Category: Life

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On Writing Everyday

The other day, a friend of mine asked, “Where you find the time to write/update your blog on a regular basis?? Kasi tips sikit!”

I was tickled by this question, because of course writing is writing – you just pick up your pen (or keyboard, choose your poison) and write away. 

But then, upon further reflection, I realised that my friend did have a point: after sporadic bursts of writing for more than a decade (and when I mean sporadic, the gap between my writings were usually numbered in months, even years!) I have finally gotten into a regular rhythm of writing. It may not necessarily be elegant or beautiful writing (though I do aim to write well, or at least, progress towards eventually writing better as I get more practice), but this morning I checked my Jetpack app, and it greeted me thus:

“You’re on a 46-day streak on Essays / Esei!”

Astounding, even to me, because this must surely be the most sustained period of public writing I have ever managed in my life. 

Of course, I have been writing almost daily in my journal for almost a decade now, but this bout of public writing is a recent phenomenon. I would say two things have spurred this recent turn.

The first is reading Montaigne’s Essays. (Yes, my current blog title is directly inspired by that legendary Frenchman.) Writing in a time of great religious and political upheaval, Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne retired from the turbulent politics of his day to take refuge in his castle and in his books, and began writing a series of essays that has not only enshrined him in the literary canon of the West, but has also inspired legions of similar writings across the centuries, including Francis Bacon and every other blogger today. Presaging the Renaissance, Montaigne made it an explicit aim to focus on himself as a subject of writing – glorying in his own joys and sorrows, his own rationalities and idiosyncrasies. He wrote about friendship and learning languages and parenthood and wisdom and literature and heroes and simple folk and fame and memory and marriage and death. He was certainly the world’s first true essayist, and reading Montaigne today, even in translation, would remind us of how modern his thinking was. Those of us grappling with issues of burnout and consumerism and the meaning of life, would find ourselves nodding vigorously, as I did, on reading Montaigne’s prognostications.

Reading Montaigne (the present continuous tense applies here – I am probably still only a quarter of the way through his voluminous writings) is inspiring to me. I have always wanted to write, and I have always known, since childhood, that I had it in me to write. Certainly not Shakespearean or Proustian levels of writing, but I have stories that I want to tell – like many of us. 

It just always baffled me, the art of writing: I would have moments (usually during holidays, when my mind suddenly has the space to roam, outside of the daily strictures of corporate life) when I would be inspired to write about something, or even struck by the idea of a grand writing project – a memoir, perhaps, or a novel in verse about Malaysian politics. As my own paltry output would testify, these were often mere angan Mat Jenin that would take root in my imagination, but die ignominious deaths, out of a lack of any real tangible action. 

The problem is that the blank page would always stare at me, almost taunting me: Kau siapa, nak tulis semua ni? Apa kau tau? My own insecurities and lack of courage would embarrass me into silence.

And this is where the second point of inspiration came along. One evening, several weeks ago, while glancing at the permanent pile of books hidden underneath our coffee table in the living room, I glanced at a copy of Carl Roger’s On Becoming A Person. I think I must have just finished a rather well-written book, because my common and ineluctable pattern is that right after reading a particularly satisfying book, I get into a restless and rather flailing mood. Gratified by the recent high of beautiful and profound writing, I would be casting around for another bout of the same intellectual and spiritual high. Often, after reading a very good book, I would be going through one book after the other, flitting through several pages, and eventually casting off one book for another, dissatisfied at not being presented with yet another magnificent read. (I know, it’s rather sad.) 

So it was in this mood that I discovered Carl Rogers, and sat down to read through his philosophy of client-centred therapy. His approach, apparently radical for his time, was almost laughably simple: he believed that the main task of the therapist is to provide a safe and non-judgmental space for the patient to fully express herself, to find within themselves the courage to try to live out their own unique individual self. Carl Rogers taught me, as he has certainly taught many others, that the path towards truly living is to have the courage to explore one’s own authenticity, and to embrace all sides of one’s self: the good, the bad, the sad, the happy, the glorious, the mean, even the most shameful parts of who we are. Being truly human is to accept our humanity, in all its ineffability.

