AUG 27 — I was born on 31 August, exactly ten years after Merdeka.

Since I could remember, my late dad would tell me, “You must love Malaysia more than everyone else.” I never questioned it. Somehow, those words sank deep into me. Malaysia was never just the country written on my birth certificate. Loving her became part of my darah daging.

I am Malaysian Tamil. I grew up in a Tamil-speaking home, although today I speak mostly Malay and English. My favourite food is Laksa Kedah, which I ate almost every day in school because my classmate Rozitah’s father ran the laksa stall in our canteen.

Truth be told, I don’t really know what “my culture” is.

My parents never raised us to be “Indian-Indian”. We weren’t forced to practise certain traditions or speak only Tamil. They simply raised us as people, and I will always be grateful for that.

My first neighbours and my first friends, from the time we were practically toddlers, were Malay. Some are still my friends today. I grew up balik kampung with them, eating in their homes, celebrating with their families, playing with their cousins and being surrounded by their aunties and uncles.

Nobody taught me Malay culture. I lived it.

And so much of the adab I carry today, I learnt from the Malays around me.

Bending slightly when passing in front of an older person. Cium tangan. How to address an elder. How to speak respectfully. How respect isn’t just something you say, but something you show in the way you carry yourself.

I loved the closeness of Malay families too. Perhaps because my own family was small, those big families fascinated me. But I never felt as though I was experiencing somebody else’s culture.

It just felt like Malaysia.

Then in 2018, my friend Elida used two words in a Facebook comment that went straight into my heart:

Saudara senegara.

I have never forgotten them.

There is something about those words that expresses Malaysia better than I ever could. We aren’t merely citizens living within the same borders. We are saudara. We share a home.

Since then, I have looked at Malaysians that way. Even those I disagree with. Even those who make me angry. Even the ones I sometimes cannot stand.

Still, saudara senegara.

Perhaps that is why I find it painful when people insist on putting us into ethnic boxes. I have been called a “race traitor”. I have been told that I have “internalised racism” simply because I embrace being Malaysian so openly.

But why should loving what is Malaysian require me to surrender anything?

I don’t become less Tamil because I speak Malay. I don’t lose my ancestry because I love Laksa Kedah. I don’t betray my community because some of the adab I carry came from Malay families who welcomed me into their lives.

I would have been a tortured soul if I had been expected to live within only one ethnic and cultural identity.

Because that isn’t me.

My Malaysia is Tamil spoken at home and Malay and English spoken everywhere else. It is Laksa Kedah in a school canteen. It is balik kampung. It is cium tangan. It is eating somebody else’s mother’s cooking and never feeling like a guest.

And maybe that is what I wish we could remember again.

Before we became so consumed with race. Before everything had to be separated into yours and mine. Before we forgot that living together is about more than tolerating one another.

Malaysia should feel like belonging.

When I think of my country, I don’t feel something intellectual that I can neatly explain. I feel it somewhere much deeper. There is pride, protectiveness, affection and sometimes even pain, because you can only hurt this much over something you love this much.

Malaysia is in the languages I speak, the food I crave, the manners I carry, the friendships I treasure and the way I look at another Malaysian and think, saudara senegara.

It is my darah daging.

Malaysia is in my blood, in my breath, in every part of me.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.