The peril of getting older and jaded? I found myself in the same situations I was several years ago, but in spite of getting angry and frustrated, I sighed a deep breath and closed the windows. I read about BERSIH rally with interest but I lacked the sort of ferocity I would have say, 5 years ago. A part of me was grateful that there were so many out there who were willing to sacrifice time and money, put their lives at risk for a better country but another part of me just didn’t really care. When I saw the scores of videos of people getting sprayed with chemical water, my heart ached and I felt sick in the guts. 10 minutes later, I continued on with work and secretly wished they wouldn’t pull something like that in the middle of my event or work meeting in the future.
Have I truly become apathetic?
A good friend of mine, who is Indian, asked me about my opinions on HINDRAF. I told her it’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. It was over MSN and I couldn’t gauge very well but I think she was somewhat taken aback. Thank goodness for 6 years of friendship, she was willing to hear me out. I told her that going by HINDRAF’s logic, chinese would have to start digging their ancestors’ graves and reprimand them for boarding the junks across South East China Sea to Tanah Melayu. Of course knowing the chinese, they would probably keep the jewelleries adorning the corpses first.
I also told her that the HINDRAF movement reflects really badly on them. Whoever that was involved certainly was not fit to be called a Malaysian. The act of seeking monetary compensation from a foreign country for the unfortunate luck of being a Malaysian is not only appalling but also reeks of selfishness. What about us!? (Just kidding). Perhaps they felt that going through the proper channels in Malaysia would not bring on any improvement. Which is true, our government certainly do not have USD 4 trillion to go around. And even if they do, they have to start compensating 60% of the population with USD 24 trillion not including 7% interest rate. HOW?
I understand the essence of HINDRAF struggle is probably for fairness but damn those ka-chings have really made the movement seems a tad too dodgy for me to be serious about. And to be honest with you, what would fairness do to this country? Being the so-called “marginalised” race, I only feel like anything remotely fair in this country would mean that I have 80% of the Malaysia’s population to fight with.
And in all seriousness, I’m really actually pretty happy with the current situation now.