Selamat Hari Raya - Somethings are amiss

To my Muslim relatives and friends, it is that time of the year to wish them Selamat Hari Raya.

For the last 15 years or so, I can't help but notice that the way it impacts me has steadily diminished.

Now in my mid-50s, I recall as a schoolboy visiting classmates and accompanying my parents to visit their friends and our neighbours during Hari Raya.

Usually, there would be no less than half a dozen homes to visit as a minimum. The last decade or more, its usually just one point of call - an old family friend who has a great open house and unusually for these times, free flowing spirits and home cooked food. Mind you, he cooks himself for about at least 150 people over the day - most trooping in for the "spirits".

I have a vast number of Malay colleagues and friends and over the Buka Puasa season, would have met each at least on one occasion at one of the must-attend functions. Sometimes as many as five or six times. Yet, (dare I ask), how come no one invites the likes of me anymore for Hari Raya functions?

Exclude the company hosted and company sponsored ones - where you just go and "mark attendance" and scoot off to make way for others to have a seat.

What has happened to the Hari Raya I used to enjoy as a young boy? Has it evolved to something else? Or, maybe is it my place now to just enjoy the gazetted paid holiday ?

In my early years of working - the 1980s - I was hard pressed to attend every invitation I got. Work colleagues, ex-classmates, ex-college mates would all warmly invite and I made it a point to attend every invitation I received - whether staff, colleague or sports buddies.

However far the kampung was then - Kajang, Banting, Port Klang - I went. I remember a particular staff of mine. She was a daily paid packer and she came by bus daily from Kajang to Petaling Jaya.

Her house in the kampung, adjacent to a stream was a great place to visit. Her rendangs were the best. The house, so humble but very clean was dignified. Her family always welcomed my wife and I warmly - maybe because we took the trouble to travel and look for the house (it got more difficult every year with old landmarks disappearing and new ones coming up). Maybe because I was her boss. Whatever, it was warmth and hospitality.

I wonder if the generation after her practises the same. My children, now in their 20s, never got to visit their classmates from school for Hari Raya for whatever reason. I suspect, most of them left the city so there was nowhere to visit.

Maybe they did not have many Muslim friends left in secondary school compared with primary school. They have no recollection of Hari Raya visits other than with me to my generation of friends and family. (I stress "family" because these days, it is unusual if you do not have a relative married to a Malay/Muslim).

Instead, we have the big taxpayer funded open houses by politicians and corporate bigwigs. I do not attend such functions simply because there is no fellowship. As long as a guest has had something to eat, it is considered job done.

Maybe today's children are only aware of this as Hari Raya. They have not experienced going to the neighbours, or the neighbours sending trays of kuih, etc. Something has gone for good.

To an extent, I blame the hotels for this. The marketing exercise to make Buka Puasa what it is has in a sense rendered the entire month of Ramadhan as Hari Raya - feast every evening. By the time Hari Raya actually arrives, a fatigue of sorts sets in and respite is sought by going away.

For those who experienced the different festivals in the 1950s - perhaps up to the early 1980's - I doubt these times will appear again. Cherish the memories. The country has either taken a wrong turn on its highway somewhere or we have been hijacked by individuals on the journey without realising so till its too late.

Selamat Hari Raya.

* Ice Cream Seller reads The Malaysian Insider.