To win the mind and heart of the people...
Showing posts with label emergency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emergency. Show all posts
Wednesday, 12 June 2019
Monday, 8 October 2018
Of espionage, fags and blocks...
Confessions. For years I have been going to his house functions only to listen to his stories. All the small talks with the other guests just bore me so quickly; his presence was the motivating factor that drew me there. With his ever-smiling demure and his stories that transport me to a time when my country was a fledgeling confluence of people trying to stand together under the shade of a flag of a country named Malaya, Uncle Kesavan was the reason I was there.
Now aged 84 years old, he is still so passionate about his work that he will painstakingly tell every detail of the time when he was almost working like a secret agent, minus the licence to kill. His team, of the Malaysian Royal Police, was the pioneer in the heeding times of the communist insurgency. They were sent to the UK to learn the then-novel way to intercept communists' radio transmissions. From the stories, or rather life experiences, that he narrated, he must be easily thousands of unsung heroes in this country who are yet to be given due recognition.
He is a living example of how one can give up smoking just at the snuffing of a cigarette butt. It was a time when he was almost in his late 50s when he fulfilled his pilgrimage at a holy shrine in India. Due to the pressures of his work and the company he kept, he was already a chain smoker, burning 60 sticks daily. After descending the hill that held the deity of his liking after completing his religious obligations, he lit his first 'post-Enlightenment' fag. He felt an instant dislike for it. Thinking that the stick was a defective one and he lit another. And that was the last stick of cigarette that he ever held. He is living proof that willpower alone (maybe with a bit of divine intervention) can stop any addiction.
Then a few years later, after losing his dear beloved and fulfilling his fatherly duties, he felt a little queasy over his chest. To the utter disbelief of the attending medical practitioners, he was diagnosed to have four critical blockages in his coronary vessels. He was labelled by the cardiologists as a walking timebomb, saying that his situation was precarious and needed urgent intervention. Contrary to his physicians' advice, Uncle Kesavan, by around 70, decided that his treatment modality should just be masterly inactivity. Despite his doctors' predictions of not lasting Long enough to celebrate the next new year, he defied medical wisdom and is living to tell his stories some fifteen years later, perhaps even outliving some of his learned caregivers. Now and then, we have outliers. He must be one. Now aged 84 years young, he is grinning from ear to ear at the launch of his story in a book written by his daughter.
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S Kesavan PPN, PPM, GSM |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Monday, 19 September 2016
Playing God?

At times of emergency when the social order collapses and everyone is hanging on to their dear lives on a thread, decency, common courtesy and even humanity is a misfit. Does it really? Or is it the place where humanity is put to the acid test?
Heard over a podcast about an incidence at a hospital during the time Hurrican Katrina hit New Orleans. The medical staff thought they were well prepared to handle the crisis, but they soon realised that panic button was hit when the levee broke on the second day. The hospital was flooded and by the third day, power supply was disconnected after the water reached the crucial areas. Mishandling of rescue services saw patients and medical providers stuck with very sick patients and depletion of backup power supply to sustain life. The worse hit were the chronically ill and the ones needing life support. Oxygen supply came to a halt, and the staff had the unenviable task of triaging who deserved the much-needed elixir of life- oxygen. They also had to decide who deserved to be saved first when helicopters eventually arrived. As transporting patients to the helipad on the top floor without elevators was a challenge, morbidly obese patients had to be left behind. Sanitation was a problem; toilets were non-functional.
Many of the patients on life support were literally breathless and dying. Very ill patients were in misery, knowing that they would be left behind due to space constraint in the rescue vessels. Some terminally ill patients were quite miserable. It was in this instance that someone thought of and perhaps administered drugs to the effect of relieving them of their miseries. In other words, maybe higher than usual doses of analgesic in the form opioids were given which proved fatal.
When the dust finally settled on the aftermath of the Katrina brouhaha, an investigation was initiated to determine any mala fide. Even though nobody was convicted, it did, however, spur discussions on the difficult decisions that the health personnel have to endure in their daily workplace and emergency situations, what more in a war zone.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/playing-god/
Wednesday, 3 June 2015
Robin Hood of Clam River forest!
Kaatu Perumal, Folk Hero of Sungai Siput.
Author: Dave Anthony (2015)

They say many great scriptures of yesteryear started off in the oral tradition. The holy scriptures were written many years after it was told and passed on from ear to ear. If we can accept that, why not the many folklores that are bountiful in our country, especially about common people who never made it to the bibliography of our history books as they were dictated by victors and the powers that be.
This was the basis of this small book. It is a novice attempt to bring alive a supposedly 'Robin Hood' type of an anti-hero around the vicinity of Sungai Siput and a few other northern towns in Perak.
