I was back to my “real” home town for the weekend in conjunction with the temple festival that gonna held here. Triang, a small “cowboy” town in southern Pahang where the majorities are Chinese and followed by Malays and Indians. I was brought up here where I would call home although from the aspect of infrastructures, Triang are way backward compare to the place i live now.
As an Indian who went to mandarin medium school in the area where Chinese are majority, I was never been discriminated as an Indian. I was always treated equally among my friends and the same happen when i moved on to secondary, always I’ll be seen hanging around with my “ah beng” buddies around, playing the so called Chinese conquered games like table tennis, badminton and mainly, basketball where i was the only real black sheep in the school team.
So this makes other Indians from the same school feel uncomfortable and me branded as cocky Chinese wannabe, which is so not true. I never had any Indian friends and it makes me nervous to mingle around with them afraid that my way of communication and socializing skill in Tamil would scare them away. The fluent Tamil speaking vicknes that you are seeing now is someone who don’t even know how to say Monday ( thinggal kilamai) to Friday (velli kilamai) in his own mother tongue.
Time goes by, I was in 5th form and i started to feel bad for not talking with other Indian friends for so many years and i never get to know them throughout my schooling age. I made up my mind and said “maire satu” ( which means fcuk it la), so what if they gonna laugh at my Tamil and i go ahead and approached the guys and started to play football with them instead of my old bunch of friends. I tried to bring in more Chinese friends into football and mixing around with each other. At one point, i felt that i should have started to mix around with all of them earlier when one of my friend told me that they hated me for being snobbish and “lansee” just because I’m from the 1st class and being the only Indian being there. I felt that I wouldn’t have got all the bad name which is totally not me if i threw away my complex and socialized rite. However, I managed to wash away all the bad name within month after i started to get together with all my friends regardless of race and religion. then vicky was a clean boy.
SPM (O level) over, and all headed towards their direction of life. Slowly, everyone tend to forget about the place they grew up and started to rush for their goals in big cities like KL, Penang and Singapore with the dream of earning big bucks and driving big cars. All of us only comes back here during festive seasons like Chinese New Year or Temple festivals in Triang, and I’m not the exceptional for this, lolz.
So I was kind of nervous before go to the temple for the festival ritual because i will definitely will look like a stranger to the crowd as I’ve never been to the festival for more than 7 years. As expected, the younger generation was looking at me like I’m an alien and the elders are looking at me with the welcoming look but the face clearly shows that they couldn’t recall the familiar face.
And thank to god, after being a “blacksheep” in the crowd, I met my schoolmate, Ananth and he was excited when i greeted him. We were talking and talking non-stop (out side the temple) and asking each other hows life going on. He wasn’t really in the good shape and asked if there’s anything I can help him out. I offered him few opportunities and gave him my contact number and told him to keep in touch and let me know if he needs anything in future. He looked at me with the touched kinda expression and he said that, no one had respected him or his other friends whom are not doing really well at the moment. Even his close friends whom seems to luckily got a bit better results than him secured a good job in Singapore and KL acts as if they don’t know him if the bump into each other in town. And those are the friends that “joint ventured” with him to criticize me at my back saying that I’m cocky and stuff. He said even some of those so called book worm type, act snobbish and as if they are hell of great and tend to ignore him as if he never existed in their life. He even added that another old friend of him told him straight to the face that
Well, I felt shy when he praised me like that but I felt more hurt to know that even Indians in Triang behave is such cheap manner. We are being categorized as the minority everywhere, if not an Indian, who will respect another Indian. If such simple awareness is not within one, then not one HINDRAF but even 100’s of Uthayakumar cant help to change the nation. Whom are to be blame? The family for the brought up? or the individual whom chose to be a jerk?
I didn’t know a warm smile and a friendly chat would help another. I felt that I also play a small role as “humanitarian” bringing the I-Brand a reality. What’s I-branding? haha, it’s something simple yet its not that everyone are aware of. It’s coming…..
