June 2005 Editorial

For years, I have been contemplating, thinking, imagining, brainstorming, what would constitute an interesting and lasting impression in the minds of readers, on articles that they read. Politics are the "ins" these days and time in our society and in fact it is the norm in every facet of our Malaysian lives. Political figures, leaders or otherwise would always make the headliners in publications, whilst on the extremes would be the abusers of society, namely the drug addicts, their peddlers, suppliers and manufacturers; the criminals who exploited their environmental freedom to abuse the privileges of modern living ; and the consequential shoot-outs and killings of these criminals by the police, - a deserving act or not, is for us to determine. In fact, the lists of these happenings are endless indeed.

However of prime concern that has come to my mind today is, if we do give ourselves a moment to ponder and look back at past events to our present life, they are somewhat connected or at least having some semblance of connections here and there.

Right at this moment as you read this editorial or more likely this article, you are reading it in the English language, but it is not going to be presented in the Queen's language - for those of you who are not acquainted with this expression, it simply means, the language of the Queen of England ( although candidly I doubt if the Queen herself speaks in "spotless" English, so to say !) The average Malaysian today does not speak fluent or grammatically correct English anymore like they used to during the British colonial days. That is understandable (although not excusable in toto ) because our medium of instructions in school is no longer in English as it was then during the British days. What I am trying to say here now is, there should be nothing wrong if in today's society we do not write those spotless English anymore since after all what matters most is whether the writer is able to drive home what he wants to say and the reader likewise understands what the writer says therein ! Indeed being English educated in the Colonial days has its setbacks too to persons like me when it comes to writing or speaking my own Malay language. What often happens is I think in English and hence self-expression too in English but the same having to be translated back to my native Malay language and this makes the whole thing rather corny ! The Malay language as we know it today is a far cry from what it used to be of old.. There are thousands of newly coined words , which if not noticed and used daily, a person like me is completely lost when spoken to and listening to ! To use our local expression, " a half-baked Mat Salleh." !

In these days and time, one way or other we all wish to justify our action or inaction. To put it straight to you readers, that is exactly what I am trying to drive home to you - that you should not be reading this article with the thought that it is going to be written in the Queens English, but rather to expect that it is written by an average Malaysian speaking English of today ! Now that I have driven home my point to you, please read on !

Yes, let us begin with schooling or what schools used to be then and now in comparison. This is a wide range of subject to deal with and right away I can tell you, whatever I convey herein cannot be what the authorities would look at , or what other individuals would likewise think and feel, rather it is exclusively my opinion on the matter as I see it through my own experience, observation and point of view - you get what I mean ?

In my own little kampong of Sri Menanti, a Royal town of Negeri Sembilan which is what it still is today, there used to be a lot of people then. At least that's how I felt then as a child where I grew up at then. There were then two Malay schools - one for the boys and one for the girls but there was no English school since it was almost wholly populated by the Malays except for the two rows of the village shops which were the norm then wholly operated by the Chinese and two barber shops , one by a Malay barber whilst the other by Indian barbers. Of course I had often preferred the Indian barber simply because I loved the "head -neck twisting" after a hair cut do that they always did , which gave a sensational painful yet pleasant effect to the neck. Nowadays, this kind of neck-head twisting is inadvisable, so say the doctors as was told to me too by my brother - in - law who is a Neurologist, since it can damage and affect the neck bones cartilage which damage could lead to paralysis in later life. As a matter of fact, it was not that many years ago that the later ill-effect of my earlier indulges affected my neck and I had to undergo contraction at a leading hospital in Subang Jaya. Today, Indian barbers occasionally still performed this neck-head twisting thing but the number of people who indulged seems to be smaller judging by my observations whenever I had my haircut at these Indian barber shops. Possibly too, the new generations Indian barbers no longer know this special trade of old.
My choice for the Indian barber, which choice still remains to this day , is also because the Malay barber did not cut my hair as well as the Indian. Consideration also was not given to the itching irritating feeling of sharply cut hair on the neck line just below the cloth cover on the neck. The Indian barber would put a lot of talcum powder on my neck so that these itchiness was somewhat reduced and become tolerable whereas with the Malay barber, he was seemingly unconcerned about my feelings. Of course you'd say why didn't I tell him to make it more comfortable. Such an act was not condoned by the elders those days. We young lads never dared utter anything to offend them. It was the absolute rule of the elders then as opposed to our younger generation these days. All of them are not only free to express anything they feel but they could also be very abusive and rude at times too ! Is not this the norm with the youngsters of today ? This is not saying we then did not feel the need to express our feelings to the elders but traditionally we were taught to remain civil and polite in their presence. We were good boys then, at least that's what it appeared to our elders, although what we did out of their sight might not be so much different to what our youngsters do today.