The book comprise interviews with many from the geriatric population and their dependants who were children when all of his activities were allegedly going on. As in many oral narrations after a time lapse, the results proved sometimes contradictory and altered depending from which side of the fence they are looking from, the rubber tapper perspective or the the police.
Perumal is said to be a dashing athletic person who was a state footballer and a keen stage actor who would don female attire to give a good impression of female characters in the estate stage dramas. He had early links with the communist party and would fight for the welfare of the estate rubber tappers whenever they were ill-treated by the estate administration, mandors or clerks.

In one of this encounters, he become a fugitive after he killed a man. In many ambushes, Perumal managed to escape being caught by cross dressing as a female. Of course, word went around that he actually possessed magical powers as he was apparently seen at two places at one time and how he mysteriously escaped every time!
Legend has it that Perumal was shot by his own comrades when he wanted to surrender en-bloc with his comrades to the authorities when Malaya attained independence. Amnesty was offered by the Government and he wanted to give up with his band of 'freedom fighters'. Die hard commies were not too keen on civilian life and they gunned him down.
There are many conflicting accounts on Perumal's activities during the Emergency. The official version is that he was the head of CPM of Perak to recruit Malayan Indians. One witness reiterated that Perumal was not killed but seen in Lenggong, Perak as late as 1994!
We have to remember that Perumal had by then attained a demi-god status and everyone wanted to be like him.
The older generation have many stories of 'he says' and 'she says'. There must a figment of truth in their narrations. They did not have mobile devices to pixelise their every action like now. Oral tradition was the only way then. And many parts of actual event gets altered or lost in translation.
Author: Dave Anthony (2015)

They say many great scriptures of yesteryear started off in the oral tradition. The holy scriptures were written many years after it was told and passed on from ear to ear. If we can accept that, why not the many folklores that are bountiful in our country, especially about common people who never made it to the bibliography of our history books as they were dictated by victors and the powers that be.
This was the basis of this small book. It is a novice attempt to bring alive a supposedly 'Robin Hood' type of an anti-hero around the vicinity of Sungai Siput and a few other northern towns in Perak.
The book comprise interviews with many from the geriatric population and their dependants who were children when all of his activities were allegedly going on. As in many oral narrations after a time lapse, the results proved sometimes contradictory and altered depending from which side of the fence they are looking from, the rubber tapper perspective or the the police.
Perumal is said to be a dashing athletic person who was a state footballer and a keen stage actor who would don female attire to give a good impression of female characters in the estate stage dramas. He had early links with the communist party and would fight for the welfare of the estate rubber tappers whenever they were ill-treated by the estate administration, mandors or clerks.

In one of this encounters, he become a fugitive after he killed a man. In many ambushes, Perumal managed to escape being caught by cross dressing as a female. Of course, word went around that he actually possessed magical powers as he was apparently seen at two places at one time and how he mysteriously escaped every time!
Legend has it that Perumal was shot by his own comrades when he wanted to surrender en-bloc with his comrades to the authorities when Malaya attained independence. Amnesty was offered by the Government and he wanted to give up with his band of 'freedom fighters'. Die hard commies were not too keen on civilian life and they gunned him down.
There are many conflicting accounts on Perumal's activities during the Emergency. The official version is that he was the head of CPM of Perak to recruit Malayan Indians. One witness reiterated that Perumal was not killed but seen in Lenggong, Perak as late as 1994!
We have to remember that Perumal had by then attained a demi-god status and everyone wanted to be like him.
The older generation have many stories of 'he says' and 'she says'. There must a figment of truth in their narrations. They did not have mobile devices to pixelise their every action like now. Oral tradition was the only way then. And many parts of actual event gets altered or lost in translation.
Saturday, 26 October 2013
The other side of HIS-story!
A few years ago when Chin Peng's application to return to Malaysia appeared in the local newspapers, I remember discussing with a close friend about the subject. Being a learnt chap who was fair and aged as he was, I was taken aback by his reaction. Hailing from the district of Tanjung Malim, an area listed as a red light for communists activities, he was quite emotional that Chin Peng should not be allowed back at any cost. He had first hand experience of experiencing the violence and atrocities at the hands of people who looked at communism as the saviour of our nation to escape colonisation of their European masters.
Now, the question is whether CP was a liberator or a CT (communist terrorist). The question is who decides which, is it the victors of ideology or the historians. The fall of communism just convinced the victors that they were right all along. As in all human endeavours, the fallen would always be suppressed by the strong and mighty. Like they say, when caught in a strong current, always hold on to the strong roots by the bank of the river not the dangling branches.
