“Sixty-four years on
this earth, and suddenly, now…
This, this T.K.O.”
On Sliding Doors
When I was younger, I used to think that Success (whatever that might mean) was a matter of working hard. I felt that I had the brains to go far, and I thought that I was already cultivating a good and kind personality, and that all I needed to do, to achieve “Success”, was to work hard. Of course, now that I am in my 40s, I recognise more than ever that much of what we attribute to ourselves, by way of Intelligence or Kindness or Hard Work, or any other so-called driver of “Success”, pale into the background when we truly reflect on how much of Life can consist of random things that happen to us.
One of the iconic metaphors for this, in our modern age, comes from that 1998 movie Sliding Doors, in which the chance occurrence of making it through the sliding doors of a London Tube train, or otherwise, might lead to very different circumstances in one’s life. There is a whiff of quantum mechanics here: the uncertainty of random occurrences leading to multiple, wildly-different outcomes.
Understandably, however, many of us moderns would prefer to not think about how random life is. We all like to think that our “Success” is due to our own hard work and effort, that we “deserve” the perks and perquisites that we now enjoy.
Paulo Coelho, for one, has made a tonne of money out of his popular book, The Alchemist, which assures the reader that his or her “Treasure” is waiting for each and every one of us, and that the entire universe (no less!) is constantly conspiring to make sure we achieve what we set our hearts to.
Rhonda Byrne is another writer who has probably made a tidy fortune for herself by assuring readers that positive thoughts and positive visualization will have a direct impact on the self – that there is a “Law of Attraction” that will guide us towards what we desire. We just need to “visualise” and “manifest” our desired outcomes: that promotion at work, that soulmate that we have been waiting to swipe right on, that first million dollars, that “unicorn” business idea.
All this assurance, of course, is catnip to the middle-class bourgeois populace that not only believes, but desperately wants to believe, that life is “fair”, that we just need to work hard and things will fall into place. It is too unnerving, even maddening, for most of us to believe that Life can be more random than we care to imagine.
But at this vantage point of my life – no longer young, but perhaps not yet too old! – I can look back at too many episodes in my life, to know that the “sliding doors” metaphor is real. Of course, hard work and effort remains important in life – I am not that naive to imagine that everything just falls into our laps based on some random dance card up in the sky – but I believe that there is a larger role for random occurrences in our lives than we would like to admit.
If my father hadn’t left us when I was four, would I have become a different person? Less melancholic, maybe more confident in his self-worth? What kind of person would have emerged if I had both parents through my childhood?
If I had done just slightly better in my UPSR exam (instead of the 3A and 1B that I eventually got), would Sekolah Alam Shah have thrown me out after four days of orientation? What kind of person would have emerged out of five years at Alam Shah, instead of the five years in Ayer Keroh that has now become an integral part of my youth?
If I hadn’t gotten that phone call from Adlan Benan Omar, would I have gotten into Cambridge? I hadn’t made the grades for my STEP papers, and Churchill College let me go – what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten pooled into Magdalene? My UCAS “insurance” was Southampton – what kind of person would have emerged out of three years on the south coast?
If I had married that girl that I was head over heels for, or if that other girl had become my wife instead, would I as happy as I am today? Would I have ended up a Petronas GM, with a double-storey house in Ampang, with three kids in tow? Or a brow-beaten husband, miserable and unhappy? Or perhaps, divorced and alone, living on my own?
If I hadn’t sat next to Omar Mustapha during that Promuda dinner, or hadn’t answered that newspaper ad for “Blue Skies” back in 2003, would I have ended up working for Pak Lah? Would I have gone on to do those years in Pemandu, if my sliding doors had led me to a different career trajectory?
So many different “sliding doors”, and there are probably millions more multiverses out there in which my life could have turned on a dime, and had come out totally different from how it has come through to today.
The expected modern take on “sliding doors” metaphor would likely be a sense of rejection. “My success is my success. I own my life”, one might say.
But I find, upon reflection on how my life has turned out, that more than anything, I feel suffused by a deep sense of Gratitude – that Life, for all its turbulent turns, has taken me into the maelstrom and has guided me to this place, here and now, where my life is Kind and Good. I have a roof over my head, a wife who loves me. I see my mother often, we talk about old times. My family is happy and healthy. I have a job that pays the bills and then some. I go on holidays.
“Which, then, of your Lord’s blessings do you deny?” – I think about this a lot, in these days. I look at myself in the mirror: greying hair, lines on my face. Yes, I have been disappointed, many many times in my life. But even with all those setbacks and failures, through all those sliding doors that I made my way through as well as the ones that closed shut before me: here I am, now, in this Life. It is Kind, and it is Good.
Tentang Paman Tua Yang Menyapu di Bahu Jalan
Sang paman tua itu tekun menyapu lantai jalan yang sarat dengan sampah dan deraian harapan Keringat membanjiri dahi sang paman tua melungsuri lembahgaris pada wajahnya yang terbanjir dengan lelah dan selautan kepasrahan Tapi paman tua itu tidak putushenti menyapu jalanbatu itu sedang mentari makin mendaki ke ubun hari.
