I love waking up to the sounds of birds chirping near my window, hearing the tinkling bells of my two cats as they run upstairs to greet me the moment they hear my door opening; I love watching my koi swimming in the pond and gobbling up the food pellets I throw; I love looking at my garden - the white purity of my jasmine, the rustling of the bamboo as it moves in the breeze, the soft gurgling of the waterfall as it falls gently over the manmade pond and the bright beautiful faces of my hibiscus - white, pink, orange and yellow. I wish I could see the bright happy smile of my grand daughter every day - surely her grin alone would banish all clouds of gloom!
Like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, there are times when I feel like bursting into song - "All I want is a room somewhere... far away from the cold night air... in some enormous chair oh wouldn't it be loverly...lots of chocolates for me to eat... lots of coal making lots of heat.." And talking of Eliza Doolittle, My Fair lady is one of my favorite films. I love the play - Pygmalion and also the movie that it was turned to.
I think here in Malaysia we have so much that we take everything for granted. We forget sometimes that the peace we enjoy can be taken back by words meant to hurt and disrupt. We all say that we are against racism and yet when we are the favoured race we tend to close an eye and that is something that I hate. In the 60s and 70s when I was growing up in Malacca, race is something that is just there on paper. We never thought of ourselves as Malay, Chinese or Indian. I grew up in a small village in Malacca. My Chinese neighbours had two children - Ah san and Ai lee - both teenagers to my 8 year old self. And yet when my mum had to leave me alone in the house, she'd tell Ah San, a 15 year old Chinese boy to look after me. Sometimes when it rained and my mum could not take me home from my primary school, she'd ask Eddy or Chong - both 17 year olds - to go to my school in her place. Its the innocence of those far off days that I love. Days when I could go to Ranjeet's house and stay over for lunch, with no... or walk with Visalachi to the library to borrow books and then stay at the foot of St Paul's Hill to talk and play without worrying that someone would come to kidnap us - a couple of 8 year olds.
I wish the world can stay safe so that my grand daughter may enjoy her childhood as much as I did mine.
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