Queen's Park and Jalan Peel

I have a friend called James Waan and in our spare time which is very rare, James takes me to hang out with him and his other friends where we share a couple beers like most guys do. Twice James has taken me to a Starbucks in the middle of a shopping complex and instead of us drinking beer as we usually do we ended up just having coffee and snacks. To be honest, I prefer to be in a bar than at a Starbuck’s by 9 PM on a Friday night. Little did I know that it wasn’t so much of the Starbuck’s that took him there but the place where it is located.

Waan Kam Yoke, 47, is James’ paternal aunty and she joined us at my request to share a little of the location’s history and how it relates to her and basically the Waan family. She called the place Queen’s Park and said she had lived there from her childhood until her Form 5 when she was about 17 or 18 years old. She quickly began to speak of the structures that once graced the place with a sense of melancholy. She said there used to be a Buddhist temple and pointed to the direction where it was, while we all sat at the outside lounge of the Starbuck’s there; and she and her elder brother (James’ father) used to live with their grandmother at the time. She quickly digressed from the topic in excitement to mention that her grandmother still lives and should be over 80 years now by her estimation but she currently resides in Subang Jaya. Returning back to the topic, she described the place as “such a waste” that the place has been converted to a commercial area and the businesses are not doing well either. She said if the temple was still existing it would still draw a crowd to the area and people would still come to worship. I have always known James to be a Christian so I enquired if she was Buddhist and confirmed if my conception of James’ religion was wrong. She said she was a Buddhist and James interrupted to explain that he and his mother are Christians.

On admitting that Jalan Peel (which is the general area) and Queen’s Park could be considered to be their hometown, Miss Waan mentioned again of another loss to the area, her secondary school. She said it was a Convent school and used to be down the road too. She tried her best to be objective about the by tagging them development but through her recollections and body gestures I inferred that is still a little upset and disappointed about the dismantling of the structures like the temple but was reluctant to admit it, probably to remain politically correct being conscious of my camera recording our interaction. She spoke of how even after the structures were demolished the land remained dormant for a period of time and laughed at my suggestion of people being upset over the demolition of a religious structure, telling of how the residents were only concerned with how much monetary compensation they would get.

She denied adamantly of having any memorable romance in her time spent in Jalan Peel and scoffed off the idea with unconvincing laughter.

She admitted that the place still has its appeal because she and her nephew (James) meet there once a week and especially “when James wants something”, much to the dismay of an embarrassed James. She also called the place James’ “2^nd home” but does not ever see herself coming back there to live. She said coming back there was a step back or a downgrade in her life. This made me wonder why she would think so of her childhood home especially since it has such a rich significance in her becoming who she is today. I asked her why, and of she did not have any fund memories of growing up there. I was surprised when she said “there were no good memories”; she only remembers life there as a struggle specifically sharing rooms with her grandmother and brothers. Trying to enforce how bad it was growing in those conditions, she told me of how unhygienic living there was too, that in retrospect she remembers a stream where her brother used to fish and that same stream served as the latrine they used. I found that funny because in my hometown back in Nigeria, it is similar and I wondered why they would fish where people defecated and I was told that the faeces was food for the fish and it was healthy. Ironically she also admitted that she had no bad memories of the place either.

I also lived with my grandmother in her latter years and although she at times was a pain, now and even then while she was alive I cherished those days as some of the best. Maybe it will take losing her grandmother to the inevitable death one day like me, for her to appreciate or at least admit to appreciating those rough times and her time spent at Queen’s Park.

Our Burmese Days

This is a documentary about a family with origins from Burma (now Myanmar) and of their journey to trace their roots. The entire documentary focuses on the mothers’ (Sally) denial of her ties and heritage to Burma as she claimed to be from Hemel Hempstead in the United Kingdom. Her daughter Lindsey filmed and interviewed her mother and uncle, Bill, most of the time trying to uncover why her mother persistently couldn’t admit that she was not British but rather Burmese. They embarked on an emotional journey back to Burma after at least 2 decades of living in England to discover that their matriarch (Sally and Billy’s mother) was long dead and most likely passed away of starvation and that the conditions to which they left the country was almost exactly the same after all these years. While Bill quickly embraced his past and one can even say found some sort of peace, reconciliation and solitude in returning home, Sally expressed contempt, displeasure and uneasiness in being at the place where she spent most of her youth. She occasionally showed genuine nostalgic emotion but she kept trying to convince herself and her daughter that she and all her family are superior to the people they had left behind, holding contempt towards her mother for not putting the maids and the servants “in their place”. Sally never did admit to being a Burmese, but from her reaction to stories told, one can insinuate that she empathised with the mixed race individuals or “Half-caste” as they referred to themselves as, who experienced some level of discrimination from the pure race individuals. That even though she did not seemed to be of mixed race, her class in that society by her parents status and association made it difficult for them to fit in properly.

