Month: June 2023

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Tentang Kewargaan

Pertama kali saya benar-benar menguliti istilah “warga” adalah pada tahun 2009, apabila mantan Perdana Menteri, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (yang lebih mesra digelar “Pak Lah”), sedang menyiapkan ucapan besar yang terakhir buat beliau, iaitu ucapan terakhir beliau di Perhimpunan Agung UMNO pada bulan Mac tahun tersebut. Sebuah jawatankuasa kecil telah disusun untuk membantu dalam proses penggubalan deraf ucapan tersebut, yang mana saya merupakan salah seorang pegawai kepada Pak Lah pada ketika itu, dan menjadi salah seorang ahli muda dalam jawatankuasa tersebut. Pena utama dalam jawatankuasa tersebut dipegang oleh Datuk Seri Annuar Zaini, mantan Pengerusi Bernama yang juga merupakan salah seorang penasihat yang dipercayai oleh Pak Lah. Dalam deraf ucapan pertama yang dirangka oleh Datuk Seri Annuar Zaini, beliau menekankan kepada konsep “warga” sebagai suatu teras dan tonggak utama yang mendasari retorika deraf ucapan tersebut.

Maka setiap kali saya bersemuka dengan perkataan “warga” ini, saya senantiasa teringat akan proses penggubalan ucapan tersebut, yang sememangnya sarat dengan melankolia dan juga kesyukuran. Hakikatnya, pada waktu Perhimpunan Agung itu, telah jelas bahawa UMNO telah hilang kepercayaan kepada Pak Lah, dan Timbalan beliau pada ketika itu iaitu Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak telahpun ditunjuk sebagai “heir apparent” untuk jawatan Presiden dan Perdana Menteri. Pak Lah pada ketika itu sememangnya dirundung kesedihan, khususnya dengan pencapaian UMNO dan Barisan Nasional yang begitu mengecewakan dalam pilihanraya umum yang berlangsung pada bulan Mac 2008.

Warga. Istilah ini jarang sekali kita ketemui, melainkan dalam konteks perkataan “warganegara” yang tertera pada setiap kad pengenalan seseorang rakyat Malaysia. Dan istilah “warga” ini, pada hemat saya, adalah suatu istilah yang terpinggir, yang sepatutnya lebih menonjol dalam perbahasan dan perbincangan politik dan budaya nasional, tetapi amat kurang mendapat perhatian.

Istilah yang lebih popular, iaitu “rakyat”, adalah suatu istilah yang bersifat “leper”, yang sekadar menerangkan: ya, inilah orang-orang yang menjadi populasi dalam sesebuah negara. Deskriptif semata-mata. Memanglah perkataan “rakyat” itu ada kaitan yang menghunus – yang membandingkan “rakyat” dibawah “raja
”, yang meletakkan “rakyat” sebagai kuasa dan pemegang daulat dalam sesebuah demokrasi.

Tetapi bandingkan pula dengan istilah “warga”, yang mengimbau hakikat hak-hak dan jaminan buat seseorang yang telah termaktub dalam perlembagaan sesebuah negara. Jika dibandingkan dengan istilah “rakyat”, maka perkataan “warga” itu pada saya lebih “bujur” sifatnya: seseorang warga itu diiktiraf sebagai seseorang yang mempunyai hak di bawah perlembagaan negara, sebagai seseorang yang mendapat pelbagai jaminan hasil dari kewargaannya – keselamatan diri, kebebasan bersuara, kebebasan berpersatuan, perlindungan daripada perbuatan jenayah dan sebagainya. Seseorang warga itu juga adalah seorang yang hakikatnya berpunya kepada dan dipunyai oleh sesebuah negara: kewargaan adalah sifat seseorang yang bernaung kepada negara tanah tumpah darahnya, dan menaungi kedaulatan dan ketunjangan demokrasi dalam negara tersebut.

Bagi saya perkataan warga ini tepat sungguh dengan falsafah politik Pak Lah yang sarat dengan kerahmanan dan kerahiman: rahimnya seseorang pemimpin Melayu kepada masyarakat dan parti pimpinannya tidak boleh sesekali memadamkan kerahmanan yang perlu bagi menaungi dan memimpin seluruh negarabangsa Malaysia yang majmuk. Warga itu merujuk kepada hak-hak dan jaminan yang senantiasa absah, selagi wujud negara dan masyarakat Malaysia di bumi tempat kita berdiri ini.

Kesinambungan Malaysia sebagai sebuah negarabangsa hanya boleh wujud sekiranya kita mengambil insaf akan istilah warga ini, dan menyulami sepenuhnya falsafah kewargaan dalam politik dan budaya negara kita. Kita semua sebagai warga Malaysia telah mengambil ikrar taat setia kepada Raja dan Negara, dan ikrar ini seharusnya senantiasa diulangtegas dalam kehidupan seharian kita. Jangan terlalu taksub dengan kepompong bangsa dan agama kita masing-masing, sehingga kita lupa bahawa hakikat kewargaan Malaysia adalah asas serta benteng kewujudan dan kemajuan negara yang kita kongsi dan bina bersama.

