When I was a schoolkid, the cliche career options were to become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. These professions signified social respect and financial security to our parents, and either by parental prompting or fiat, generations of Malaysian kids set off on that educational grail.
But that was in the middle of the last century when Malaya had yet to chart its own dreams beyond gaining independence from Britain.
That was a time when making a phone call overseas required you to make a booking with Telecoms who would call you half or an hour later to say the connection had been made via a deep oceanic cable. A time when urgent news, usually dire, couldn’t wait for the conveyance of a letter – days old by air, weeks old by sea – to reach you, a postman would deliver a telegram bearing the bad, sad tidings to you.
Heck, that was a time when a slab of roti canai cost 10 cents; a roti telur cost 20 cents, but if you didn’t want the man to profit five cents on the egg, you were allowed to supply him with your own egg.
In the subsequent decades, men have walked on the moon and sent probes beyond the solar system. The DNA code has been broken and the human genome mapped. Billions of people are "netizens", their handphones and computers giving them access to an excess of information, allowing them to share obsessions, eliminating geographical distances and physical isolation. E-wallets are replacing cash.
As for career options, there is still a multitude of people studying to be doctors, lawyers and engineers, but there are many, many more choosing to make something else of their lives – financial analysts, artists, anthropologists, app creators, corrupt politicians, etc.
My own career path is an illustration of the manifold options that proliferated as Malaysia matured and society became more complex – I have been, at various times and sometimes simultaneously, a lecturer in English, English Literature and the Performing Arts, a journalist, a theatre director and an actor in films and television.
Much of the physical world has been transformed for better and for worse. Social evolution and technical innovation are killing old industries and ways of doing things, spawning new ways of looking at things
Yet, in this, the second decade of the 21st century, we have a respected leader of a political party, Abdul Hadi Awang, posing a rhetorical question: would Malays “rather be cow-herders or pig-herders.”
Every state in the country has at least one university. Every neighbourhood in the country seems to have a college or an institute of “higher learning” (or at least a couple of tuition centres). Our colonial masters had their industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. The current popular catchphrase of our ministers is "Industrial Revolution 4.0".
Yet here we have a political/religious leader offering his constituents the career options of animal husbandry. In his defence, it can be said that Hadi was using an analogy rather than offering career counselling but the very fact that the analogy relied on bovine/porcine imagery reflects an antediluvian cast of mind.
Better to be a cow-herder under cruel Muslim rule than a pig-herder under non-Muslim rule? I will never understand the painful appeal of masochism. To each his own. Whatever turns you on, Hadi.
What Hadi’s analogy did was remind me that, in two decades of being a journalist, I have only ever had one piece of my writing, a column, spiked by an editor.
This was a few years ago during one of our periodic eruptions of religious/racial xenophobia. Molotov cocktails were hurled at a couple of churches in Old Town Petaling Jaya. A Bar Council forum on the Lina Joy conversion case was invaded by an unruly mob shouting imprecations of pendatang and babi.
I responded by writing a satire in the guise of a pig appealing to international organisations to stop the genocidal persecution of my species.
The editor told me that she had to spike the piece because the office had received phone threats of a fiery attack because of its “liberal” (another word anathema to certain Muslims) columnists.
I reproduce part of that piece:
"On behalf of my porcine brethren, I draw the world’s attention to the persecution of pigs in Malaysia.
It’s bad enough that, as a species, pigs have not been able to erase the centuries-old stigma branded on our hide by the peoples of two major faiths, Islam and Judaism; the words halal and kosher declaring their prejudice against us.
It’s bad enough that everyone else seems to think we are fair game to be roasted, chopped, charred, skewered, balled, stewed and braised. Some races, like the Chinese for instance, don’t even leave sufficient remains for a decent burial and possible reincarnation as a butterfly. Other countries turn our bits and pieces into luncheon meat until you can’t distinguish between the earlobe and intestinal lining.
It’s bad enough that greedy human beings are linked with us. Yes, we pigs can eat, but […] it’s the steroids you slip into our slop because you want us to bulk up quick like Porky Schwarzeneggers […] dogs and cats are fed science diets. Pigs on a diet wind up suckling.
It’s bad enough that lazy human beings are associated with us. Sure, we pigs like to wallow in the mud and mire and cover ourselves with dirt. Sure, there’s nothing like a nice snooze in between meals. What’s wrong with that? [...]
A few years ago, thousands of pigs were slaughtered in a couple of states in Malaysia. They blamed pigs for infecting humans with death when pigs had no say in the filth they were penned in. Thousands bulldozed into deep pits like genocide victims. Newspapers reported the smell of death. Humans? No, pigs!
There are abattoirs throughout the land. Rumours have reached my farm that a town called Klang is one of the bloodiest slaughter centres, that hundreds of people gather there every morning to pick at pig bones […]
In the most recent assault against us pigs, "sensitive" Malaysians battered their way through open doors into a forum organised by the Bar Council and loudly demanded that we pigs be deported to China. To underline how fiery their sensitive feelings were, Molotov cocktails were mixed and served at a couple of places.
The response of Malaysian ministers? They expressed their concern for the "sensitivities" of those who shout and burn for those who would rather fight than talk.
Since we are touring the bestiary, I would like to identify those who barged in as Yahoos, a rabid species of ape-like beasts first noted by the English writer Jonathan Swift in 1726 in Gulliver’s Travels. The Yahoos’ response to attempts by Gulliver at social interaction and dialogue was to climb up trees, show their red backsides and fling down crap.
These are the people whose fur should not be ruffled? I bristle at the thought. It’s not pigs ruffling their fur. It’s the racist streak just under their skin.
Doesn’t sedition cover what was bellowed? Or are they covered under freedom of expression of sensitivity? [...]
It’s obvious from the Bar Council brouhaha that illiteracy is still widespread in this country, that Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka may suggest the polite ebbing sibilance of khinzir, but Yahoos still prefer the explosive consonants of babi."
I guess this third-generation pendatang will never be accepted as a Malaysian by these members of the master race till pigs fly, or till the cows come home.
THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist. - Mkini
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