The journey through their roots lead them to discover some secrets about themselves and their family, including a sexual relationship that was shared with a maid by both Bill and their (Sally and Bill’s) father and also embracing their late mother’s lover. Some might find understanding in Sally dissociation with her roots while others might find her having simply built a superiority complex towards her people and the most logical of them all, in my opinion, is an abuse she must have experienced that scarred her while she was there in her youth to which she is still not willing to share or admit.

Persepolis, Good Muslim – Bad Muslim, & Islam as News

The animated movie “Persepolis” is based on the graphic novel by the same name and is the autobiography of Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian emigrant. It tells of her years as a naïve child when the revolution that removed the Shah (Iran’s ruling monarchy at the time) begun in 1978 and the events that followed afterwards, leading to her going abroad to school. Her family life and the detachment she experienced as a result of her being sent to Europe, where her parents believed she would be free to express herself, are also put into play. Marji, as she was fondly called, saw the first Iranian Revolution from the inside but with the innocence and naivety of a child and she saw, firsthand, how manipulating politics can be; although she did not realise it at the time. The revolution which was championed by the Iranians led to the ousting of the Shah, a monarchy that they considered illegitimate and replaced it with an Islamic reform which they welcomed and it also led to the re-education of the populace, much to the confusion of school children who were initially taught that the Shah was divinely ordained. Jump to her European experience; she continually struggled with her identity as an Iranian as she came to find that the people there did not share her values and could not understand her perception of things. She also found herself a victim of discrimination and had to reinvent herself to fit in and even then could not satisfy her cruel judges. She eventually repatriated to Iran and was no longer the sweet naïve girl that she left as, but instead was this angry, dissatisfied, depressed and westernised woman, quick to classify others like the Europeans she disliked that made her long for her home. She had lost herself and bought into the classification by the West of her people that implied that they were pre-modern. She found herself unable to fit in and was depressed, was always getting into trouble and had experienced a freedom that women had so could no longer tolerate the confinement she found herself in. She eventually left again; still depressed and uncertain what she wanted for herself but influenced by her family history, the West’s notion of how things should be and her inability to stay out of trouble, she was left with no option but to emigrate again.

Islam as News, in contrast draws its analysis from the same period but from the view of an adult, witnessing the inappropriate classification of people from the “Orient” (Middle East and Asia) by people Occidental heritage. The article by the late Palestinian scholar, Edward Said, narrates of how the “West” and the United States in particular are complicit in stirring the “Islamic Revolution” and how they were able to vilify almost every country and region that is of a different cultural heritage. His article which was published in 1980 recognises the end of World War II as the genesis and if not, catalyst of the West versus the Orient political mentality, stating even then how the West used caricatures to portray “Muslims as oil suppliers, as terrorists, and more recently as blood thirsty mobs” (Said 1980). That extract could explain why Marjane was victimised in Europe and ironically is still very relevant to the notions of Islamic nations today.

In Mahmood Mamdani’s Good Muslim, Bad Muslim (2004), he said “Culture Talk has also turned religion into a political category”. He focuses more on the divisions being caused by culture and, written in a much later period than the works of Edward Said, he notes that the end of the Cold War as his turn of the tide even before the 9/11 events (which he also makes reference to) and put that in contrast to Said’s World War II’s end as the defining point.

What is a consistent theme in all 3 narratives is the notion of the West versus the Orient. Marjane experienced it when she emigrated and practised it when she returned and both authors, a time capsule between them, try to rationalise why this trend exist and its origins; but the undeniable here is that it exists and irrespective of the different approaches by some to bridge that gap and understand its causes and come up with resolutions, it is still on-going.

The Big Durian

The scene that stood out to me was the scene that showed from a newspaper photo, Private Adams’ expression while he was being taken into custody by the police and military. I found it interesting because, for someone who had just shot and killed people, held a city hostage and needed negotiating to stand down, he looked happy and successful, with no signs of fear, which was contrary to the narrative saying he was scared.