Tentang Harimati
Akan kunyanyi tralalalala
di harimati mu nanti
memperagakan s’gala amarah
yang telah lama terkunci
Langit bergema falalalala
di harimati mu nanti
malaikat turut raya gumbira
bila kau terbujur sepi
Dengan setiap wahana dusta
penipuan yang bertubi
kau robek musnah perasaannya
kau siat separuh mati
Kini masanya tralalalala
pembalasan yang terindah
t’rimalah habuan yang tergendala
pengabadian tergundah!
On Neverness
I will always remember that evening, humid, balmy you were dressed in white crowned by fiery stars like the most graceful swan that swims serenely in a lake of her own joy. Meanwhile, I am just a speck of sand here amongst these people who love you. And as the crowd rises to its feet in celebration I shove my hands in my pockets and look away for just a brief moment lost in the neverness of us.
On Being Overly Friendly
He shakes her hand, but
does not let go - her smile falls,
her eyes flail wildly.
On Swimming Blind
I dip into the
murky pool - the night is dark
and I'm twice blinded.
On One Hundred Days
One hundred days ago, I started writing again – egged on by some unnameable djinn of my unsatisfied youth. I took pencil to paper (occasionally, but more frequently, digits to keyboard) and started writing again – rediscovering the undulating joys and sorrows of words, like an old sailor rowing his small dinghy past the crags and coastlines that he once knew well.
I say “rediscover”, because for a brief period in my youth, this was all I ever wanted to do – to read joyfully, and to write soulfully: to breathe in the mysteries of the universe, to bask in the crypticism of existence, and to exhale outwards for others whatever small particles of wisdom I was able to assemble from the dustmotes of Life.
What can I say? Many years came in between myself and I – years filled with the longing for warm embraces and silent kisses, for the hollow thrill of rising in the estimation of one’s peers, for the sheer and desperate act of merely staying alive. Many years of wanting to start, some days of actually starting, and on those rare days, being quickly embarrassed into silence by my own sense of futile ambition.
Then one day, I started writing again. And again. And again. Each time, I would tell myself, quietly and firmly: this is for yourself. No one but yourself. Because we are all silently rowing our own little small dinghies in the darkness of being alone – every word, every sentence, every exhalation is a furious defiance of the inexorability of Time, to say I exist, dammit!
I breathe in again. Breathe out. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat, every day, every week, every year, evermore.
Tentang Penggilap dan Pelahap
Kau gilap lencana
pada gril hadapan Alphard yang kau tunggang seharian
yang megah menempikkan "D.I.M.P."
pada sekalian insan kecil
yang menghurung jalan raya
disekelilingmu
dan kau lahapkan
setiap kata puji dan bodekan
orang-orang yang kau pilih khusus
demi bakat mereka
memarakkan naluri takabbur
dihatimu
dan kau sakau
apa yang sempat kau sakau
agar dapat terus berdatukdatin
dengan rakan-rakan taikun dan parasit
yang kau temui di majlis-majlis penuh gah
yang kau santuni dalam laman majalah Tatler
kerana kau mengharapkan
semua nobatsilat itu
mampu mengabui perasaan malu
atas kedaifan jiwa dan kendirimu
dan dapat membuatkan kau lupa
walaupun untuk seberapa lama
bahawa kau juga manusia
yang harus makan dan minum
yang perlu kencing dan berak
yang akhirnya akan mati
sebagaimana orang lain juga harus mati.
On Political Tourism
Those who know Kat and I well would know that we both have an abiding interest in politics. In fact, the first time Kat and I ever met was at the Putra World Trade Centre – during the UMNO General Assembly back in 2007! I was working for Pak Lah then, and Kat was working as a political analyst with Karim Raslan Associates.
Over the years, while both of us have drifted away professionally from the world of politics, we both have maintained deep interest especially in Malaysian politics, and the general broad lens of public affairs remains a common point of interest for both of us.
So much so, that one of the things we have been doing, on-and-off over the years, is what we both call “political tourism”. The usual expression of this is when elections would take place somewhere – whether it is general elections season, or a more locally-focused by-election – we would take the time to drive around, have a look at the poster game, maybe even chat up the locals on their take of politics on the ground at the local gerai or mamak. In the recent general elections of November 2022, Kat and I both made it a point to attend as many political ceramah and rallies as we could, taking care to try to attend events held by each of the major political parties. Often, the mood and fanfare of the events as they take place, and the level of energy and excitement amongst the speakers and the audience, are a very good barometer of political sentiment, and often a good leading indicator of how the political tea leaves would fall in place come Election Day.
We have walked through a crowd of mostly Chinese onlookers in the audience, eyes transfixed on me being this one obviously Malay dude, as Lim Kit Siang spoke on stage in JB to explain why it was it was time to punish Ah Jib Gor and UMNO. We saw, in Shah Alam, the tepid response to Arul Kanda’s arguments on why he believed that everything was ok with 1MDB. We saw, in Gombak, that the level of enthusiasm for Amirudin was going to carry the seat for him against Azmin. We were in the audience one rainy November evening, the crowd undampened by the weather as fireworks streamed to the sky and we realised that Perikatan Nasional – contrary to my initial expectations going into the November 2022 elections – were going to win big. It’s been a great ride, and many memorable moments, so far.
Recently, we just realised that we are about to – inadvertently, I must add – find ourselves participating in yet another jaunt in our long string of political tourism over the years. Should be fun!