The Malaysian 13th elections - aku menyampah!

The best thing about knowing more than one language is that you can choose from the different ones for selected expressions. I treasure the conversations I have with people from different language backgrounds - those who are on the same page with me about not preserving the purity of languages. Rojak is definitely the best!

I thought I would share some of my favourites over time - no rational choices or reasons why they are the best - its all in the way one says it, the non-verbal gestures, the tone etc.

For example, when you tell someone they've been taken advantage of, or that this characteristic of theirs is why they always get the shit end of the stick, the Tamil phrase is best: illichu vaai (not the best spelling, but it will do).
E.g:
"Vel Paari said Indians will vote the Barisan for sure, they are grateful to the MIC."
"He think we all illichu vaai-s is it? *%^$#@^"

Or Sei Lor in Cantonese = die lah, for almost any context when you're in trouble, hard pressed for time etc.
E.g:
"Eh, if Pakatan Rakyat win the elections, sure riot one.."
"Sei lor! better go stock rice fast fast!"

Or Cis! Bedebah! from Malay - which is basically SOB.
"Ibrahim Ali is standing for elections in Bukit Bintang."
"Cis bedebah! He dare one come to the Chinese area!"

Or maay pen rai in Thai - which means it doesn't matter.
E.g:
"YB, maaf tak sempat nak pergi kat Kuantan buang undi. Tapi seperti saya janji, dah pergi Pekan, Raub dan Temerloh. On the way, tayar pancit.
"Maay pen rai! Orang tua kamu dah pergi semua tempat dah. Nah, ambik RM150. Bagus!"

This is my intelligent and intellectual discourse when trying to make sense of the current political situation in Malaysia. I have given up conversations about when the elections are to be called or to understand any of the political decisions of the Barisan Nasional. It is great that my friends in the likes of Wong Chin Huat tirelessly try to educate and inform us of all that is necessary. Kee Thuan Chye today placed his bets on the dissolution on March 26. I'm not booking my flights yet though.

But I have only one word at this point. I draw inspiration from the Malay language.

Menyampah.

Fists clutched. Spit. The anger is unquell-able.  

It can be translated as hateful or disgusting. For the occasion, I'll say its a combination of the two.

"Aku menyampah lah kat Najib tu."
"Ish, aku menyampah si BN, pi mampus-lah."
"Dr. M ni mencarut-lah...menyampahnya!"
"Najib nak panggil Psy! Ae..lah...menyampah betul!"
"Menyampah-lah diorang tak nak announce election. Penakut!"

That's Malaysian politics for now. Its been reduced to waste. I menyampah that I feel so stupid because I can't really argue or explain what is happening. The BN and the Prime Minister think we are all illichu vaai-s, bedebah! I want us to rock the boat so much they will say Sei-lor. Chaos? Maay pen rai.... asalkan orang tak menyampah kita.

Itu sahajalah setakat ini. Sekian, terima kasih.

Too much freedom? Er, start thinking, can?

I have just been looking at some notes from a discussion on press freedom recently. A theme that has come up a few times in the recent months, particularly in relation to this topic is that the problem with the media and society (in some countries in Southeast Asia, for example) is that there is too much freedom.

Can you have have too much freedom? Hell, no! Its a false argument. I think this is the result of an aggregate of unthinking beings and unyielding hypocricy (I learnt how to say hypocricy in Thai - phuut yang, tham yang or khit yang, tham yang). If there was too much freedom, don't you think we'll be better at defending minority rights, providing protection to those who need, and have safe drinkable water and breathable air? Access to homes, education, employment, thoughts, and opinions. Waving the Universal Declaration of Human Rights here! - No, there's never too much freedom.

What we have in excess is this: a society unable to criticise itself; where selective prosecution and application of freedoms dictate; elites own the meaning of rights and freedoms; and just unthinking, destructive individuals roaming the streets.