From our childhood, we had been inundated with the idea that communism is some kind of evil teaching that is out to pulverise all kind of successes and liberty that mankind had attained since the time of Adam and Eve. So when I saw it this book at the local shelf in 2009, I grabbed a copy but only got to read it of late.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Too much information can sometimes lead to more questions and confusions. This is what happened to a young Ong Boon Hua (a.k.a. Chin Peng), a veracious reader. At time when the feudal system was meeting its coup de grâce through much human suffering and rising of the workers' class, elitists and intellectuals tried to stir human emotions on equality and humanity. These ideas fascinated many young minds of the mid thirties in the hope of creating an utopia on Earth.
The 1937 Rape of Nanking by the Japanese soldiers left a deep scar on many Chinese all over the world including the first generation migrants. It was only natural that when the Japanese reached our shores in early 40sduring WW2, the Chinese here took up arms against their Eastern intruders. WW2, in a way, woke Malayans from their slumber of nationalistic apathy. The people were also divided into two factions; one who went underground to resist the invaders from the Land of the Rising Sun (MPAJA) and the other who were cooperative and gained from the cycling Hirakiri advocating invaders.
The bumbling British tried to make a comeback with help of the underground army. This cooperation between Force 136 and MPAJA later won many praises when the war was over. The Communist Party which was hoping to liberate Malaya from their colonial masters were taken for a ride. The newer batch of English officers were gung ho and set to reap maximum benefits for their motherland which was in dire straits after the war.
On the Malayan side, poverty was the order of the day. All the three years hard earned savings through the war years came to naught when the returning masters deemed the banana currency non legal tender. The new changes in the British administration and the economy malaise added by hungry mouths became fertile ground for fascination with socialistic and communistic ideologies. These ideologies infiltrated trade unions.
After the war, many MPAJA soldiers were decorated. Chin Peng himself was conferred 2 honorary medals and OBE. Ironically, less than two years later, he became Public Enemy No. 1 with a price on his head!
Post World War 2 era marked the begin of the Cold War and both divides were not giving their territories to the other side so easily, hence the change of heart.
The frustrated guerrillas took matters to their own hands. With the dearth of communication means, the leaders of CPM never could hold a tight rein on their subordinates. On top of that all, it was rife with internal problems. Its early leader, Lai Te, turned out to be a turncoat who sold his comrades to the Japanese and also to the British! He later absconded with a princely sum of money.
Interestingly, CPM received support from sympathetic Malayans and through capitalistic means!
Subsequent shrewd planning and propaganda use of the media on the part of the British crippled CPM.
The crimes of the communists were highlighted making it justified in the public eyes for them to be labelled as 'terrorist'. On the other hand, nefarious acts by the armed forces were muffled. A picture of a British soldier holding 2 'trophy' heads of Chinese communists made it way to the Daily Mail in the UK. It earned a bad reputation for the Brits. The authorities justified their action by the need of identification and census. They argued that they did not have to follow the international set of rules of treating captives as the Emergency period (1948-1960) was not a war! Then there is the Batang Kali massacre where the accusing fingers still point to the English.
This book gives a deep insight into the happenings during the 1955 Baling talk like never seen before in any history textbook. Chin Peng and his men, by then weary of the jungle, wanted to come into the mainstream. They wanted recognition as an entity which fought for the nation and be allowed to operate as a political party. David Marshall, a roaring lawyer from Singapore with his own political ambitions, is seen here a loud steamrolling one sided negotiator who wrecked the peace talk. Tan Cheng Lock, is painted as a true capitalist who seem more interested in loss of business opportunities and monetary wastage rather than liberty and social justice. Political wrangling by the powers of the day forced them to go underground again.
Once again, as world reeled from the post war slump and economy was booming, communist sympathy dwindled. At the end of the day, it is money that talks - a hungry stomach raises the sickle but when hunger is fulfilled, he yearns for peace.
In its early days, CPM seem like a groping organization with no recognition from its well established peers like in Australia and India. It was not even invited for the Communist World Summit in 1960. The Australian delegate who was passing through filled in on the details and suggested the idea of killing strike breakers and traitors.
The damage of public property was supposed to hurt the colonial masters. The first brutal killing of a British planter in Sungai Siput over wage dispute herald the beginning of the Emergency period. Renegade members of CPM killed here and there without the blessings of the Central Committee, allegedly. The assassination of Sir Henry Gurney was apparently a wild shot, unplanned. Guerrillas who wanted food and money hijacked a VIP car by chance. Sir Gurney happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Briggs' plan of creating new villages overnight by forcibly mass transporting villagers unannounced and rationing their food supply may appear inhumane but it helped to fade the sympathy of the Malayan people. This, with the euphoria of a new independent nation and burgeoning prices of raw material in the world market sent the revolutionary ideas further back into the back burner.
A disappointed Chin Peng went into exile in the background, He was a guest of Thailand, Vietnam and China. He received financial support for China and telecommunication aid to transmit communist ideas to Malaysia.
