there’s still hope in this neck of the woods, or A Malaysian Tail

 

“Mama dengar bunyi dekat bawah, like someone trying to open the sliding door. balik!” i rushed home after the call from my mother late Wednesday night, worried that someone was trying to break into our home.

 

my family has lived in Shah Alam for 24 years and for the most part, life has been peaceful. we are very close to our neighbours and friendly with folks in the local shops and market. we moved to Shah Alam when there were no McDonald’s and not a single traffic light. the site of the Concorde Hotel was still a plantation and the “Blue Mosque” was under construction.

 

today, we are no longer a town but a city. and apparently, Shah Alam has the country’s largest concentration of affluent middle-class “Bumiputras”. ideally that should mean sophistication and civility. but, the recent anti-temple cow-head protest was inspired and organised by our own folk.

 

we have never before seen such incivility in Shah Alam. who are these people, really? how is it they can exist among us? how did they come to exist at all?

 

these were questions i asked myself as i drove past the Selangor State Secretariat building, after my mother’s distressed call. but my thoughts were interrupted as i turned the corner into our neighbourhood and saw a motorcycle parked by the roadside.

 

a young man was squatting in front of my neighbour’s gate. it was close to 2 a.m. and my suspicious urban mind immediately thought, “ommigod! you a*sehole burglar! kantoi! i got you now!” i pulled up right next to him and wound my window down half way. “awak buat apa tu?!” i barked at him, trying to conceal my own fear.

 

the young man took off his helmet and pointed to something in front of him. “kucing ini kena langgar …” he said in a strong Sabahan accent. i looked at the cat and to my horror it was Orange Boy Cat, the stray that visits us regularly to eat our cats’ food. his face was badly injured and he was breathing very fast. clearly he was in severe pain.

 

someone had hit the cat and left it lying in the middle of the road. the young man was riding home on his motorcycle when he saw the cat lying there. he had rescued the cat from further misfortune by placing him by the roadside. my first instinct was to call my vet friend, Kavita, for advice.

 

i then left the young man, Daryl, and the cat for a few minutes while i went home to check on the house to make sure everything was okay, and got a small cage for the cat to rest in safely. i thought to myself, “Almighty, cucurilah rahmat on Daryl for his compassion! and bagilah balasan yang setimpal padahnya to the cruel monster who ran over the cat and sped away!”

 

there really was nothing Daryl could do at that hour except sit there to accompany the poor animal. it was so heartening to see such compassion for a helpless creature of God, and just 600 metres away from the State Secretariat building where the group of callous bigots paraded with a cow’s head earlier this Ramadhan.

 

Daryl volunteered to nurse the cat at his flat where he lived with his brother, Kenny. the next day, the 3 of us took our whiskered friend to see the vet.

 

today, a week after the accident and on Malaysia Day, i am pleased to report that Orange Boy Cat is recovering well at the clinic. his jaw is broken and his leg is slightly screwed up, but he will be okay. soon he will be moving in with his new Sabahan family, Daryl and Kenny.

 

there are still decent people living in Shah Alam after all. thank you boys for giving us hope.

 

 

The Beautiful Malay [A participant's comment]

 

As published in The People’s Parliament

 

Assalamu’alaikum Encik Haris and readers.

 

i contemplated writing this comment in Malay but i want to be understood properly by your readers so i’ve decided to write this in English.

 

firstly, thank you Encik Haris for documenting the visit which was initiated and attended by private citizens of Malaysia. and might i add, with the exception of my beloved mother and a number of gentlemen, the group was made up of young people. 

 

reading some of the comments here, it sounds as though until this post was published there were no decent “Malays” left in this country. so much so that our visit to the temple comes as such a pleasant surprise to many of your readers here – to the point of tears. imagine if you didn’t publish this post. we would all be left in our bigoted belief that the vast majority of Malays/Muslims in our country are arrogant and intolerant.

 

one of your commentors even said that it is “so rare that Malays come out of their way to lend a hand to non Malays”. perhaps such people should socialise a bit more and not depend on newspapers and blogs for generalised “truths” on how members of other races behave.

 

we would like to think of ourselves as intellectual and [correction: sophisticated] for our ability to carefully identify all the political culprits who are responsible for the sorry state of our perpaduan today. but we, the Rakyat, are ourselves too self-righteous to even admit that WE are the most responsible party in this mess. we let this happen.

 

bless the internet for today we have an avenue to share information and discuss more openly. but at the same time, cyberspace has become a place for thousands of Malaysians to become yea and nay sayers without doing much else.

 

if you really like what you see here, get your own little group together and visit your neighbourhood’s places of worship and offer a hand shake. and yes, that should include your neighbourhood mosque or surau. if you want to bring a buah tangan to these places of worship but you’re not sure what’s appropriate, bring something safe. we brought flowers. and jelly.

 

we don’t always have to move in big groups to make our point. and we certainly cannot afford to wait for another incident to happen before we make our move.

 

Wassalam.

 

——————————————————————————————

 

* The beautiful Malay on The People’s Parliament.