I have written about Carl Rogers earlier, and I should not belabour the point. But what reading Carl Rogers did to me, was to encourage me – literally, to give me courage – to embrace who I am, and to decide: I want to make this journey towards better acceptance of who I am. And I want to use my writings as a means to explore this. 

And so I picked up my blog, which has been around since, oh maybe 2012, but had lain fallow through long periods of abandonment, and I promised myself: whatever and however my day would be like, I would make it a point to find time through the hours and days to make sure that I write enough to be able to publish something, every day. It would be wonderful if every day I could publish something profound and meaningful and elegant and beautiful – but if on some days, or many days, I don’t, that would be okay. I just need to write, and use that space to discover who I am, and this world that I live in. 

So that’s it. That’s the “tip”. I simply decided that of all the things in my life, this exercise in writing would take precedence, and be up there in my list of daily priorities, like taking a shower every morning, and praying five times a day (not always succeeding on this one, tapi bro cuba), and telling my wife everyday that I love her. And part of achieving this is also to let other, less important things, drop out of your life. I try to cut out TV and Netflix from my life. No more computer games – even Marvel Snap and Mini Metro get little time on my calendar now. I don’t go out much at night, except to have dinner with close friends and family, and even in that latter, it is mostly just spending time with my wife. I get into bed around 10, often even earlier. 

It’s nice to know that it’s been 46 continuous and unbroken days of trying to write more honestly, more openly. In the same way, I am trying to be more honest, more open with my own self. To accept my failures and disappointments, as much as I take comfort in my “achievements”, however grand or meek they may seem in the eyes of others. 

Some years ago, bereft in what was certainly depression, feeling disappointed at how my life had turned out, I took refuge in a series of books about palliative care and mortality. I remember reading the final pages of Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, tears streaming down my face at two in the morning. I came out of that particular period of reading with a determination, almost grim in its steely grip, of wanting to learn how to live well, so that I could die well. I wanted it so that when I finally come to the final moments of my life, I can look back at a life well lived. 

These writings are part of that project, and perhaps that also explains the tenacity of these past few weeks. To use the much-loved metaphor of a much-beloved mentor of mine, if this is my “Game of the Impossible”, then I want to play it well. I want to be present for every inning that each new day presents to me. 

And this is how I find time every day to write. 

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On Mat Som

One of the injustices of modern Malaysian culture is that so little regard and respect has been given to what I personally think is one of the top works of contemporary Malay literature: Lat’s singular graphic novel, Mat Som.

Perhaps it is because we associate Lat predominantly with saccharine cartoons on national unity, or nostalgic depictions of kampung life (both of which, of course, remain as indelible contributions from Lat to the Malaysian public discourse.) Maybe it is because we do not have any real tradition of the graphic novel as a legitimate and respectable vehicle for aesthetic expression and cultural commentary. The graphic novel, in the Malaysian mind, is too easily mistaken for its adolescent cousin, the comic book.

This is why there is hardly any discussion in the public space about the contributions of Mat Som to the narrative of modern Malay culture. Even amongst Lat’s abundant oeuvre, Mat Som is so often overlooked.

For more astute readers of Malay culture, Mat Som is an invaluable and singular artifact of a fracturing Malay polity, forced to undergo one of the most rapid and dizzying socioeconomic transformations of the modern age.

Within just a generation, thousands of poor young Malays were taken out of their villages, and handed the keys to education that would unlock opportunities beyond their wildest dreams. Many were sent overseas to learn the secrets of modern science and technology, and told to come back to serve the nation. Most of these young Malaysia came home with burning ambition, but were also deeply confused: they were told that to study overseas, and to go to the cities and get a corporate job and to enrich themselves beyond their parents’ imagination, was a noble vocation – but as they sought to find their place in their new urban settings, they were also told that many of the habits they had taken to be emblematic of what it meant to be “modern”, were shameful and to be castigated. The very modernity that they were told to seek, was labelled as “budaya kuning”, worthy only of disdain and censure.

