Saturday, May 26, 2012

On the Crying Child and the Screaming Maid. An Inconvenient Truth



 I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
O Lord please don't let me be misunderstood
Understood....
Understood....
(Oh Marcello, Regina Spektor)


There's this story about our neighbours, whom even after several years of moving into the house adjacent have never got into the neighbourhood mood with us, or anyone from our house. No exchanges of food during Ramadhan, no talking over the small brick wall that separates our houses, not even a mere greeting upon crossing eyes on the (oh ever so inconvenient) event of us being in front of our houses at the same time.

Upon asking mom about this unusual phenomenon (as I've been away in Australia since they first moved in), she told me about the story of the day everything started. It had to do with my dad.

Once upon a time., the neighbours had a maid at home caring for their children. Maids in Malaysia are basically domestic helpers usually from neighbouring South East Asian countries, who are often entrusted (too much trust I reckon) with the task of keeping the house clean and managing the house chores and also to care for the children. Households with maids are usually those where both parents work the usual office hours.

Being neighbours in the usual terrace house in Malaysia, you cant help but to hear loud noises coming from the adjacent unit, as the houses are just separated by probably some 3 layers of bricks. And on many occasions, my parents used to hear lots of crying and screaming from the house during day time. Specifically , the kids were doing the crying and the maid was doing the screaming.

And upon hearing these events repetitively, my father, being true to his origin of being a Malay, decided that one day we'll break the news to the parents (whom we didn't think knew what was happening while they were away at work) about our suspicion that something dodgy might be happening with the maid and the kids, ever so subtly.

And so one day, upon meeting them outside of the house, dad said, looking at one of the child "oh yang ni ke yg selalu nangis tu?" (which translates to: "oh is this the one that cries all the time?").  All in hopes that the father may pick up on the subtle hint and start thinking about asking further about the issue.

Well that didn’t work.

If anything happened at all, they just stopped interacting with the people from our house. It seemed that they did not appreciate my dad ringing a bell about the probable problem that they were possibly aware of.

However, the maid one day was changed with another maid for some reason I do not know, and do not wish to know, and the crying stopped.

And I heard from mom that she went over to the house next door the other day to visit them and their new baby. Oh joy.

What Im intending to share with you readers today has something to do with that story. Quite recently I was faced with the dilemma of having to tell people about something unpleasant. An inconvenient truth if you will.  Something not fun for the ears to hear, something uncomfortable for the eyes to see, and in this case specifically, something not tasty to the tongue.

This is what I sent two of my friends through the Facebook messaging system (This message had mixed Malay English words in them. Ill translate to English the whole thing):




Salam (friend name)

Just to enlighten (friend name) . incase (friend name) didn’t know. I feel a bit responsible to share with people about this. and I feel a bit hypocritical that we went to sydney for this but didn’t say anything to the people close to us about it.

That day when we went to the Global March to Jerusalem in sydney, the march and the protest was against Max Brenner. Reason being, Max Brenner is a company 100% owned by Israel and it specifically provides benefit and support to branches/teams in the Israeli army.

If you are interested in reading about Max Brenner, you can look up this site:
http://gm2j.com/main/blog/2012/03/30/activists-take-part-in-global-march-to-al-quds-in-australia/

There are companies that are not showing their support to Israel as obviously but the Max Brenner company supports the occupation clearly and proudly.

Just to let you know. (Yes their chocolate is amazing. Ive been there twice before i got to know of this fact) Because in the end the judgment call is wholly individual, based on what we believe and what we think is the right thing to do.

I personally believe that this is a personal choice and people shouldnt have a say on what other people eat or drink or how they spend their money, but just in case you didnt know. I hope though that you knowing this will make a difference.

and even if you decide to not go with this boycott, id appreciate that you dont unknowingly do promotions for them through facebook.

Salam 





Harsh….was it...? Definitely…! Or...

Well some of you may think its harsh, some may not. This depends on how much you know me. And the problem with reading text is that you miss on the intonation and melody of the sentences, you may not get the full picture of what you are reading. And how you interpret what you read unfortunately depends on your emotions at the time. And admittedly, reading something like this, coming out of no where, you would feel offended and hurt. Which is what happened to one of the person I sent this message to. And I'm sorry, dear friend.

Am I to write in length about using words correctly and grammatical and sentence structuring strategies that may be of value when you are trying to write a note to someone about an inconvenient truth? No.

I today would rather write about the struggle that I believe everyone face in this world. You, me, the people next door, the doctors, the politicians, the socialists, the police...Batman…(ok that’s
unnecessary). It’s the struggle of telling people about an inconvenient truth.  

Ignorance is bliss. Something you don’t know wont hurt you. Unfortunately though, something you don’t know may hurt other people. In this instance, us unknowingly spending lots at Max Brenner is directly contributing to the pain and suffering of many Palestinians. But oh well we don’t know them. Their pain and suffering is theirs. Why should I stop doing what I like for people I don’t know and whom I will probably never meet? And as I mentioned in my message to my friends, the decision on how to spend their dollars is their prerogative, no one should have a say in it.

I was merely suggesting that they look up the website in case they didn’t know what was happening, and the latter part, I must admit, sounded unnecessarily  cynical (but that wasn’t my intention at all, the words I used sounded alright to me at the time, honestly. But I have a heart of stone. So pardon me for being direct in my communications most of the time).  

It’s a hard thing really. I mean if you know something is wrong, do you then keep it to yourself; in an effort to make everything appear fun and fluffy and fine. Or do you speak out against it, speak for the truth; at the risk of sparking a misunderstanding  and igniting a relationship problem? It’s like a curse that plagues the people who knows things. Because knowing something and believing in it makes a person want to talk to others about it, its only human.

I guess to simply think about it, many people would have the opinion of consulting yourself about your priorities. Would you rather have something and risk the other? What are your priorities? Would you rather be scorned upon for telling an inconvenient truth? Or would you rather smile and pretend everything is ok? What are your priorities? What are the values that you hold on to?

Does this mean that everyone who are on a mission to tell people about inconvenient truths will be hated? 

Well I don’t think that is necessary. It all comes down to how well are we able to assert ourselves and our opinions to other people. How able are we in singing out sad lyrics in a happy melody? How able are we in tuning our music to our audience. 

An art too hard to master at this young age of mine.

Yours sincerely
Azfar


Its not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me
(The Batman, Batman Begins)