Tête-à-tête with a Chinaman!

"Damn, these car batteries do not last!" I cursed as my car refused to start as the battery went kaput. Just one and half years and it had reached the end of its life span! Being a Sunday afternoon, as all the mechanics in the vicinity were closed, I had to send an SOS message to my good old mechanic, Ah Kwan. He obliged and asked me to pick up one of his workers for rescue.
So, I picked this late 40s worker of Ah Kwan. While driving him to my car, I engaged in a tête-à-tête with him, tea followed after his job was done.
Incidentally, I had just finished reading a small book on the Malaysian Chinese educationist, Mr Lim Lian Geok, who lost his teaching license and citizenship in1961. It was changing times for Malayan education. After the Barnes' report (to abolish vernacular schools) and later the Rahman and Razak reports (which demanded Malay language as the premier language), there was increased pressure to change the curriculum of Malaysian Chinese education. His overzealous efforts to fight to put Mandarin as one of the official languages of the country and to maintain the status quo in Chinese schools, landed him in hot soup with the ruling party. In fact, he started his job as a dedicated teacher and carried a lot of cloud in the Tunku's days. He was one of the dignitaries at the 1955 Malacca Talk to draft the country's constitution. Political outplay and supporting the wrong faction landed him in his predicament. Along the way, we read about the infamous (by Dr M's standards, whom he called communist) Dong Jiao Zong  which is an alliance between Chinese school teachers and directors of Chinese School committee. After reading the book, I realised that, we as a country are still arguing about the same basic things like language and education like we did more than half a century ago.
So, what did I gather from my little Tête-à-tête with my Chinaman friend?
He seem very savvy about the current happenings in the country, probably you have to give credit to the Chinese media and the evening newspapers. Now you know why suddenly cars stop in the middle of nowhere in the evening traffic jam - it is either to buy papers, to buy 4D results chit or to watch any accident on the other side of the road, as if there is more to lighten up their mundane life!
My mechanic, Ah Keng, knew the latest happening in his country, Malaysia. He grew up with his rubber tapper family in Kuala Pilah., Negeri Sembilan. He was narrating in many words about his carefree childhood days and his experience in indulging in various exotic meats like snakes, wild boar, fox, frogs, dog and even monkeys! He simply cannot imagine how he managed to swallow the monkey meat then!
The conversation then went on to Botak Chin as we were passing Jalan Ipoh where Chin used to reside. As told by many, he too thinks that Botak Chin was 'Robin Hood' - robbing the rich to help the poor. Ah Keng had very strong views about his political stand and his distrust of Malays was quite apparent from his conversation. His son decided neither to follow his father's nor his grandfather's footsteps and have ventured into air conditioning maintenance business.
My conversation also reminded me how things have not changed amongst us, the Malaysian born citizens of non-Malay ethnicity. We are still talking in broken conversational Malay (bahasa pasar) in many syllables of 'L's instead of 'R's as did our grandfathers 50 years previously. Our suspicion among each other is still as strong. Nothing has changed....At the hint of racial sentiment we all flock together, along ethnic lines not as Malaysians in the true sense of the word.