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On Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

I just read this recently, and finished the book satisfied but also deeply ruminative.

The clue to this book is in the title: it is about a collection of people living in a poor rural town in the South of the United States of America, each plagued by loneliness in their own way.

The bar owner who loses his wife. The young girl making her way awkwardly into adulthood, and nursing a passion for music that she can share with no one else. The vagabond who sees too keenly the injustices around him, and is bursting with rage and socialist righteousness. The black man who worked his way up to become a doctor, only to find himself seething and raging against the continued oppression and privations of his people.

They all gravitate around John Singer, a man that most call simply “the mute”. Indeed, The Mute was supposed to be the original title of the novel, written at the age of 23 by a precocious young author. Almost unique for her time, Carson McCullers wrote of the sorrows and joys of simple people, and masters that very difficult art of shading each character’s narrative so that the reader can almost feel themselves living in the minds of these persons as they make their way through unremitting sadness and misfortunes, in a time when very few cared for the plight of the black man, or the poor.

I enjoyed this book. Each character was believable in their own individual loneliness, and as each of them sought the company of the mute to pour out their worries and sorrows, the reader gets a sense of how difficult life can get. The mute himself, even as he plays the oblique role of being the receptacle of others’ deepest concerns, is struggling with his own loneliness, which culminates in a tragic and senseless ending.

This was a 4-star read. Some rough edges here and there, understandable in the context of a young author finding her footing, but still miles ahead of many writers out there. Recommended.

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Tentang Merewang

Pening serabut 
Minda senggugut 
Semuanya kalut 
Otak di lutut 

Masa terbuang
Bincang bercabang
Kata merewang 
Hasilnya kurang 

Asyik berlafzi 
Lazat sendiri 
Pulang berlari
Masa merugi.
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Tentang Kecondongan

Aku rasa seakan condong
Bagai nyawa ini dihurung
Laut semut merah menyala
Gigit jerit mencebis nyawa

Runcing jiwa kala terhujung
Bagai nyawa ini terpuntung
Dinyah tepi tanpa berbelas
Habis madu sepah terhampas

Bagai karam ditengah laut
Pada Engkau aku berpaut
Lama sudah jiwa terumbang
Ampunkan 'ku sebelum tumbang.
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On Literary Heroes

This week has seen the passing of two of my literary heroes: Cormac McCarthy and Robert Gottlieb. This essay will serve as an inadequate eulogy to two people who have, in different ways, shaped my recent literary tastes and sensibilities.

Cormac McCarthy is today celebrated in the public mind mainly for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Road, which depicts a father-son relationship in a harrowing dystopian world.

But the core of his oeuvre, and I think what will make his legacy truly lasting, is what I think of as his “cowboy” novels – the Border trilogy (which is made up of All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain), No Country for Old Men, and what many consider to be his masterpiece, Blood Meridian.

All these novels have a shared style and mood: taciturn protagonists, terse dialogue, stark depictions of nature and beauty, and an almost tyrannical approach to punctuation (no quotation marks, no semicolons!)

The distinct style of Cormac McCarthy’s novels have often been described as “cinematic”, which probably explains the profusion of Hollywood productions that have been based on his novels: the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men, The Road featuring Vigo Mortensen, All The Pretty Horses featuring Matt Damon.

Sometime late last year, his final two novels were published, a twinned publication of Stella Maris and The Passenger. I was not impressed by the novels on the whole, sadly: the digressions on mathematics and physics were fascinatingly geekcore, but the fantastical elements felt like a warmed-up version of Blood Meridian’s Judge Holden, and the supposedly-unspeakable love at the core of the story did not feel entirely fleshed out or believable. This does not, of course, detract from Cormac McCarthy’s legacy – I still believe he is one of the most important novelists in the English language of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Robert Gottlieb, in contrast, lived a life mostly in relative obscurity, even though, in the literary world, he is a veritable rockstar. The list of those who have benefited from his wise editing is littered with household names and acclaimed authors: Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Robert Caro, Doris Lessing. He was editor of the New Yorker. And he had an unexpected side gig as a longtime member of the board at the New York City Ballet.

I encountered Robert Gottlieb for the first time some years ago, when copies of his memoirs, Avid Reader, hit the shelves of my local bookstore. It still remains emblazoned in my mind that he had finished all seven volumes of Proust over the course of one week while in university!

Both of these men, in their lifetimes and in their own way, changed the ways in which people see the world. The community of readers across the world, of whom I consider myself to be an enthusiastic member, will mourn these men and cherish their legacies.

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Tentang Baris-Baris

Baris baris ini memuji
Hanya Engkau, Tuhan Ikrami
Shair zikir tiada henti
Mengucap salam ke arash tinggi

Baris baris ini meratib
Shukur sungguh padamu Allah
Alam maya beratur tertib
Sembah sujud tiada lelah

Baris baris ini memuja
Hanya Engkau, Seagung Tuhan
Ampun kami pohon selama
Nyawa masih dikandung badan.
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On Literature and Being Human

A few months ago, in a short essay on reading that I had written in reflection of the recent turns in my evolution as a reader, I wrote briefly on how, starting off as someone who was focused mostly on reading histories, biographies and other pieces on nonfiction, I have slowly gotten around to adding more literary and fictional works into my reading diet.