It was rumoured that his brother was allegedly murdered by a member of the regional monarchies and there was no justice expected to come off his death. His brother was alleged to have been employed by the said “Agong”.

She said that she noticed a look of “freedom” on Private Adams’ face and that is what she wanted to feel. While others were afraid of him she was not but rather she envied him.

The “Historical Vantage” point, in my opinion was at the genesis of a political, social and academic reform which the opposition parties were trying to push for in the late 1980s. He subtly suggests that the shooting could have been a distraction to the on-going distabilising events which were occurring.

In the present, he shows disappointment that the younger generations are oblivious to those events among others. He touches on how Malaysians had grown since the racial riots of 1969, stating the fears of those who experienced it (1987 shooting) expected racial reprisals and were somewhat surprised when it did not happen. It also help mold the current political atmosphere, as the then Deputy Prime Minister (Anwar) became the opposition leader, flipping on everything that he had earlier on claimed to believe in and started the “Reformasi” movement.

Note: Anwar has attempted to shape perceptions of his movement across the parliamentary aisle by speaking of continuities between his political values and policies during his 16 years in the BN and his “Reformasi” politics.

He draws a connection from 1969 to 1987 to 1990s to his present day. 1987 was pivotal in carving the steady improving Malaysian socio-political atmosphere.

: LIEW KUNG YU EXHIBITION

The ‘Cadangan-cadangan Untuk Negaraku’ (Proposals for My Country) collection, by Liew Kung Yu is an outstanding representation of photographic artistry at a very high level. The larger than life multi-coloured, expression is a captivating collection of abstract representation of Malaysia. Liew uses methods he had picked up in years as a photography student and scholar to construct this masterpiece in its own right. One cannot but draw similarities from this works and that of his mentor and teacher Fern Helfand’s 1986 work ‘Tourists at the Great Wall’ (Langenbach 2009), where she used pictures of tourists at the Great Wall of China taking pictures and combined them in a panoramic collage and giving an eerie feeling of being watched by the work as much as you are watching the work. Liew, so as not to be accused of mimicry used this influence of collages and developed his own mastery and style. He inculcated jigsaw cuttings, scratching, painting, sculptural constructions, and stitched photo-costumes for street performances (Puteri Oriental) into his expressions. The amalgamation of all these techniques when looking upon the finished works, gives a sense of life to the pictures which have a 3 dimensional illusionary perception to it. Most obvious in his works is the photo-landscaping he employs to tell his story which at first glance resembles a simple celebration of the diversity, history, cultures and classification of modern day Malaysia; but at a closer glance the abstract cannot but be insinuated of the works. As stated in Ray Langenbach’s article ‘Staged and Askew: Liew Kung Yu’s Interrogation of the Lens’ (2009), “The modernist kitsch of Komtar has led him to other manifestations of political, monumental and architectural kitsch”, referring to Liew’s earlier work ‘Komtar’ which at first glance comes off as a “paeans” to Komtar but is actually a parody or “humorous critique of urban decay”.

When interpreted in the context of Anthony Milner’s ‘Historians Writing Nations: Malaysian Contests’, you may appreciate the abstract ideology behind his works. Milner tells of Malaysia and its fight for and eventual achievement of independence (Merdeka) and what it meant to the different stakeholders, beneficiaries and citizens of the Malaysian Nation (Bangsa Malaysia). He speaks of the unification of a nation but the inconsistency in the narration of the sequence of events that led to the ultimate goal, indirectly referring to the division or segregation among the different races that share a common history and homeland. Different races of the Nation-state have different interpretations of the roles that each race played in the establishment of the state which still reflect in the social and political status that each race holds even in this modern day. In Liew’s work, he distinctively envelopes Malaysia and its people in a frame in each photograph but the irony is within these uniting frames there are still individual envelopes and groups used in classifying the populace. A good example of this is in the piece ‘Bandar Sri Tiang Kolom’; he celebrates the aesthetic in the less glamorous in his four different collages. One shows the beauty of royalty, another the lavish, a third the middle-class and then the rural and finally a fifth dedicated to his vision of the future.

All-in-all, the Liew Kung Yu exhibition portrays impressive qualities and when closely studied, you cannot help but notice the humour, witty sarcasm, a uniting message and is a typical kitsch of an artwork.