Talk about respect for the elders, there had never been an instance when children are allowed to be in the presence of their parents when the latter was engaged in "elderly" conversation. We were always told to go away somewhere and those who bravely tried to stay on would eventually be told off to move away pronto ! That did not happen to my children though. We recalled how our second son, Farazil , who was then aged six years, at an age when he could fairly understand what adults talk about. This son of ours would always remained around to listen to all our elderly conversation and seemingly very attentive too despite our remarks to him to go away, which was never heeded to, and to which action we somewhat tolerated. To this day, Farazil remains a curious listener at the dining table or wherever the elders congregate. This stay-on thing has gone down to our grand-daughter Maisarah these days, but then she is spoilt, says her parents to us. But that's beside the point, something I will elaborate on some day, Insyaallah.

These days, children of all ages dared to talk sex matters unashamedly in front of parents and the elders as if they are talking about the movies ! More often than not it's we the elders that feel uncomfortable. This shift in attitude which becomes the norm of present days must be due to the exposures in the mass media of books, magazines, television, radios, video etc. How much we elders still feel bashful and uncomfortable having to talk and teach sex matters to our children. In fact , if not for my brother-in-law, who is a Neurologist by profession, who always jokes about sexual happenings to my children whenever we have a family get-together, my children would have been very ignorant about "the birds and the bees" things that we elders used to disguise sex teachings in the old days. Our elders had imbedded in our minds and culture that sex is taboo talk in front of children and brought about disastrous effects on themselves ultimately. In the end, the embarrassment was felt by they themselves when they had to talk things over with their children whilst the children did not feel anything. To the children, they are just curious and simply enjoy listening to these new revelations ! To this day, we dread the idea of talking "adults" to our children despite the fact that they are all grown-up adults and married with children too ! I blush a lot whenever sex is mentioned in our family discussion. However, my wife is a lot better - sometimes ' too much better' when the children themselves are seen embarrassed by her remarks at them, but then that seems to be the trademarks of folks from the north, namely Penang, Kedah and Perlis. During my college days, it was typical of those who came from these states to freely talks and uttered sex jokes !

Such was the environment that I grew up in at this small Royal town - realistically more of a village than a town - then , there were a lot of water buffaloes, cows and ponies. These animals were left wandering around all over the village and as expected, they ' shit' all over the place too, but nobody really minded that nor did anyone cared to clean up the messes . We young boys used to enjoy playing the cow dung by poking them with young underbrush or sticking flags on them but fortunately no one played around with them physically ! Ever wonder how these cow dung feel like when you hold them in your hands, especially the fresh ones just dropped out ? Well, they're kind of warm and wet at the same time but not slimy. They feel very grassy and indeed there's nothing else in them but a mixture of grass or plants and water. Smelly ? Yes somewhat but not as bad as human feces ! But for the water buffaloes and the cows which were owned by the local villages, the ponies on the other hand never seemed to be owned by anyone, although it was said that they belonged to His Royal Highness. No one was ever seen to feed them left alone looked after them. Did we ride them ? As kids, we did not venture. However, we did ride the water buffaloes because there were wide bodied at the top and hence easy to cling on. But there were times when we were somewhat cruel to these animals - the water buffaloes, I mean - and that was when we imagined ourselves to be Tarzan.

Having seen Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan movies of those days, we naturally idolized and wanted to emulate him. Thus, with my local friends and my cousins, we sort of concocted a kind of bow and arrow stuff made of bamboo but sharp pointed at the end and then we started to harass the water buffaloes and once they started running, we would start shooting these arrows at them. Of course some arrows did get on them but only momentarily on the surface skin and then they dropped off ! That was cruel, when we looked back but then we were kids and that's the kind of things that kept us occupied those days. Of course, there 's the tree climbings too - any tree for that matter. Better still the fruit trees around my grandfather's house. There were a lot of them then - mangosteen, rambutan, langsat, duku, chiku, mango, jambu biji, jambu manis, bacang , buah mentega or avacado, kundang, cenderai, tempunek, kuini ( a mango variety) and of course the durian too. Of course indulging in climbing these trees as past time more than the need to eat their fruits became obsessive at times for us young children, those days, but that's another story I will relate to you another time.

Suffice it to say for now, in today's world, good manners or the lack of them, are no longer practiced or rarely seen amongst children or even adults. In the rat race of the Malaysian environment how often we heard of those infamous road rages which culminated in undue killing of the innocence. Life simply become too cheap these days. It is as if, life holds no more value to most people. We become a very rude society today simply because we think the world of ourselves . Only the other night when we attended the 80th birthday of a senior member of our family, we were appalled by the remarks of a fellow diner, who happened to be a Malay, who acted and spoke arrogantly about the nations and condemned Tun Mahathir's 21 years premiership as being too long for the country and that simply having tall buildings cannot be equated to progress ! And all these remarks were made to impress his immediate fellow diners who were British. When we look at him in his tuxedo black tie attire, we cannot help feeling that he was simply someone in a monkey suit ! Therein belie the arrogance of our people these days. Very sad indeed ! He forgot it was this same nation that he condemns that provides his early education and eventual success in life !

Anyway dear readers, let's move to better time ahead. Cheers !