RIFLE RANGE BOY

Migrant stories of yore from Malaysia by Farouk Gulsara Ah Soh with Nand Lal, Saraswati’s son. (Photo taken circa the early 2000s). Courtesy: Farouk Gulsara https://borderlessjournal.com/2023/08/14/belacan/ “There she goes again,” thought Saraswati as she cut vegetables she had never seen in her native country. “Here goes Ah Soh cooking her stinky dish again.” Saraswati, Ah Soh and the rest of the pack are people commonly called fresh off the boat. They hail from various parts of China and India. The loud beating of a metal ladle against a frying pan, accompanied by the shrilling Chinese opera over the radio and her shrieking at her children, need no guessing whose kitchen ‘aroma’ is coming from. Everyone knows Ah Soh is frying belacan , a fermented Malay shrimp paste. https://borderlessjournal.com/2023/08/14/belacan/? This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

I used to be fascinated with the term 'money laundering'. At face value, it looked simple enough - to cleanse money obtained via unsavoury means and to put them in circulation whilst giving them a legitimate source of origin. Was it a coincidence that Al Capone used a laundromat to store and 'cleanse' his ill-gotten gains during Prohibition?   As the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup is in progress, another word frequently mentioned is 'sports washing'. Traditionally sports have been utilised to cement friendships between nations. It has also been used to spur nationalism among its own citizens. For years despotic regimes whitewash their sins with the glamour of sports. During the 1936 Olympics, Hitler tried to paint a new image of a rejuvenated Germany after the humiliating defeat in the trench War and to prove his supremacist Aryan race theory. Sadly, Jesse Owen's achievement simply threw dirt on Hitler's face. Then it was the Argentinan junta who tried to whi...

Velayutham from Pudukkothai It looks like every Malaysian leader who claims to represent the Indian community in the country also wants to bend over backwards to represent Indian migrant workers. Ever since a migrant Indian worker who escaped his abusive employer in Kuala Lumpur to showcase his sufferings on a Tamil Nadu talk show, every leader here, the ruling as well as on the opposition seems to be jumping up and down like an excited kindergarten child wanting to have the last say on the issue. To summarise the point at hand, a 40 years old carpenter from Tamil Nadu came into Malaysia, through an agent, with a tourist visa to work. His agent's arrangement was that he would be placed to commensurate his carpentering experience and that his tourist visa would be converted to a working visa in time. Upon arrival, he found himself having his passport confiscated, sent to be enslaved in a banana-leaf restaurant from 5am to 11pm every day. His wages were withheld, exposed to verbal ab...

Silence (Nishabdham, Tamil; 2020) This film was initially meant to be a silent movie, one without dialogues. It would have probably done better. The dialogue was a killjoy and laughable. A significant proportion of conversation of the film was in English, and that is the one that looks so fake, especially the lines written for Hollywood actor Michael Madson.  It starts off as a paranormal tale but later goes on to give a serial killer angle to the final story. It is predictable with many glaring loopholes in the narration. The cast comprises an ensemble of a few Indian actors (R Madhavan, Anushka Shetty and a few young actresses) and many amateurs.  Forget the story. What fascinated me about this film is how Indians in this story blended into American society. Filmed amidst the lush landscape around the outskirts of Seattle, Washington, we see how the characters mingled seamlessly partaking in what is considered the culture of the local populace. They indulge in classical musi...

The answers on Earth are not easy to come by, especially when it comes to questions about the purpose of Life and ways to steer it. Why some people are born with all the options in life, with a silver spoon, in a rose garden, but are too blind to use them for their benefit while others have all the zest to do all the things in life to better themselves without any opportunities. Assoc Prof Munjed Al Muderi This topic of discussion came up the other day when the story of an Iraqi doctor, now Assoc. Prof. Munjed Al Muderis, who was given a new lease on life in Australia after running away from his birth country flashed in a newsfeed somewhere. Dr Muderis was an ambitious young doctor in an Iraqi University when the Republican Guard showed up and ordered him to mutilate his patients who happened to be Iraqi soldiers. Refusing to conform, as it was against the Hippocratic Oath, he finally had to make a dash out of the country and eventually ended up in Christmas Islands as just a...

It is quite comical that how verses from the same book of the Bible is used on either side of the divide in America on the issue of immigration. Quoting the book of Romans, one side claim that leaders are ordained by God. Hence, their decree is equivalent to God's command on Earth, and the people are dutybound to follow.  Paradoxically, detractors argue that it is taken out of context. Texts that were preceding and after that verse that were omitted.  The Good Book reminded the followers of the times when the people were themselves slaves in Egypt and how they were ill-treated. Everyone is a sojourner on Earth, just passing through. Words like 'feed your enemies if they are hungry, give them a drink if they are thirsty', ' do not reap to the very edges of your field, leave them for the poor and the foreigner',  and 'love your enemy as yourself' may denote that one should for the unfortunate. But life is not so simple. Scholars have decided that the pas...

https://mybukz.tumblr.com/post/175292906152/poem-the-roost-by-farouk-gulsara Credit: FB group: Rawthers Penang circa mid-1960  There was once a time, a few years ago, there was a spate when many of my relatives had given up on their motherland, turned their back on Malaysia and started looking around for greener pastures. I wondered how Mother Malaysia would feel to see one by one, her children, after years of nurturing them, after growing so big and strong, feel compelled to fly away from their roost. Like a proud mother seeing her kids having a mind of their own, she must be immersed in a kind of bitter-sweet feeling. Like a flight of swallows, you came all stocks and barrels, from Swatow, from Coimbatore, Looking for a peace of mind, you scaled the high seas and brine. You were hungry, I fed your soul, you had shivers, I showed you warmth. you were homeless, I gave you home. you were stateless, I was your hope. Under the yellow umbrella, and a piece...