They hide behind the walls of cultural relativism and post-colonial insecurity to decide what is the norm. None that makes rational sense, to me. "Its not our culture to criticise the elders" or "our society is unique because we have a tradition of this and that" - but will you also claim responsibility that your unique culture is also violent and inhumane because of the murders and brutality that take place, either by individuals or organised groups? I am well aware my argument is a fallacy, but one cannot pick and chose arbitrarily when culture is a determining factor. To hold back freedoms because of cultural values, is, in my not so humble opinion, the greatest disasters of our time. Add religion to it, and the result is far worse. The argument is that its not the religion per se because religion teaches compassion and good values, its the people who spoil the religion. Well, to me, religion is nothing without the people, and the two are actually one. And this one is a major threat to fundamental freedoms, including the right to have a belief of your choice. As an atheist, I'm more secure than a believer of something in some countries.

I digress.  

And as much as we try to make ourselves, our communities, unique, I think no one is unique. We are far more alike than we are different, but we invest so much time in picking out and parading the differences, which we then use to justify denial of others' freedoms and rights. I don't mean to say that because we are not unique, we don't have rights. On the contrary, we do. But that's because we are above the narrow unique distinctions. There is far greater purpose in serving humanity as a whole. 

Back to my starting point.

I am looking forward to a time when we can be honest and call a spade a spade and accept that the failings of the media, for example, is because the people in it choose to be so and they have given up their rights to freedom and in respecting the freedoms of others. The cultural values have protected the elites and the powerful and their band of media. Understanding the media situation in this region is less complicated that what many of us make it out to be. Its base is simple: power, power, power. Except that the ones feeding into that machine of power, i.e the journalists, are, undoubtedly the ones with zero power. Their poor state is a result of their unthinking, yet willing give away of power. They do things to give the impression that they have lots of freedom and rights. Yet, they are only a pawn in the big scheme of things.

Ranting.

I have to analyse media freedom in the region. I do not appreciate cultural relativism. I want people to widen their horizons and see poverty, abuses, control, violations on the one hand, and joy, delight and happiness on the other, stretched beyond their own borders. It is not a problem of too much freedom anywhere. It is a problem of narrow vision.

Project to "finish being born"

"The child, unnoticed, had already put out tendrils and sent down roots, and there had been time for that fragile-seed to place his tiny, unsteady feet on the muddy ground and to receive from it the indelible mark of the earth, that shifting backdrop to the vast ocean of air, of that clay, now dry, now wet, composed of vegetable and animal remains, of detritus left behind by everything and everyone, crushed and pulverised rocks, multiple, kaleidoscopic substances that passed through life and to life returned, just like the suns and the moons, times of flood and drought, cold weather and hot, wind and no wind, sorrows and joys, the living and the not. Only I knew, without knowing I did, that on the illegible pages of destiny and in the blind meanderings of chance it had been written that I would one day return to Azinhaga to finish being born." (Saramago, J, Small Memories)

I stopped in my tracks with the last line... return to finish being born. I think, maybe all of us never really finish that process. We get uprooted, we leave to a new place, we imagine the things that were around us, the landscape that was, the memories of the place, the house, the people. Sometimes, its an unfinished business. And Saramago says that of himself: the landscape is not his as he didn't grown up there. You are thrown into situations and the new place forces you to grow up and when you return to the place, its something else.

I want to go back and finish being born. Or maybe I don't. Do I have a choice? I now think that as we get older we reflect back on those now borrowed landscapes and think, there was a time I was being born and it was interrupted. But to what ends will this project achieve?

Maybe its in one of the poems Saramago has written that he refers to in this trip to finishing being born.

....
I wait motionless for the whole river to be bathed in blue and for the birds on the branches to explain to me why the poplars are so tall and their leaves so full of murmurings
Then, with the body of the boat and the river safely back in the human dimension, I continue on toward the golden pool surrounded by the raised sword of the bullrushes
There I will bury my pole two feet down in the living rocks
A great primordial silence will fall when hands join with hands
And then I will know everything.

(Protopoem)

Thanks translated Saramago, for how you enthrall with your words.