In Mat Som, Lat would dramatise the rapid social change of the late 20th century amongst the Malays, but from a more rooted perspective: that of the young Malay from the kampung who makes his way to the city to earn a living with words. The young journalist finds himself attracted and entranced by the whirling pace and the glittering lights of the city, but is repulsed by the crass commercialism and the capitalistic striving of the rising Malay middle class. Lat, in Mat Som, romanticises the poet, the working journalist, the common Mat on the street.

Mat Som puts into stark focus the cultural confusion of the Malays of that generation, forced to choose between traditional values and the modern world that threatens to unmoor the Malay from familiar ground. If Umno’s Revolusi Mental and Mahathir’s Malay Dilemma were loudly exhorting the Malays to change their mindsets and embrace modernity, to discard old-fashioned values that were seen to be holding back the community, then Lat’s Mat Som was a cri de coeur for the common Malay man – that the way to traverse the rapid currents of social upheaval was to hold fast to the wisdom of old.

To be fair, Mat Som was not a blind rejection of modernity – Yam could be at ease in a baju kurung, or wear a pair of jeans if she wanted to. But the ideal Malay, in Lat’s telling, was someone who was not merely throwing the baby out with the bath water, when it came to the values that would anchor and centre the Malay. One could be modern, and still be Malay, without merely aping the West.

Lat’s genius, of course, was to wrap all this cultural commentary within a simple and heartwarming story of a young man trying to find his way, and his heart, in a city that can often appear heartless and cruel. Bridging that gap between modernity and tradition is still an ongoing dilemma for the young Malay today, and Mat Som reminds us that there is a path through the thicket of confusion, if we only remain clear-eyed about who we are and where we came from.

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On Tarawih

I was well into high school before I had known that it was a thing to be praying 20 rakaat for Tarawih prayers during Ramadan.

For most of my childhood years, I was living with my mother in my grandfather’s family home. It was a sprawling bungalow complex at the edge of the city centre, just several minutes’ walk away from Taman Tasik Titiwangsa. For Umi and me, we were living in Kuang and Sri Petaling, before moving back into Titiwangsa after Umi’s divorce. Six of my grandfather’s children lived within this complex, most of them well into their thirties.

For Tarawih, Atok would be leading all of us in prayer: his wife, his six children and their spouses, and a flock of granchildren who numbered in the teens while I was growing up. It would be eight rakaat of Tarawih, three of Witir, then we would adjourn for the evening. Some would turn to the TV, some would be having some snacks while chatting.

We were a universe unto our own.

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On the Dark Side of Malaysia Boleh

All Malaysians of a certain age will remember the boisterous confidence of the 1990s. The stock market was booming, the economy was the darling of investors, and everyone was making money. Politically, Malaysia had come through a rough patch at the end of the 1980s, and everyone was eager to look forward, beyond the traumatic events of Ops Lallang and the deregistration and rebirth of Umno and the fiercely-contested general elections of 1990 that saw Kelantan fall back into the stewardship of PAS. Many were still disgruntled, or fiercely opposed to the iron fist of Mahathirian authoritarianism, but the rise of Anwar at that time gave hope that there was a more liberal future in store for Malaysia. Understandably, some Malaysians looked at the political upheavals of the late 1980s and decided “that’s enough for me, I’m off“, leaving the country for different shores. But for those left behind, the 1990s had a balming effect of soothing the wounds of the body politic with the elixir of rising wealth and prosperity.

One of the slogans (and there were many, during the Mahathir era) that truly captured that moment in time was “Malaysia Boleh“. A pithy and confident assertion of can-do positiveness – our very own version of the American Dream. After the trauma of 1969 and the political battles of the 1970s and 1980s, Malaysians were finally ready to step into the sunshine of economic prosperity. The fall of the Berlin Wall gave rise to a unipolar world, in which the US presided over a new age of globalisation, as the tendrils of capitalism extended outwards into the frontiers of the the Third World, and Malaysia was standing ready to welcome intrepid investors into the brave new world of emerging markets.

