What makes her special are the things she does for love, virtues that spark a hundred different emotions.

Her life is a riveting study of family bonds, love, sacrifice, gratitude and kindness.

At just over five feet tall, Kamala is a force of a woman, and the sparkle in her eyes, and sweet smile, matches her vivacity of the 36,525 days she has lived.

Her spine straightened with pride as she spoke about celebrating her big day with the Yang di-Pertuan Agong on his official birthday today, and of her century of existence.

Kamala wished the King “goodness, success and peace” from her Ampang home in Kuala Lumpur, as she was flooded with birthday greetings from friends and family members in Malaysia and abroad.

She said she made it to this grand old age through God’s grace and mercy, family love, and a happy frame of mind.

“I’m in good health, my hands are stable, my eyes serve me well, I eat everything, and I have a love for travel,” said the affable Kamala.

Her flawless complexion is largely due to her applying pure saffron powder mixed with water on her face since 1936.

“We were all created by God to love life, and we should enjoy each day as it comes,” she said. “Let love be with us so we can laugh, forgive and enjoy living.”

Kamala, who embodies the lovable grandmother figure many wanted as children, with the benefit of astute views that comes with a time well-lived, is among a reported almost 44,000 Malaysians who are 100 years old and above.

Her entire being revolved around her affection for children, as a mother of 11, grandmother of 21, great-grandmother of 21 and, as foster parent to some, including media luminary PC Shivadas when he was 12 years old.

Kamala and her postmaster husband GA Das looked after Shivadas for a year in Tampin in 1953 after his parents returned to India.

“Destiny makes things happen and I thank the Lord that Aunty Das and family have become an indelible part of my life,” said Shivadas.

Long-time family friend Fauzi Omar said the large and fortunate Das clan, “blessed with abundant charisma and boundless promise” always radiated togetherness.

“Aunty Das puts everyone at ease with a simple smile, and touches hearts with the smallest of gestures,” said Fauzi, once an influential sportswriter.

Kamala’s eldest son, George, said he was glad that his mother’s enduring humanity has had a positive effect on those who came into contact with her.

Speaking on behalf of his siblings, George, another prominent sportswriter from the 1970s to the 1990s, said: “Our mum is our shepherd, and when we look into her eyes, we see the purest love.

“We are a mosaic of different shapes, sizes and characters. She has moulded us through life with lots of love and planted the seed on how to be a good human being,” he said.

Beginning of 100 years of Kamala Das

Kamala was born in 1923 as the fourth of seven children in Tapah, Perak, 13 years after her husband, both in the same month.

When they got married in Singapore in 1938, Das, then working at the Gemas postal department was 29 years old and Kamala was a 15-year-old schoolgirl.

Kamala is still tickled by how a “tall and handsome gentleman” first walked up to a “shy girl” in the kitchen of her elder sister Pushpum’s house in Seremban, and tried to strike up a conversation with her.

As she had not been formally introduced to Das, she refused to answer his questions. He returned the next day and invited Kamala to a movie, but that didn’t work either.

“It was a meeting of the souls after he had visited my house every day thereafter, and even though I did not know anything about marriage, I was happy I was going to marry him,” she said.

Kamala spoke lovingly of her husband, who was to her what she has always been for everyone: her rock, her constant, her guide in times of need.

Das was 10 years old when he lost his mother, and went to live with his brothers at a time when the British did not allow the locals to wear any form of footwear, even to school.

Kamala recalled when the Japanese declared war on British Malaya, Das moved his family, as did many other families, to a kampung on the outskirts of Gemas town as it was safer in the jungle.

She said one day when Das was about to set off on his 3.2 km walk to the town to work, their eldest child Evelyn, aged about two, pleaded: “Daddy, today don’t go. Today, got planes.”

Das kissed Evelyn and went to work. Hardly an hour later, the Japanese began their aerial attack of Gemas town, and he got hit by machine gun fire while fleeing the post office.

Kamala said she was 18 then and agonised over her husband’s fate, turning to prayers and to Our Lady.

After six months, Das returned home and related his terrifying experience of being shot in the leg and being taken to a hospital in Singapore.

Evelyn remembers one of her mother’s comments: “I have to be strong for all of you”, when Das died from a heart attack at the age of 62 in 1972.

And that Kamala, the homemaker did, being there for each of her children, not allowing the weight of responsibility to crush her irrepressible spirit. She was 49, and had to raise her children, with six of them still in school.

‘Queen of 11 Hearts’, ‘A 100 Smiles’

The two books written about Kamala are relentlessly sunny and tells of the things she does for love, and intertwining stories of the gift of a good and godly Christian family.

“Queen of 11 Hearts” weaves tales of alluring relationships between Kamala and her 11 children, and takes in the ravages of the Japanese invasion when Kamala witnessed horrific acts, and helped in harbouring British soldiers escaping the invaders.

“A 100 Smiles” paints her as an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness, and as an old family friend and famous former sports journalist, Lazarus Rokk put it, “a warehouse of love.”

Rokk said the closer Kamala became to people, “the kinder, more connected, more tangible and infinitely relatable she came to be, gentle and always smiling.”