square one

You know there’s this line that they tend to use in movies and dramas: “one step forward and 5 steps back.”

It seems to be happening so much these days. One step forward towards happiness and you tend to take 5 steps backwards and lend your ass straight into despair. Interesting, no? A repetitive and a stable of life it seems. You know when I used to baby-sit my then baby cousins, I used to love making them laugh. Babies and kids have the most genuine laughter –no faking it to ‘jaga hati’ no sympathy laughs- that seems to instantly make anyone within the vicinity brighten up. But in doing that, my grandma, aunts and my mom even, used to tell me this: don’t make them laugh too much they’ll have nightmares at night. Some used to tell me: don’t be too happy, you’ll cry later. I used to think that it was dumb. I mean seriously.. What’s the connection really? But I guess this has a certain twisted logic to it somehow.

Maybe it’s because when you are having fun too much, you leave your cares behind.. Being care free, I believe, also comes with a down side – you are unprepared and unguarded. so then, a sudden jolt, no matter how subtle it is causes you to come crashing down without your usual safety nets- no barriers no ‘softer’ landing spot option = DAMN painful!

I guess that is how it’s been in that country of mine.. All this time we’ve been so caught up with the cool stuff and we do have that tendency of sweeping things under the rug. Our GDP this quarter was such and such *hoorah!* another great thing happens in our country *hoorah!* some Australian dude whose mom was a Malaysian got into Phd at a young age *hoorah!*. And then of course one thing, just one dumb statement, causes a destructive, unattractive domino effect that not only unveils the ugly side of our ‘respected’ politicians but also to shame us all. How the hell did we manage to elect people with no manners is beyond me. To add to our shame, people whose tolerance level is on par with a tiger whose territory is breached.

Owh, well educated people are they? If they are so well educated what the hell is going on? These darn donkeys are causing more havoc than the time of emergency and may 1969 put together. It’s as if they never went to any of their history classes. And to make matters worst, some of these idiots are the descendants of those who fought for our independence. (Note: those who fought for our independence are not only confined to the politicians of those days.)

And then a new selling point begins: because we, Malaysians, are made up of so many different races, we have to work harder then the rest for harmony. To that I’d like to say just one simple, common word: BULLSHIT!

Whenever any of us complains that something is hard momsy will always tell us this: “if that’s the case, even going to the toilet is hard.” The easiest solution to me is to put these donkeys in kindergarten - no, not to teach them basic manners, though they are sorely in need of that, but for them to observe kids. Before their brains are contaminated by their parents mind sets, kids befriend anybody regardless of race and colour. They play together even eat together. No nonsense about blood contamination should you accidentally touch each other. All they do is smile and say hi do you want to play and in that split second a friendship is forged – no petty questions like ‘ooo, where are you from?” or “ are u Indian/Chinese/Malay?” simple, no?

But sadly that’s where the simplicity ends coz primary school is a new story. I can say that from experience coz I clearly remember my mom giving me a long lecture about how frens are frens regardless when I said this when she picked me up from school (around std 2/3): ‘Ma, you know my Chinese fren said..’ I din even get to finish that sentence because she lauched into this:

M: what Chinese fren? Is she less of a fren because she’s Chinese?
Z: no.. I didn’t say that…
M: then don’t call her your ‘Chinese fren’ either call her by her name or just say your fren. I didn’t teach you that. So what was it you were going to tell me about?
Z: my fren so and so (can’t remember who it was) said….
(note: this is a condensed version of lecture)

Yea that’s one of the conversations I remember so clearly. More people should teach their kids that way. Maybe I should talk momsy into giving a seminar on this to our dear politicians. We’ll call it, TOLERANCE 101.

The happy people I know have frens from various backgrounds. It is because they don’t confine themselves to a certain sect of the society that they are not riddled with curiosity that turns vindictive. The key to it is for us all to be colour blind. We should make frens not because we are of the same race or religion. Make frens just because. It makes a bit of sense now when people say “curiosity kills a cat”. People get curious, people wonder and because they have an ego as high as the Twin towers they won’t do the simplest of things which is to bloody ask. When they don’t ask, their paranoid selves come up with of course baseless excuses to qualm their curiosity.. you get the drift.

I'm praying hard that what's happening back home is not taking us 5 steps back because to land our arses into the depair of racial tension is to not only wrong ourselves and the future generation (since the politicians love to play the future generation card) but also our forefathers who trusted us to make our home a land we'd all be proud of. But so far, i think Mark Twain was right when he said: history may not repeat itself but it sure as hell rhymes.

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival

-Rene Dubos-