In recent weeks, I have come to the belief that my reading experience and pleasure would be best served by focusing even more on literature, and to reduce even further the mix of nonfiction works in my reading queue.

Let me explain.

Like many, I spent most of my youth believing that “nonfiction” means what it says on the cover: that by reading works of history and biography and science, one would get a better appreciation for the reality of the world that surrounds us. What better way to prepare oneself for the world, than to gain deeper knowledge and appreciation of how that world works: its grand design, the outsized historical figures that direct the currents of politics and nations, the workings of human societies and the vast natural endowments that surround and support those human civilisations, the animals and the trees, and the physics of pebbles as well as planets.

By contrast, the very term “fiction” conveys a certain sense of fakery – why should I spend my time being immersed in the doings and goings of made-up characters in some random person’s imagination? And “literature” added another sheen of (what I then perceived as) stuffiness and pomposity around works of fiction; as if there was a certain class of nonfiction that ought to be elevated above others, by the simple device of approbation from peer writers and the reading public. “Apa yang bagus sangat?” as one would say.

As I mentioned, it was only after marrying a committed lover of literature, that my attitude towards this dichotomy was finally broken. And in more recent weeks, I find myself feeling even more committed to the value and pleasure of reading good literature.

One could ask: what do you think of as “good literature”?

The answer to this, I think, rests in what I believe to be the essential nature of the contribution of literature to the human spirit: by dramatising human dilemmas and struggles and travails in fictional terms (which are often just thinly-veiled depictions of real events), the best authors are able to capture in words and on paper, however fleetingly, essential and timeless truths about human nature and the struggle of existence.

As I mentioned to a good friend recently over coffee, in nowhere else but in literature, I believe, can one human being truly immerse themselves in someone else’s mind and consciousness, to walk in someone else’s shoes. I am thinking here of Victor Hugo’s depiction of Jean Valjean’s internal struggle on whether to give himself up in place of someone else who was mistakenly arrested by the authorities. I am thinking of James Agee’s masterful narration of the inner monologue of Ralph Follet, the alcoholic brother struggling against his addiction and self-loathing. I am reminded here of Tolstoy’s Pierre Bezukhov, and his long journey towards finding himself amidst the hedonism and travails of early 19th century Moscow. Moments in Proust and Austen and Eliot when a smattering of letters and punctuation marks and lines can come together to paint a picture of utter realism in the lives of people who are recognisably human in their frailties and concerns and inner doubts.

This is why I read literature. For pleasure, yes, and to while away the time, certainly. But more than anything, it is through literature, I believe, that we can best get past the superficialities of our mundane existence, to attempt to touch the very core of what makes us truly human.

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On Political Ambition

When I was in university, I got involved in student politics, and got bitten by the politics bug. Perhaps it was natural – at a place like Cambridge, you suddenly find yourself a small fish in a big, big pond, filled with many other fishes, big and small, many of whom have grand ambitions for themselves. I remember, in my earliest days at university, visiting the room of one of my fellow Malaysian students, and noticing a copy of Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs on his bookshelf.

It is a small and flitting memory, but distinct for several reasons.

The first is that after many years of being in high school where I got ribbed often for reading too much, I had found myself in a new social environment, one in which it was almost taken for granted that everyone reads. More than that, it was an environment in which ambitious and competitive young students would often compete to see who has read what. It took a while to get used to this.

The other reason why this was so memorable was that I had finally found myself in a place where mostly everyone would have some opinion on politics, and many others would (often not-so-secretly) harbour ambitions of politics. I remember hearing, in hushed tones, of recently-graduated seniors having been recruited to become a special officer to so-and-so. I had contemporaries who were themselves scions of political dynasties, or hungry to make their own.

Of course, little did I know that coming up to university in the summer of 1997 was soon to thrust me into a world I had scarcely imagined, when the comfortable assumptions of what I thought I knew about Malaysian politics would be exploded by the arrest of Anwar Ibrahim and the rise of Reformasi.

I am old enough now to see friends in university now taking on important jobs in Cabinet, and many others over the years in the halls of government, as speechwriters, as special officers, as political operatives, as aspiring front-line politicians themselves. And of course there are many others who started out with that fire in their eyes – but later on, choosing different paths in life: corporate law, or working in MNCs, or taking up big jobs in GLCs, or investing in private equity.

What I can say, after having lived this long on this earth, and observing others and myself as we wrestle with our own individual hopes and ambitions, is that there is no one right way to live life. The years will come and go, and the fires of youthful ambition, as important as they are, are only as important as you would like them to be.

Know why you are carrying this ambition within you, and if and when you let go, know for whom and why that decision is made. For those who are still in the arena, I congratulate you and I wish you all the very best. In the end, we have nothing and no one to answer to but our own selves, and our Creator who will be waiting for us at the end of this long journey through existence.