul Syifa setting. We were heading towards secondary forests and dirt roads. The fact that the trip had exceeded more than an hour made me nervous.

"Who are we visiting?" I asked my friend.

"Uncle Din."

"And who is Uncle Din?"

Uncle Din was renowned as one of the top bomohs in Malaysia. He was supposed be over a hundred years old and had had 14 wives. He was an expert in Malay, Siamese, Indonesian, and Orang Asli witchcraft. He took on clients when and if he felt like it. His client roster was the surrounding villages at the bottom of the hill, the odd celebrity, one who came in a few days ago to remove her 'bad luck' moles and implant a pelaris, and a few Ministers. Sometimes he was paid, sometimes he wasn't. What mattered was whether he wanted to help.