Never one to miss a grand opportunity, Mahathir parlayed his utter political dominance into a flourish of edifice-building and infrastructure investments. The North-South Highway had whetted his appetite – and likely enriched his party’s coffers as well! – and he took Malaysia into a new era of infrastructure investments: KLIA. The new stadia and new hotels and new train systems for the Commonwealth Games. The Petronas Twin Towers. And for the coup de grace, Malaysia was to unveil a whole new capital city, built from scratch with petrodollars out of the marshes and oil palm plantations of Prang Besar.

Much ink has been split, of course, over the eventual economic boom-and-bust of the 1990s. There was definitely irrational exuberance, and the collapse of many of the premier conglomerates of that age were textbook cases of corporate overreach. “Malaysia Boleh” became licence for frantioc dealmaking, and everything was being fueled by cheap credit and a stonkingly-bullish stock market. There was already blowback even then: “Malaysia Boleh” came to be viewed with bitterness and cynicism by a number of Malaysians who saw their country’s transformation into “Bolehland“, where anything goes, as long as one had the wealth, or power (ideally, both) to push one’s way through the red lines of regulations and morality.

But there was also another, darker psychological side of “Malaysia Boleh“: the race for performative “achievements” became a favourite mode of expression, especially for those eager to curry favour with those in power. The longest Malaysian flag. The longest satay barbecue. Biggest cake. Biggest ketupat. Swimming over the English Channel (as if there weren’t already hundreds, if not thousands, of others who had already done the same.) Climbing Everest.

Not to dismiss some of these deeds – I cannot ever imagine climbing Everest, or even having the desire to, really. But too many of these “achievements” were clearly low-ball efforts at garnering attention. And it laid bare the contradictions at the heart of the “Malaysia Boleh” project – we wanted attention and recognition from the world, but often unwilling to do the hard things that would be truly meritorious. Biggest flag, tallest flag pole – boleh. Eradicating politik wang, weaning the economy off cheap foreign labour, paying Malaysians fair wages for the work that they do – these ones tak boleh.

And this frustration strikes at the core of today’s Malaysia Madani project: what are we doing now that is so different, now that we have a man who was probably unjustly imprisoned and shut out of power for more than two decades, now at the helm of the government? Two decades of calling for Reformasi. What is so different now? Why are we still playing the same old games of state propaganda – the slogans and the logos and the theme songs? Why are we still treating appointments to state agencies and government-linked companies as ghanimah? And why is it that for the truly hard and necessary measures that we need to enact, to bring out the potential for our great nation, the answer is still “tak boleh”?

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On Pushkin’s Onegin

Inspired by Harold Bloom, I have been trying to read more poetry in recent years, and hence have been dabbling with Whitman, Dickinson and Bishop amongst others.

Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, of course, is one of the classics of Russian literature. I’ve read most of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, but have never read Pushkin until recently.

One of the most impressive things about the translation by Stanley Mitchell that I have just recently read is that the translator has apparently kept to Pushkin’s rhyme and metre, this itself having been inspired by Byron’s Childe Harold.

The story itself isn’t all too complicated – a story of spurned love and a broken-down friendship, all of it enveloped in a narrative of ennui and disenchantment. Eugene Onegin is a dandy who spurns the dandy’s life, retreating to his recently-inherited estate, where he falls into friendship with Vladimir Lensky, a young poet and romantic who lives in a neighbouring estate. Lensky is engaged to Olga Larina, a spirited and merry young girl, whose elder sister Tatiana – more melancholic and ruminative – inevitably falls for Onegin. Her love is spurned by Onegin, with tragic results for all four protagonists.

With any translation, but especially of poetry, one must rely on the translator to give a sense of the power and subtlety of the original text. I can’t read Russian to save my life, but the English translation itself is so masterfully done, that it makes me wish I could read this text in its original incarnation. The translator/poet subtly captures the rollercoaster emotions of youthful love, and does not spare his protagonists in his clear-eyed view of how we humans often bring about our own disappointments and disenchantments, through our own impatience and arrogance.

Kat often points out that when I really enjoy reading a book, I would be incessantly updating her on what I’ve been reading. Unfortunately for this ride, I was fairly silent. I enjoyed the read, undoubtedly, but I think that after the high of James Agee’s A Death In The Family, most other texts were always going to fall short.

