APRIL 29 ― Sometimes, films can say so much more than books can. It’s a given that it will be a relatively passive experience, watching a film ― but in that way, when we’re not in control of our perceptive faculties, and we’re just being led by others into new worlds they want to show us, we are in some sense, literally being in another person’s shoes.
Over my Easter break, I watched a few films and among them, the locally produced Ice Kachang Puppy Love. Sounds like a pretty cheesy title for a film, but this supposedly innocent film on childhood romance never quite prepares you for the profundity in its articulation of the issues that pertain to growing up, pursuing dreams, leaving, family problems and how childhood experiences sometimes shape our entire worldview.
I wanted to say it articulated some essentially Malaysian Chinese issues, but in many of these instances these themes transcend beyond a specific cultural and ethnic group.
There’s one theme in the film that’s constantly tugging on my mind ― leaving. Perhaps because it’s personal, but has over the years become political. Towards the end of the film, almost all the key characters leave the small town. To KL to open a coffee shop, to Singapore to pursue higher education, to someplace far away to escape debts. Throughout the film we hear the female lead talking about her desire to go to a faraway place after she finds her father. She did, and left for Singapore thereafter.
Singapore. Not quite the idea of a faraway place to us right now when we think of how we’re more aware of the larger world and how distance (both literally and metaphorically) from one end to the other has been shortened. But to people in that small town, Singapore was their idea of a faraway place.
It’s understandable for a small Chinese town in the 1980s. Definitely more so if your grasp of Malay, the national language, serves as a hindrance in academic progress and at work. My parents went to Singapore for secondary school education in the 1980s, supposedly when the language of instruction was changed to Malay. They sent me to Singapore for secondary education more than seven years ago.
I can’t help but think: this hasn’t quite changed. Today, and even a decade or two ago, this Malaysian Chinese diaspora in Singapore is a phenomenon that’s been politicised, brought up in almost every brain-drain argument and become a source of tension when you talk about Malaysian-Singaporean foreign relations.
Yet sometimes it seems all too natural and human, to desire and to pursue dreams beyond the provincial, in the nearest metropolitan city abound with opportunities. I don’t suppose anyone who goes abroad for work ever thinks about brain-drain, or the consequences of like-minded people who embark on the same path en masse.
Usually their decisions are governed by career opportunities and the perception of economic stability. Most of my uncles were educated overseas and they continued to work and live overseas. Eventually they ended up in Singapore ― not quite home but closer, at least.
I don’t think the notion of returning home, and of Malaysia, holds much sway over them when bread and butter issues such as making ends meet, feeding the family and seeking the best education they can afford for their children take precedence. While at times I do differ, I respect their decisions, and perhaps I can empathise with them, too.
Most of them left Malaysia in their teenage years and have a rather shaky grasp of the Malay language. Indeed this handicap is a very real problem for them in terms of career and social prospects. It would be quite unreasonable to fault them for what we might call “turning their backs” on their motherland, when the premise for the promises of Malaysia hinges quite significantly on communication in the national language. (Again, how justified are we to measure others by our own standards, by our own expectations?)
Granted, this might be what one calls “first world problems” because not many were given opportunities to study abroad in the 80s and 90s to begin with. But what I’m saying is that there simply wasn’t another way, at least (or especially) when they were just starting off and trying to keep their heads above water.
Singapore is to many Malaysian Chinese, what New York is to America and what America is to the world.
Previously I wrote an article on returning to Malaysia ― and yes I still won’t dispute that there are merits for returning home. There are opportunities, albeit of a different kind, to suit a different temperament. There are reasons, and there are non-reasons. Saying that returning and empathizing with others for pursuing their own reasons that are removed from the national question would be setting up a false dilemma.
The nation isn’t what I would say, a natural thing. The concept of nations was conceived by European intellectuals as late as the 19th century. But being human, is. Having desires to do what you feel you should and must do, is. Chasing your dreams and doing justice to all your advantages, is. It is also good to be patriotic, and good to want to contribute, to serve, to simply just return. It’d be great if these two seemingly disparate ideas coalesce, but who’s to say it will or it must?
At 19, my thoughts are in constant flux. If you asked me if I knew what I’d be doing or where I’d be after graduation, the only honest answer I can give you is: I don’t know. But trying to negotiate being your true individual self, and being an individual in society, with all the implications and responsibilities of being a citizen of such-and-such a place, a professional in such-and-such a field, a lover, a sibling or a child with all that ties us to places and people emotionally ― is a neverending conversation with life.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
