Tag: life

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On Being Originally Spicy

“I hope you don’t mind, I decided to order KFC for dinner today,” I said.

“Eh, no worries lah. Once in a while it’s ok.” Kat shrugged.

“Fuh, can you smell that?!” I took a whiff of the fried chicken, all jumbled up in the paper box, parts of chicken anatomy of various shapes in assortment like a fragrant game of Tetris. “I hope you don’t mind, I ordered the Mixed option this time around. I know you’ve been preferring the Hot and Spicy flavour lately, but my heart is still set on the Original.”

“Well, the irony is that to be Spicy is actually more Original,” Kat said archly.

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On My First Day of Ramadan

The details are rather hazy to me now (as it often is with memories that bring shame to our minds), but I think I was seven years old, and I was then in Standard One. It was not our first year of fasting, but that year was my first year of fasting while in “big school” (as I thought of it then), and I was very careful to make sure that I would make it through the first day of fasting that year.

We had just come back from school – both Abang Ijan and I were at St John’s Primary in Bukit Nanas, and I think at that time we were in the morning session, because I am pretty sure it was still some time away from Maghrib when this incident happened. 

First, an explainer: Abang Ijan and I are cousins, and we were just a year apart in age, he being just a year ahead of me. I was my mother’s only child, living in my grandparents’ home with another 11 or so cousins in the same house. Naturally, we spent a lot of time together, playing catch almost every afternoon and watching cartoons on TV, but Abang Ijan and I were especially close. He was the eldest of his three siblings, and I looked up to him naturally as a big brother. Despite my rather frail stature and my oh-so-geeky glasses, my primary school years went by largely without much incident or bullying – most likely because most of the kids in school knew that Abang Ijan was my “elder brother”. 

Anyways, as I said earlier, it was probably that time of year when we had morning classes, because this most certainly happened at home, around maybe five or six in the afternoon. Abang Ijan thought it would be a good idea – the day being so hot, and it was our first day of fasting, to boot – to take a shower. And not just any shower, but in Atok’s bathroom! 

Atok’s room was the inner sanctorum of the sprawling bungalow complex that we called home. Air conditioned, wood-panelled walls, carpeting – the room was always cosy and comfortable, and I am pretty sure now that it was only the audacity of well-loved grandchildren that made it conceivable for us to steal into Atok’s bathroom for a shower. Steal in, we did, and – as I am writing this, I can imagine eight-year old Abang Ijan winking at me, with an impish twinkle in his eye – as we were taking turns underneath the shower, Abang Ijan turned his face upwards and proceeded to glug a few gulps of the spraying water into his mouth. Naturally, I followed suit. 

There was a certain naughtiness to it – drinking from the shower in the middle of the day on the first day of Ramadan. I am quite sure that I didn’t tell Umi about it, not that day itself, certainly. We pretended to be fasting as usual for the rest of the evening, and when Maghrib came, we ate as ravenously as our cousins who, presumably, did not quite descend to our level of mischief that day. 

Now that I am older, I think of this incident almost every time Ramadan comes along. We are older now, and I don’t talk to Abang Ijan as much as I should, or would like to. I’m not quite sure what happened – although a lot certainly have, over those difficult years. But we’ll always have Ramadan, Abang Ijan. 

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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 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 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Was 25

For some years after I had just turned 25, I would joke with my friends that my “internal mental clock” was stuck at 25. This lasted for some time, until of course the fiction could no longer be maintained as the body increasingly refused to play ball with my gentle conceit.

This year, I will be turning 45. It won’t be as harrowing as when I was turning 40, I think. By now I’ve come to some amount of reconciliation with who I am and what Life means. I recognise that in many many ways, I have been stupidly fortunate, and remarkably undeserving of many things that have graced my existence of these few decades.

I also recognise that to the extent that I still hold feelings of Envy for others, and Self-Pity for myself, for the many missed opportunities and desired achievements that have eluded my ham-fisted grasp, there is still work to be done in learning on how to become a better human being.

Maybe the lesson will never be fully learnt until my time on this Earth is up.

I am now old enough to know that time travel is a fanciful idea, nothing more – but if I could go back in time and talk to that blithely-hopeful young man of 25, I would be telling him a few things, like these:

  1. It’s ok to make mistakes. All your life, you will fear making them, and you may well have missed out on any number of wonderful things that could have been part of your life, if only you had that little extra ounce of Courage to try and risk failing. You will find, ironically, that some of the best things in your life will come out from what you may have thought, from the outset, was a regrettable and irredeemable error. Be prepared to be wrong, often.
  2. There is no such thing as “The One” person for you – this is mere hogwash invented by movies and Hallmark cards to make money off your naivety. When you truly Love someone, your concept of Love and Self will grow to encompass the larger person that you should and will become as a result of loving that someone.
  3. Family will hurt you and disappoint you. Because they, too, are human, and will commit the mistakes and mishaps that humans do. Some of them might never deserve your forgiveness, but at the very least, you can learn to live with the hurts and the disappointments, and save room in your life and in your heart for the ones who truly love you and care for you.
  4. Ambition is important to your personal growth and livelihood, but never forget that these are all means to a far more important end: to learn what it means to be who you are, and what you are meant to do on this Earth.
  5. In work, try your best to gain the right Skills that will make you useful as you grow older. Since you weren’t born with Wealth, you must sell your Labour like most others on this earth – gain the right skills that can make your Labour useful and worthwhile, to yourself and to others.
  6. What you might think is desperately and shatteringly important to you today, will likely end up being something rather “meh” as you grow older, and your priorities change and grow to encompass the bigger and better and more mature person that you become.
  7. Friendships – you need to pay attention. Too often, in the past and in the years to come, you will let friendships lapse and wither out of lack of tender care and attention. Don’t do this. Spend the time to reach out. At least drop a text from time to time – better yet, make the time to meet over coffee. The friends you have are the most precious gift you will have in this life – we are all ships passing by silently in the night, but it is no small consolation to know that we can sail alongside each other for a while and make that loneliness a little easier to bear.
  8. Reading will save your Life. Not merely the influx of information, as mundanely important as that might be. Rather, reading offers you a window to constantly reflect on Life and the big questions that will increasingly haunt you as you get older and closer to your own mortality. Some of the best highlights of your life will come from the epic, beautiful and haunting reads that lie in wait for you.
  9. On the point of mortality: Death is the ever-present phantom, the one thing that makes you truly human, that bittersweet pill that each one of us will need to take one day. Raging against Death will serve you no purpose: running away will only lead you astray, and cause you to twist and turn in the most unnatural and transmogrified ways. The only truly human way to live life is to constantly think of Death, and look Death in the eye – and embrace what it means to live well so that you can die well.
  10. Love yourself. You will find that you are one of the lucky ones on this earth, who can count on a good number of people in your formative years as well as in your later years, who have loved you truly and unconditionally and unreservedly. More than anything, and despite everything, this has been the best gift of your life, because it has taught you that you can love yourself. In the end, all you will have ever have is yourself, to live within and to live with.