Overall, this was a 4-star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read. Recommended for poetry lovers, and those who enjoy Russian literature.

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On What I am Reading Right Now, Part I

I am currently reading a few books in parallel (beware, there may be spoilers ahead):

  1. Robert Caro’s Power Broker – this is one of those books that I have been reading for some time – years, in fact! – but got shelved as I got distracted by other books. Also, the size and heft of the book means that I often only read this in the evenings and on the weekends. Right now the book is heading into an interesting turn in Robert Moses’ life, as his benefactor Al Smith leaves the Governor’s Mansion in Albany, and FDR – whom Moses had pissed off many times over – takes over. I am keen to see how he managed to parlay the powers he had already gathered through the State Park Commission, to become the powerhouse of New York City that he eventually becomes.
  2. Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin – I am reading this Byronic verse-novel in fits and starts. The English translation is really enjoyable, and apparently well captures the metre and rhyme of Pushkin’s work. Tatiana, having mourned Onegin’s retreat from her life, is now settling into society life in Moscow. I was not expecting the duel, or Lensky getting shot and killed, and I am expecting only further tragedy ahead.
  3. Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I – another one of those books that I am picking up again, in keeping with my vow not to buy any new books this year, and to go through my current stash of books lying in wait at home. His prose style is erudite and mannered, and his current exposition of early Christianity in Rome leads me to think that he is not all that enamored with institutionalised religion. This is, of course, a classic work of history that I have always wanted to read, especially since it famously inspired Asimov’s Foundation series, which is one of my all-time sci-fi favourites.
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On Things I Like and Dislike, Part I

(With apologies to Susan Sontag)

Thing I like: Jah. Paperback books. Umi. Taking the train. Lego. Chicken. Qur’an. Legal pads. Satay. Manchester United. Carl Rogers. Friendly cats. James Taylor. Karaoke. Corner office. Proust. Gibbon. Chapati. Chocolate in all its forms – ice-cream, cakes, biscuits, you name it. Oxford. Watching movies in the cinema. Simon & Garfunkel. James Agee. iPhone. Ebiet G Ade. Ramadan. Leather belts. Whitney Houston. Chicken rice. Star Trek. Making lists. Usman Awang. FDR. Blackstreet. Batik. The Edge newspaper. Karl Popper. Roti canai. Yura Yunita. Ayam bawang at Mahbub restaurant in Bangsar. Whitman. Cambridge. Cocoa butter. Art museums. Instagram. M Nasir. Double junior scoop of Jamoca Almond Fudge and Peanut Butter & Chocolate ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. Sourdough. Deng Xiaoping. The smell of grass after a rainy day. Bali.

Things I dislike: Cockroaches. Samsung Galaxy phones. Heights. Durians. Religious bureaucracies. Wearing a wristwatch. Liars. The smell of tobacco. Ostentation. Irresponsible fathers. Crowds. Cats that try to bite you. Deserts. Boastfulness. Arguments on Twitter. Asking questions to strangers. Traffic jams. Monopolies. Bullies. Wearing suit and tie. Racism. Duku. Cowardice. The concept of a hereditary monarchy. Tantrums. Dan Brown. Netanyahu. Insects. Sleeping alone. Shopping malls. Airport transits. Entitled brats. Hot weather. LinkedIn. The smell of beer. Inequality. iPhone keyboards. Anakin Skywalker. People playing their phones out loud, especially in public transport. Touch n Go. Performative religiosity. Suicide. Alcoholics. Tom Cruise. Blowing my nose. Najib Razak. Lizards. Golf. Sloganeering. AirAsia. Bicester. Syed Saddiq.

