Honouring the Malaysian woman
Rejected by newspaper editor
In 1965 a Javanese teenager found herself commuting back and forth the lonely trunk road between her home in Seremban and Kuala Lumpur. She was only 17 and without a driver’s licence. Typically, she would be accompanied by her mother, two younger brothers and a Tiffin carrier of home cooked food for her sick father at the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital.
Life was exhausting growing up taking care of younger siblings, live-in relatives and a mother who was behaving erratically possibly due to menopause – though that would have been a huge mystery back then. Yet, she would sit for her High School Certificate exams and pass with impressive grades.
Today, a teenager like her who is smart and starred in a state youth hockey team would probably enrol in a good university. However, that was not the case for her. Her family needed care and her commitment was to them. Unlike some of her brothers who got the opportunity to study all the way in England, the young girl was grounded at home.
But what would she do for a living without the prestige of a college diploma? She would do wonders.
She was bold, intelligent and was blessed with a flare for writing both in English and Malay. With encouragement from the late A. Samad Ismail she became a cadet reporter. It was a rough job for a young woman fresh out of school. The press room was patriarchal, rowdy and no curse word was out of earshot. She became one of the first few women reporters in Malaysia and certainly one of the first few women reporters to cover crime news. But the tough nature of the job only prepared her for greater things in life.
At the age of 21, she was chosen by the Australian Rotary Club to participate in a cultural exchange programme. For several months she travelled and lived with Australian families around the Riverina region playing the role of a young Malaysian ambassador. Mayors and government officials would admire the way the young reporter carried herself and the positive image of Malaysia she represented. The Australian press would sing praises of her and the goodwill she extended on behalf of her country.
Her experience and talent would one day secure her a position at the esteemed Financial Times of London. How proud a Malaysian she was every time the newspaper published her by-line. Here was a hardworking young Malaysian who was truly “glokal” long before Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak invented the word.
But her service to her country was mostly accomplished at home. In 1973, she became the 245th employee of the newly established Malaysian Airlines System (MAS). The airline was a symbol of independence and pride in post-Merdeka Malaysia. Like her contemporaries, she put in a lot of love and hard work for the airline to take off.
MAS had just been created following the closure of the Malaysia-Singapore Airlines (MSA). Former MSA staff had to be reassigned, assets around the world had to be dissolved and a new Malaysian identity had to be created for MAS. She was one of those dedicated staff who helped nurse and nurture our national carrier in its teething days. And like those of her time, she would now cringe in despair whenever news of loss and abuse in the airline surfaced.
This young woman was well on her way to making a life for herself. But that did not mean her childhood “career” was over. She still had to dedicate time and energy everyday to clean the house and manually giling (ground) meal ingredients for her mother who endlessly received visitors. This she did despite having a full time job.
But it was this tough life that gave her the strength and courage to start her own business at the age of 28. Her small company, assisted by close friends and family, would organise Malaysia’s first international motor show which also featured classic cars from the Sultan of Selangor’s garage. Despite all the funds made available to young entrepreneurs today, not many below the age of 30 can claim the same glory as this woman who did not even have the privilege of a tertiary education.
Her hard work and perseverance paid off and she eventually blossomed into a respected corporate figure in the telecommunications industry. She had done wonders for her family and country, and had helped paved the way for professional women who came after her. Most importantly, she did it sincerely and selflessly.
Her proudest moment however, was the day she stood on a sidewalk as she watched the eldest of her three daughters march the streets of Wellington, New Zealand dressed in a graduation gown and a mortarboard on her head.
To this woman, my mother, and other Malaysian women like her, I wish you happy anniversary. Your daughters are proud of you and are eternally grateful for your sacrifices.
Thank you for making Malaysia a better place for us.
Young women must claim their space
As published in The Sun
UNIVERSITY students are still waiting for the University and University Colleges Act to be abolished, or at least amended to suit the 21st century.
The Act has been used to curb student activities, particularly to prevent student involvement in party politics. However, over the years the Act has acquired new jurisdictions to include student participation in organisations and movements with broader interests. The result is a generation of removed and apathetic young Malaysians.
Meanwhile, a 23-year-old Egyptian girl finds herself in the thick of action in Malaysia. Hadil El-Khouly is in town to lend a hand at the Musawah meeting in Kuala Lumpur this weekend.
Musawah is a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. The meeting will see some 200 Muslim scholars and activists from 49 countries come together to launch the movement and discuss ideas on how to reform Muslim family law.
