Switched On

My friend Edwin and I have lately fallen into a mode of mutual respect. I admire his amazing sense of composition and technical know-how in the photographs he displays on KLDP - which pampers his ego; and he talks of my writing as if my sentences were constructed of gems strung together - which pampers mine. So for the moment, our Tiger stripes are in sync and there is harmony between us.

With childhood friends, familiarity tends to breed a blind spot over appreciation. There is much beauty and talent I see in each one of my inner circle friends but I cannot remember the last time I told them so. It's as time-enduring friendship is a tacit approval of who you are and everything you will ever do - which in a way, I guess it is. Well, this time, I throw a spanner into the works. I simply must give Edwin kudos for travelling down a less trodden career path. In this town of assembly line lawyers, doctors and investment bankers, try telling people you are an actor and not receive a gushed "Why on earth?!"

Without an actor friend, I doubt if I would be so exposed to the little known shoplot otherwise known as Malaysian Theatre, in this shoppping mall-infatuated city.

Excuse me while I go off on a tangent and vent - KL, the city I live in, is sucked into the powerful vortex of Consumerism - an apparently inescapable fate of this modern age. It is a town where children are brought believing they are allergic to the sun like their snowy-skinned, SK-2-brandishing mothers and prefer to live from one weekend to the next from home to car to shopping mall to car to home. They can name you the latest Dreamworks movies faster than they can islands in the sun. Life may have become more global but certainly less about getting out. It's all Smart this and IT that and less about touch, feel, sense, taste and smell of what's real and yet intangible.

Of course, I once happily surfed the waves of this deluge of designer brands, hot hot trends and the art of being seen in the right outfit. Ahh, yes, I do still gets shivers at the mere mention of a sale, but these days, I also realise that shivers are possible inside a local theatre.

I have almost always gone to the theatre merely in suport of a friend, never for the love of the art. You see, I was (maybe still am) a bit of a blockbuster buff - art house movies, little indie productions and two-bit, low-budget theatre with minimal props have never staved my appetite for big=beautiful.

But to answer your question Edwin, "Yes, The Second Link did indeed restore some faith in Malaysian theatre". But more importantly, it created a new chapter in my book of beliefs - a faith in Malaysian writers. My, do we have a talented pool. I am awed, sincerely amazed and very, very humbled.

After listening to what we pass of as advertisements on TV and God-have-mercy, the ones on the radio, and reading the used-to-death phrase "loved ones" - so much so that it sounds cornier than a corn field, I had closed the door on anything English, Made in Malaysia.

The Second Link reminded me of a sepia-toned era when people were henteel in thought and manner, when Prime Ministers confessed to having soft spots for whiskey and tiger hunting. Back to an age of innocence and face value, before the flag of surpression was waved in the name of national good.

I thank the writers who captured the spirit of Malaysians then, which without their scribbling pens jotting down every innate detail, those who had once tasted it would never be reminded in such technicolour and for those of us who never lived it, never been given the gift of imagining.

I thank the writers who expressed with such honesty the Chinese passion for pork; and for capturing in such heart-wrenching beauty, the grief of a mother who lost a son in the racial riots of 1969 - a story with such clear parallels in my family, that although I was not born then, caused me to feel the pain that was so real to my grandmother. I thank the writers who like magicians who effortlessly pulled out an endless stream of literal gags from their luggage of letters.

I can only ever aspire to be in the same league.

For someone like me who envisioned myself as a bit of a literary artist, The Second Link fed me a bite of humble pie. I apologise for ever lumping Malaysian writers together under the same spool as human waste, for I learn that there are writers and then there are writers. And not all are of the same make.