Things I like: Salmon. Warren Buffett. Judika. John F Kennedy. Sushi. Johnny Cash. Khairy Jamaluddin. De Maupassant. Kahlil Gibran. Harold Bloom. Hannah Yeoh. Tuna. Star Wars. Rain falling down at night. Chairil Anwar. Tulus. Barack Obama. Value investing. Watching football games. Potato in all its forms – fried, baked, mashed, you name it. Robert Caro. Dante. Apple Pay. Coke Zero. Lydia Davis. George Clooney. Arugula. Cormac McCarthy. Dinosaurs. London. The Beatles. Reliable Japanese cars. Couple friends. Forrest Gump. Five Guys burgers. The Mandalorian. Dewa 19. Chilli sauce. Post-It notes. Subway maps. Spirited Away. Olivia Newton-John. Linen. George Michael. Ovid. Venice. Boyz II Men. Hand sanitizer. Jean-Luc Picard. Studying. Public parks. Violins. Classic Transformers cartoons. Bach. Darth Vader. Singapore. Rawls.

Things I dislike: Pickles in burgers. Colonialism. Standing in trains. Servility. Jennifer Lopez. Anwar Ibrahim. Motorcyclists weaving through traffic. Fascism. Hitler. Laziness. The Monkees. Outriders and VIP convoys forcing everyone else on the road to make way. Cheesecakes. Living beyond one’s means. Military dictators. James T. Kirk. John Grisham. Expensive flashy cars. Donald Trump. Misogyny. Sewers. That sleepy feeling you get after over-eating. Muggings. Ingratiation. Public toilets. Lim Guan Eng. Plastic surgery. Narcissism. Sweat. Aubergines. Cultural appropriation. Paying taxes. Getting a parking ticket. Israel. Gambling. Discarded cigarette butts. Vanity car plate numbers. Street food in Singapore. Gyms. Inherited wealth. Mao Tse Tung. Chess. Passing the buck. George R R Martin. Content-free Friday sermons. Militancy.

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On the Books I Would Write if I Had All The Time in the World, Part I

A random assortment of the titles of books I would write if I was independently wealthy enough to just spend all my days writing books:

1. The Trip: From Kuala Lumpur to Oxford in the Summer of 2018

2. UMNO: A Biography of Malaysia’s Grand Old Party

3. Kanun Sastera Melayu: Menelusuri Khazanah Persuratan Bangsa dari Tun Seri Lanang ke Usman Awang

4. Sakau: How Najib Razak Destroyed Tun Razak’s Legacy

5. The Tattered Hibiscus: Poems on and about Malaysia

6. Reformasi, 1998-2022: Suatu Penilaian

7. Tan Sri Asri Muda: Sebuah Biografi Politik dan Peribadi

8. The New Economic Policy: Achievements and Failures in Malaysia’s Bumiputera Policy

9. How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Other People and Pay Attention to the Prospect of My Own Impending Death

10. Essays: A Decade of Writing, 2023-2033

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On Keeping Your Head Down (or, the Hang Nadim Problem)

In my first few months of boarding school, a well-meaning dorm mate of mine pulled me aside and explained, “You got to keep your head down. Don’t be so proud. I see when we were taking our class photos, you were putting your head up, looking too proud. Don’t.”

Naturally, I bristled at this.

It took me a while – being a boy from KL who suddenly found himself in a boarding school with 600 other boys and girls, most of them being Malay kids from kampungs across Melaka and Muar – to realise that I was entering a different world, with a different moral code at play.

Jangan tunjuk pandai.

Jangan eksyen.

Jangan pasang butang baju yang paling atas, nampak sangat macam geek.

Jangan baik sangat dengan budak puteri, nanti ada orang ingat kau try nak kacau awek diorang.

Over my six years in boarding school, I got used to the rules of the game. It didn’t always make sense to me – why is it a problem that I can speak English fluently, and why should I take pains to hide that fact? And at the start of my time there, I chafed against these rules that seemed to be arbitrary and mindless.

But in boarding school, where you are pretty much left to your own devices, potentially defenceless against boys much bigger and stronger than you, you learn very quickly to fit in and play along.

If there was an overarching principle in all those years in boarding school, it was to keep your head down. Malay culture certainly puts a premium on being humble and grounded, but in the hothouse of a boarding school environment, the imperative can almost seem like a necessity for survival.

All these lessons from my youth were heavy on my mind during the last general elections, when Khairy Jamaluddin went all out, in the face of heavy anti-UMNO sentiment in his Sungai Buloh constituency, to declare that he wanted to be Prime Minister someday.

