The Patriot

This is not about Mel Gibson terrorizing redcoats with his tomahawk and merry band of militias. Not about ‘Murica at all. No sir.

This is not a piece meant to tell you to love the country. Much have been written about that. You can love or hate the country. It is up to you. This piece is not meant as a virtual keris rattling for me to exhibit my faux Malayness. After all, I identify as a Mongol. Last week it was Danish. This is a piece about looking for that one Malaysian thing we can rally behind.

Some time ago in a conversation with friends the topic of what makes us Malaysian cropped up. Eventually it was agreed upon that food is the common unifying factor. Which is nothing new really. We love food and we really love our food. It is the only factor I think. Our national football team is lacklustre, our badminton post Chong Wei is meh. We are not cricket mad like Indians and Pakistanis. Take away the food what do we have? We have no Great Malaysian Novel (not yet), no national epic to speak of. Hell, we have no National Laureate that is common to all Malaysians (not yet). No Trafalgar to remember, no Alamo to rally behind. While we fended off those Maoist wannabes up until 1989, we fought no great war of national liberation. In that regard, the Bangladeshis had us beat.

 

Ours is a negotiated freedom. In return for their plantations and business interests to remain unmolested, the Brits granted us our freedom, as if it was theirs to bestow to begin with. It was all very civilized. Very chill and relaxed. Want to be free? Here you go. Have some tea, keep your Sultans. This negotiated independence of ours only spawned more questions about what makes us, us. Secular or Islamic, crown or tengkolok or serban, Peninsular or Sabahan or Sarawakian or Malaysian and what have you. 

 

We have not been thrown into a great conflagration in which the mutual distrust among the races is dissipated and in its place our common national identity is forged. We did not have that experience. It is always about one race vs another, very rarely about us. All these cases in the apex court I think is not really about whether Civil Courts vs Syariah Courts and all that. It is about trying to find the answer to the question, what makes us, us. In a way, this is our great war of national realization. For good or for bad, we will decide the kind of people we want to become for generations to come. Thank God that so far we have been fairly civil about it limiting it to the courts. Long it remain so. Even our protests are tame compared to the French. For a snail-loving, wine-quaffing people the French really do know how to riot, I mean protest.

 

The closest we came to smoking atop a powder keg was during the pandemic with the succession of governments clawing for power with almost weekly pageant of imbecility and insensitivity from the administration to the dengki ke gaffe all the while the people are confused, fearful, struggling to keep on living when death was all around with no end in sight and most importantly angry, Angry at how things were handled. Angry that those in power for choosing to play politics when lives were at stake. That was our national trauma and we ought to learn from it. That a country is only as strong as its people.

The land. What of it? The land is here and will always be here so long as the sky is blue and the sun is out in all her brilliance. We ought to let go the fixation with ownership of the land or who came here first. We all belong to the land and while we are here we ought to not take it for granted. You know, preserve trees and hills instead of clear it off for that hillside development and durian orchards and things. We also should learn to live together like decent folks. Mingle la. Don’t be cooped up in your own racial cocoon, nursing your own fears of the other races just like the politicians wanted you to. God knows the land is big enough for all of us to do all these things. 

 

In the course of typing all this up it came to me. Maybe that’s it. Our unifying feature is our laidback nature. That rilek la brader vibe. Maybe a weakness where efficiency is concerned but most of the time it is our chief strength. As long as we appeal to our inner rilek spirit (within reason lah) this country can never be a nest of extremism and hatred. Because nursing hate is a tiring thing to do and we, we like to relax. 

This land is yours as much as it is mine. I have nowhere else to go. Even if i do, i would rather be here. This in-progress, flawed place. Land of the relaxed and where the medical bills is almost free (if you go to gomen lah).

So do you part. I say let us lower that accusatory fingers and raise that glass of teh tarik up high and then sip it, savour that fatty sweetness. Have that inane conversation with your friends and strangers. Talk cock sing song and laugh. Let us just sit together at the same table of brotherhood (or sisterhood) to break that hallowed roti canai of understanding and chill. For to chill is patriotic and to lepak is Malaysian.

 

Now I gotta hang up that flag. Our flag.