The post-apocalyptic pillbox?

 

T junction - Semenyih, Hulu Langat Batu 18, Genting Peres.

This junction had seen better days. Weekends and holidays used to be marked with a hive of activities, loud banters and laughs. Streams of cyclists enjoyed the mild temperatures, the greenery and the challenge of steep hills leading to Genting Peres. This is the once busy T-junction of Batu 18 Hulu Langat leading to Peres and beyond. Now it stands a sorry sight of the testimony of all the putrifying underhand dealings that had been happening right under our noses.

Used to be a family heirloom, now a staircase
to nowhere.

To me, this reminds me of my own imaginary vision of how the world would be after the apocalyptical World War 3 - a pillbox amidst the man-made ruin, standing proud as the last man standing, a symbol of victory after a zero-sum game.

To the outside world, it was a front for prosperity. Unbeknownst, behind the row of lush greenery that paved the web of highways lay hidden hectares over hectares of government-sanctioned logging to line the pockets of political ballcarriers. As if a signed document can cement the ecosystem that Nature took generations to reach a steady state. 

As a near sexagenarian, looking back at the repeated faux pas that put our nation in the international media for all the wrong reasons, I realise my generation and the generation before me have blood in their hands.

Nowhere in the world would Forces of Nature
systematically slice timber! Yet the authorities
denied issuing any logging licences. Of course,
the issuances were legitimised at whim.

First, they told us the majority of the country held only 5% of its wealth. Let us all prosper together, they said. What was kept away from us was an accurate breakdown of the distribution of wealth. Somehow, statistics from Government-linked companies did not make it to the public pool. Then they said affirmative action would only last 20 years. But then, a cat fed milk daily would shy away from catching mice! Then race supremacy, and religious hegemony ensued. Rubber barons ruled the roost under the cloak of official secret and siege mentality. A halo of grandiosity was painted on its citizens. Like an Emperor with his new clothes, only we were proud of our perceived achievements even when meritocracy took a backseat and the floodgates to brain-drain laid bare open.

The leaders who we thought would take care of various interests either slept on the job or were bought over. Yet they keep painting a rosy picture despite the parched desert terrain that we see. We sensed a feeling of unease when two strange bedfellows, politicians and businessmen, were screaming 'win-win'. Little did we know that 'win-win' never referred to the nation and its citizens but upon themselves!

Meanwhile, as the economic pie got smaller, accentuated by a worldwide pandemic by years of sweeping under the carpet, the stench from years of decay is finally seeped out. It took a global jolt to expose the shortcomings. Do we need another cataclysmic catastrophe to change this crony capitalism, nepotism and unashamed corruption?

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A silent punching bag

Year in year out it is the same story. December would come and like an uninvited guest would gate crash your Christmas party. The intruder would be party, a wet wild kind, to be a ruin to many, leaving its hosts wet and grounded.
It had wrecked property, upset school examination schedules and took lives from time immemorial. It must have happened all over the ages that the house designs in this part of the world involved stilts.

The annual floods this time seem to have hit us a carnage of Titanic proportions. Even medical personnel who normally be at limelight for victims to seek help now find themselves trapped in hospitals. And on top of it all, hospitals traditionally had been built on higher ground!
Rather than finding the root of the problem and thinking of ways to mete the problem with our God given minds, what do we do? Say it is all 'act of God'. Lest we forget, God helps those who help themselves.
We cut, we pilfer, we rape, we mutilate and we flatten Nature and we expect Nature not to retaliate.
Like the holy man who refused to budge from his place of worship when the river threatened to overflow its bank. He sent away a pickup van which came his way. As the tide rose further, he refused a hovercraft. His steadfast rock was the belief that he would be saved by the Almighty.
Now, he was holding on to the tallest pole of his place of worship. A helicopter was swirling around picking up stranded people. "It is okay. I'm good. God will take care of me!" he refused the rope that was hurled from the helicopter at his direction.
Unfortunately, no further aid came his way and he perished.
In the after-life, the holy man managed to secure an audience with the Big Guy. He stated his predicament of sacrificing his whole life for the work of the Divine only to be let down at the last moment through an act perceived as the wrath of God. God replied, "I sent a van, an hovercraft and a helicopter. You just refused to budge from your high chair!"