Chin Peng's love affair with communism met more resistance as the days went by. Malaysia started diplomatic relationship with China. CPM in turn had to comply with certain requests made by Malaysia via China. Difference in thinking amongst the Soviet, the Chinese and true Marxists created various factions within CPM with many backstabbing with money as the primary gain. The tired old man called truce in the 80s with the then Inspector General of Police but failed to make it even as to the motherland that he fought for. Ironically, his last breath was on the day sanctioned as Malaysia Day, 16th September 2013 at the age of 88.
Now, the question is whether CP was a liberator or a CT (communist terrorist). The question is who decides which, is it the victors of ideology or the historians. The fall of communism just convinced the victors that they were right all along. As in all human endeavours, the fallen would always be suppressed by the strong and mighty. Like they say, when caught in a strong current, always hold on to the strong roots by the bank of the river not the dangling branches.
A War Hero |
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Too much information can sometimes lead to more questions and confusions. This is what happened to a young Ong Boon Hua (a.k.a. Chin Peng), a veracious reader. At time when the feudal system was meeting its coup de grâce through much human suffering and rising of the workers' class, elitists and intellectuals tried to stir human emotions on equality and humanity. These ideas fascinated many young minds of the mid thirties in the hope of creating an utopia on Earth.
The 1937 Rape of Nanking by the Japanese soldiers left a deep scar on many Chinese all over the world including the first generation migrants. It was only natural that when the Japanese reached our shores in early 40sduring WW2, the Chinese here took up arms against their Eastern intruders. WW2, in a way, woke Malayans from their slumber of nationalistic apathy. The people were also divided into two factions; one who went underground to resist the invaders from the Land of the Rising Sun (MPAJA) and the other who were cooperative and gained from the cycling Hirakiri advocating invaders.
Public Enemy No. 1 |
On the Malayan side, poverty was the order of the day. All the three years hard earned savings through the war years came to naught when the returning masters deemed the banana currency non legal tender. The new changes in the British administration and the economy malaise added by hungry mouths became fertile ground for fascination with socialistic and communistic ideologies. These ideologies infiltrated trade unions.
After the war, many MPAJA soldiers were decorated. Chin Peng himself was conferred 2 honorary medals and OBE. Ironically, less than two years later, he became Public Enemy No. 1 with a price on his head!
Post World War 2 era marked the begin of the Cold War and both divides were not giving their territories to the other side so easily, hence the change of heart.
The frustrated guerrillas took matters to their own hands. With the dearth of communication means, the leaders of CPM never could hold a tight rein on their subordinates. On top of that all, it was rife with internal problems. Its early leader, Lai Te, turned out to be a turncoat who sold his comrades to the Japanese and also to the British! He later absconded with a princely sum of money.
Interestingly, CPM received support from sympathetic Malayans and through capitalistic means!
The crimes of the communists were highlighted making it justified in the public eyes for them to be labelled as 'terrorist'. On the other hand, nefarious acts by the armed forces were muffled. A picture of a British soldier holding 2 'trophy' heads of Chinese communists made it way to the Daily Mail in the UK. It earned a bad reputation for the Brits. The authorities justified their action by the need of identification and census. They argued that they did not have to follow the international set of rules of treating captives as the Emergency period (1948-1960) was not a war! Then there is the Batang Kali massacre where the accusing fingers still point to the English.
This book gives a deep insight into the happenings during the 1955 Baling talk like never seen before in any history textbook. Chin Peng and his men, by then weary of the jungle, wanted to come into the mainstream. They wanted recognition as an entity which fought for the nation and be allowed to operate as a political party. David Marshall, a roaring lawyer from Singapore with his own political ambitions, is seen here a loud steamrolling one sided negotiator who wrecked the peace talk. Tan Cheng Lock, is painted as a true capitalist who seem more interested in loss of business opportunities and monetary wastage rather than liberty and social justice. Political wrangling by the powers of the day forced them to go underground again.
In its early days, CPM seem like a groping organization with no recognition from its well established peers like in Australia and India. It was not even invited for the Communist World Summit in 1960. The Australian delegate who was passing through filled in on the details and suggested the idea of killing strike breakers and traitors.
![]() |
Grinning Royal Marine with his "trophies". |
A disappointed Chin Peng went into exile in the background, He was a guest of Thailand, Vietnam and China. He received financial support for China and telecommunication aid to transmit communist ideas to Malaysia.
Chin Peng's love affair with communism met more resistance as the days went by. Malaysia started diplomatic relationship with China. CPM in turn had to comply with certain requests made by Malaysia via China. Difference in thinking amongst the Soviet, the Chinese and true Marxists created various factions within CPM with many backstabbing with money as the primary gain. The tired old man called truce in the 80s with the then Inspector General of Police but failed to make it even as to the motherland that he fought for. Ironically, his last breath was on the day sanctioned as Malaysia Day, 16th September 2013 at the age of 88.
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
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