Credit: Pinterest Sarawak, 1950.  A tattooed Orang Ulu nurse and patient. Have you noticed how so often we are made to realise of our shortcomings? We thought the house was spick and span only to receive a metaphorical smack on the head when it is discovered that the stench was actually culminating the years sweeping the dirt under the carpet and the moisture it accumulated year in year out. Our colonial masters left us with a community level medical services network that we could be proud of. In the late 50s and all through the 70s, every gravid mother, parturient and neonate in a village was given personalised attention by the members of the medical team. They took great pleasure in caring for them from the cradle to the grave (when the time is ripe, of course). One of their greatest success stories is the immunisation programme that drastically brought down the incidence of common communicable diseases. Over time, we have become complacent. Lurking beneath the surface so...

Selfie with the Prime Minister (2017) Directors: Nor Arlene Tan, Grace Cho At first I thought it was just a film to showcase the plight of the migrants and the hardship that they had to endure on a daily basis after being swindled by human traffickers and shunned by the Malaysian society at large. Well it is that and much more, but it tries putting it in a light hearted manner. It tells the tale of a selfie crazy migrant worker who goes around taking pictures of himself against the backdrop of the landscape around the country. As he introduced himself, he made a blooper (or was it is on intention, I wondered!). He introduced himself as Ziaur Rahman from Bangla... er, Myanmar. What kind of person would forget his country of origin. Then it clicked. Ziaur is a Rohinya from Arakhine State whose people are is in great turmoil as we speak. A bit of history on the origins of the Rohinyas. They occupy the Western part of Burma neighbouring Bengal and they were recruited by the Britis...

Bhaji on the Beach (1994) Director: Gurinder Chada It is quite clear. Man is always restless. He is never happy with anything. He is always looking for greener pastures. It may be his inborn desire to spread his wings, to improve himself and subsequently propel mankind to higher of achievement. But, what is this achievement? Does progress technological advancement, ease of living or carrying out the traditions set out by our fathers and creating a peaceful world where everyone can hold hands together, look at each other and say 'Joy to the world, joy boys and girls, joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea and the joy to you and me!'? We seem to uproot from their native country, leave stock and barrel and explore greener pastures with a chest full of hope that their newfound motherland would be a land of milk and money. Surprise, surprise. True, some of the things that the new country has to offer are worlds apart with what they grew up. But, their sojourn also marks the...

Bread and Roses (2000) Director: Ken Loach Staying true to what Nietzsche was saying about masters, slaves and master morality, the economic migrants put their lives at stake to get to be like their masters. They (the migrants) yearn to be like the masters; speaking their language, dressing like them and abandoning their age-old traditions. Whatever the masters did was good and their own self-depreciating. They achieve what they want, but they are still not happy. They have a kind of self-realisation. They realise that their back-breaking endeavours are only to make the masters' life comfortable at the expense of their (slave's) health and life. They rebel, demanding appropriate recognition and remunerations. That is when the boat starts to rock. The masters do not like all these melodramas. After all, there are many other newcomers ever-ready to fit into the workers' shoes. The master's continuity of comfort and high-brow lifestyle is of supreme importance. Hence...

There must be something wrong with our top down approach in teaching History to our young ones. And what do you expect from the politicians who always keep changing the origin and the course of history as they fancy to befit their bedevilled agenda? The real history of a civilisation and a nation should be rightly learnt from a ground-up manner. The real story lies hidden amongst the many untold narrations of the little people, the fabric who make the nation, not the generals and warlords who look at events of the day through their rose tinted glasses who would want themselves to be portrayed in Annals of times as heroes. Many such stories of the ordinary people remain untold in this country. Their viewpoints had never been seen as sexy or newsworthy. After all, they are just economic migrants in pursuit of survival from a land already in ruins. What do they know? They are sometimes viewed by the earlier dwellers as just snatchers of the country's wealth to send it...

Aylan Kurdi at Bodrum Beach It was just a picture to don the morning papers to say what reporters do best. Some of their photographs become international icons of a bygone era. Every living soul would be instantly aware of the American atrocity in Vietnam at one look of the picture of napalm struck confused girl running aimlessly with burnt clothes. This picture the dead toddler by the Turkish beach may one day be the reminder of the danger of stirring of a hornet in the highly volatile region of Middle East. For the perpetrators, the US, it is a European problem, not theirs. No rubber dinghies would traverse the Atlantic to reach their shores. You think a picture is just a picture, but you would be amazed at the dynamics and rhetoric that goes through before and after it goes to print. A dead body polluting the beach of a bourgeois beach resort. The child has no life. Death has engulfed him, but the picture is subtle enough not to appear gory. The violence and unc...

Migrating to Australia, good meh? Authors: Ken And Michael Soong. In the typical conceited Malaysian fashion complacent with his comfort zone and would not lift his finger to help his helpless neighbour, most of my friends who saw the title of the book were quick and forthcoming with their unsolicited advice, went on a with unpunctuated liberal last words. "You don't need read a book to know that, come here, I'll tell you!" they said. Sure, it is easy to go on a rant on the merits and demerits of migration, the push and pull factors, of political and economic refuge. Sure, our forefathers took the bold step of giving up they had, which is what they never had, as times were bad then. It was a question of whether staying for a saviour to turn up to save the day, to become a statistic or plunge into the pit of uncertainty. Those were different times with different needs. We have come a long way from living to survive to living to prosper. This book, in my view, g...