Uh-oh, I thought. That’s a no-no.

In Sejarah Melayu, the tale of Hang Nadim is a cautionary one – don’t make yourself appear too clever, such that you end up appearing to be a threat to others. Yes, I suppose Malays have a problem with hasad dengki, but isn’t this basic human nature at work? Even for the best of us, we have a responsibility to maintain our viability, to avoid getting “assassinated” for posing a threat to others.

Maybe Malays will always have this Hang Nadim problem. We can complain about it – or we can accept that to survive and thrive in any human community, some amount of keeping one’s head down is necessary – if only to keep one’s head when everyone else is losing theirs!

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On Malaysian Foreign Policy in the Age of US-China Decoupling (or, ZOPFAN21)

I am old enough to remember when Malaysia’s foreign policy was already quite clear and bedded in. Yes, we started out as a reliable partner for the West, given our heritage as a British colony. (In fact, we were so hard up for Western approval and protection that we even patterned our national flag after the Star Spangled Banner!) But as the Cold War wore on, we gradually edged towards a more neutral position, marked by our active membership in the Non Aligned Movement (NAM), our active participation in South-South initiatives, and most importantly, our core role as a founding and active member of ASEAN. The latter adopted, on the urging of our very own Tun Razak, a stance of studied neutrality, in accordance with the concept of ASEAN as a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality.

Each ASEAN member, of course, had their own independent leaning, one way or the other between the US and the USSR, but by and large when the stakes were at their highest, we banded together as small-ish nations to insist on a path forward for global affairs that would work, in our own small way, towards averting the nuclear Armageddon of full-on superpower rivalry.

Many years later, after the economic and geopolitical boon of a unipolar world had led to a rapid rise in prosperity for many countries, including Malaysia and its ASEAN neighbours, we are entering a new world of geopolitical rivalry. Thucydides had warned us that this day would come, and now it is here. The ban on advanced semiconductor technologies, the ongoing spat on the status of Taiwan, the threat to ban TikTok – these are all opening salvoes of what must surely be the dominant geopolitical rivalry of the 21st century.

Malaysia has so far been careful to balance itself off the two polar opposites. Pak Lah and Najib were temperamentally inclined to hedge closer to the Americans, but the incendiary scandal that was 1MDB had inevitably led Najib to turn to China to cover up his billion-dollar hole, to no avail.

Mahathir’s second tilt at the premiership was a strange throwback to the 1980s – his close courting of Japan was merely another instance of the maestro happily replaying his greatest hits of the late 20th century.

Muhyiddin and Ismail operated in a world of geopolitical stalemate as the world grappled with a global pandemic, but as we begin to emerge out of that health emergency, and the US marches even more determinedly in the path towards confrontation with China after Trump’s wilful realignment of US foreign policy, we will find ourselves pressed to make choices.

Anwar, of course, has a history of being pro-West. But the world has changed radically from his previous stint in government. Will he, too, like Mahathir, fall prey to the nostalgia of rehashing past glories?

My sense is that Anwar has an opportunity here to place Malaysian foreign policy firmly in the non-aligned camp. To treat with both the US and China as fairly and as equitably as possible, accept gifts as they are offered, but be firmly determined to chart out a more independent path. Perhaps not always equidistant between the two, but certainly never getting too close as to fall inescapably into one orbit or the other.

There are a few structural as well as coincidental challenges here. On one hand, our geographic and cultural proximity to China will always exert a geopolitical pull that may prove very difficult to resist (although resist we certainly must.) On the other, surely it must be more than coincidence that not only is Anwar himself an avowed Americophile, but his Foreign Minister holds a PhD from Temple University. There will be personal and philosophical ties that may well tilt this government towards the West.

As mentioned earlier, we have already survived one geopolitical contest by treading a neutral and independent path. Surviving this one, in this century, may necessarily require us to do the same. We have an opportunity here to lead ASEAN, yet again, in troubled times. A ZOPFAN21 could be Anwar’s greatest legacy for Malaysia, as it charts a trajectory forward in a brave new and dangerous world.