Hadil arrived from Cairo in December to assist the organisers with Arabic translations for their meeting materials as well as to strategise on integrating young women into the movement.
“It’s important for young women to have experience in activism, in this case, in the Islamic context. Our experiences and challenges may differ from the older generation, for example on issues relating to identity and acceptance within the Muslim community. A body like Musawah can also promote multi-generational dialogue,” she said.
As a student at Cairo University from which she graduated in law, Hadil was active in student organisations promoting equality and justice for women. At 18, she threw herself into the “real world” working with the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance.
“Starting work young forced me to manage my time between school and work. But the experience was liberating,” she said.
She said the women’s movement in Egypt is, as a whole, a visible and strong one. The student organisation she was involved in promoted equality and justice for women, but was conscious not to exclude men.
Their activities would ride on the general human rights platform (where women’s rights are an integral part) which included male students.
Women in the Arab world are reluctant to identify with the English term “feminist” even though they have an active women’s rights movement.
As writer Tala Al-Ramahi said in the UAE-based publication The National, even progressive Arab women “would be weary of the word, most probably because it carries with it Westernised connotations of what a woman is expected to be.” They would prefer to identify with the kind of activism that is more relevant to their own cultural context. Moreover, another major criticism of “feminist” groups is that they tend to hold dialogues only among themselves.
Hadil said that for the cause to succeed, women’s groups cannot afford to isolate men. After all, when it comes to legislation men would have to vote for women’s rights too.
That is precisely what Musawah is trying to achieve: reform in legislation. Muslim family law in many countries has not changed from the classical legal framework. This framework does not take into consideration the daily realities of Muslim women today. Malaysia, for example, is a good case study.
While Malaysia remains one of the more progressive Muslim countries, its position as a leading nation in providing just Muslim family laws has been surpassed by countries like Morocco, Turkey and Tunisia. We can claim back our position in the Muslim world by supporting Musawah’s international law reform movement to end discrimination against Muslim women across the globe.
Hadil sees immense potential for our country to play a major role in the movement. Malaysia’s strength, she said, is in the diversity of her people.
She said young Malaysians must have the desire to be part of the decision-making process and young women especially, must integrate and dare to take risks. Most importantly, they must claim their space because no one will give it to them freely.
Here be dragons
As published in Off the Edge
Anyone who has visited the older parts of Indonesia’s sprawling capital will probably have seen the historical Stasiun Jakarta Kota and noticed the striking difference between it and its Malaysian cousin, the Stesen Keretapi Kuala Lumpur.
Architecturally, Stasiun Jakarta Kota is remarkably uncomplicated compared to the splendour of the Kuala Lumpur station. Another obvious difference between the two is that the one in Jakarta is still very much alive with human activity (and waste) while the one in Kuala Lumpur is, well, quite dead.
But things were not always sepi at the Kuala Lumpur station. It was the main railway station linking the capital to the rest of the country from the early 1900s up until it surrendered most of its operations to the new Kuala Lumpur Sentral in 2001.
Today, other than to photograph its pretty exterior, the station is a dull place to visit.
There is an art gallery/mini-museum—established perhaps to snare the occasional pedestrian—but this also seems somewhat half-hearted. The gallery-museum is, at the very most, uninspiring except for one particular exhibit: A huge model of the original Sentul railway depot and workshop area.
Those of us who know Sentul only for its roti canai and the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac) might wonder, “Where the heck in Sentul is this? It’s is enormous!” A lot of it has given way to development, and all that is left is guarded behind walls. The famous KLPac building was in fact part of the facility, functioning as a saw mill for our railway lines.
Better known today as the Sentul Workshop, the facility has been the heart of our nation’s railway industry. It began operations in 1905 as the central workshop and depot for the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR), which eventually evolved into the present day Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB).
Until recently, the Sentul Workshop was home to generations of railway families who depended on employment at the facility. It was a huge establishment of 13 acres, and a busy one considering it was where trains were built, fixed and refurbished before they proceeded to serve commuters and businesses on the Malayan peninsular. It brought life to Kuala Lumpur, and to it Sentul owes its epithet: City of Locomotives.
Most of us are unaware of the facility’s significance. The very compound into which some of Kuala Lumpur’s middle-class waltzes for their dose of music and plays, was itself once a great war theatre. In 1944, the facility was destroyed by bombs dropped by the very people who helped build it—the British.
So vital was the function of the Sentul Workshop that Allied forces deemed it necessary to destroy the Workshop in order to paralyse the Japanese military occupation during the Second World War. Soon after the bombing, and after looting more than 5,000 locomotive carriages from the peninsula (they ended up in Indochina), the Japanese mission to create an “Asia for Asians” ended too. So, back came the British as we restored the Sentul Workshop to its important position in the Malayan railway industry.
The Sentul Workshop history is an important one, and likely to be forgotten. Like the Kuala Lumpur station the Sentul Workshop will also cease its operations when the new facility in Perak is completed, and the land on which it stands has been sold to a new owner.
But what will become of it? Will it serve as another community centre like the KLPac? Or will it stand in a grand lull, like Stesen Kuala Lumpur? Perhaps it will be “Bok House-ed” and replaced by a Disneyland of condominiums.
Whatever its fate, a group of young photographers feel its visual memory should at least be preserved. With permission from KTMB, photographer K. Azril Ismail and his students from the Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) were able to photograph the last vestiges of the original Sentul Workshop.
Together with the KLPac, they are staging an exhibition in January to share a glimpse of the historic facility with the public.
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* Iron Dragons of Malaya on their official website.
Santa to the rescue
As published in The Sun
Dear Santa,
Not so long ago this column published my letter to the prime minister. In the letter I appealed for serious efforts by the government to strengthen relations between the various religious communities in Malaysia.
Additionally, I welcomed the prime minister’s enthusiasm in wanting to stimulate an intellectual renaissance through all-round quality education.
Nevertheless, I also called for greater distance in Malaysia’s relationship with war-mongering governments because I thought that would be the right thing to do since we are after all a principled, pro-peace Hadhari society.
On this topic, Santa, I suggested for Malaysia to hold back on Free Trade Agreement talks with the United States – a call merely echoing Latin American governments that have already testified to inequality in such pacts with the particular warmongering state. I also suggested that we not allow any more warships destined to participate in the Middle East violence to dock at our shores.
Since that letter however, inter-religious and inter-racial relations have severely deteriorated in Malaysia.
What’s more, our leaders do not seem earnest in handling the problem since many appear to be getting away with seditious crimes like spreading horrifying fitnah (lies) through text messages and promoting xenophobia on television.
We have also since seen our university standings plunge in the world rankings, although I cannot quite remember if we blamed our underperformance on Western bias and conspiracies again this time around.
And despite a lot of talk about bina insan (character development) and providing all-round quality education to confront Malaysia’s brain drain problem, nothing has been done to liberalise the Universities and University Colleges Act.
You might also be interested to know, Santa, the government has also pursued further talks with the United States for a Free Trade Agreement and allowed yet another military aircraft carrier to dock in Malaysia while on its way to the Persian Gulf.
On top of that, we welcomed and gave special treatment to John Howard and Condi Rice at an international conference we hosted here in Kuala Lumpur. The latter was even furnished with a piano and invited to play a few tunes for our distinguished guests.
That said, I have no choice but to conclude that the prime minister either did not read my letter, or worse, does not love me enough and has therefore done the opposite for all my appeals.
Dejected, I have resorted to writing to you instead – an old, bearded, seasons-greetings, fictitious, pink celebrity. I therefore seek your good offices, dear Santa, to help with the above issues.
Maybe you can help restore trust between religious communities in Malaysia. While you’re at it, please also advise the government against allowing foreign military vehicles to park here, especially those carrying nuclear warheads.
It may be too much to ask for you to free Palestine and eradicate poverty in Africa too, but please at least try granting the following for 2007:
1. A new chief for the Elections Commission and the state of Selangor.
2. Live telecasts of parliament proceedings. This will allow Malaysians to see for themselves the rude and immature behaviour of their elected representatives. Contrary to what the deputy prime minister recently said, live pictures do not give distorted impressions. Malaysians will also have the opportunity to see how the House Speaker easily blocks hot issues from being debated by dismissing the issues as “not urgent”.
3. Independent media. Let it not be the case that the only newspapers left not merged or gobbled up by media conglomerates are the opposition newspapers.
4. More women in leadership positions. For many years now, public universities have reported higher numbers in female student enrolment compared to male. Recent figures actually show an average minimum of 60% for female student enrolment in almost every public university.
This suggests there are more qualified women in the job market compared to men. It is only reasonable therefore for more women to be represented in leadership positions today, be it in business or politics.
5. One year’s supply of anti-nausea pills. Just something to help Malaysians get through the extra dose of propaganda expected to flood the media as the general election approaches.
I am counting on you, Santa! Cheers.
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