Nostos

"Do you miss home?"
"Yeah well, of course I do, I mean... yeah... of course I do."

My voice quivers ever so slightly, lips recoiling almost defensively as I speak the words. I cannot help but feel a pang of guilt. It's a question I am asked often, and short of giving a lengthy explanation, I opt for the much simpler, cookie cutter reply of "Who wouldn't?" and launch into a even lengthier panegyric on the beauty of Malaysian cuisine.

Occasionally though, I cannot bear to hide beneath a flurry of superfluous words.

"Do you miss home?"
"Not really."

Every single time I say this I feel like I am being judged, like I am admitting that I am a horrible person wracked with familial problems, or worse yet, an ungrateful brat who can't be bothered to remember my parents.

What is home anyway?

Sure, I miss my family. I miss driving with my father in one of his old cars, just the road and some Lynyrd Skynyrd playing on the stereo. I miss my mother's cooking, which is the strangest thing, because when I was at home I wanted nothing more than to escape from it. I miss my brother bothering me in the midst of a movie or reading a book to show me his latest cool magic trick or the latest Youtube fad he has discovered.

I miss my bed, my dog, my house. I miss the lonely walks beneath the stars to the abandoned playground, just sitting on the swing and contemplating life in solitude. I miss the colorful and vibrant food, the sweet-as-sin milk tea in the morning and the fragrance of fried rice at 3am at night.

But it's far more complicated than that. With "home", there is also chaos. There are the frantic 2am rushes to get a press statement prepared on time. There are the heart-stopping moments as you look into a riot police officer's visor and see your own reflection staring back at you. There are the speeches that come rolling, one after another, until they all blend and mix and form this amorphous, all-encompassing ball of lies that devours everything in its path. There is that fear, that anger, that disappointment that permeates the air, the front page of the newspapers, the websites, the cyberspace, the conversations at coffeehouses.

For most people, "home" is this place of refuge. This place of shelter, where everything becomes OK and life stands still. Whatever storm, quake, disaster stops at that invisible wall people call "home" and whatever exciting, crazy ups and downs go away for a monotony that most people decry but I crave.

For me, "home" is the storm. Home is the embodiment of chaos, of messiness, of burden. Yale, for all its "stress" and "commitments" and "assignments" is a safe haven for me. At least here I know I can close my eyes, I can fall asleep, I can let go of myself and life goes on. I am not constantly bombarded by an insidious hopelessness, assaulted by the egotism or stupidity of politicians, weighed upon to take upon the mantle of a fighter.

Not all people share my sentiments of course. Many can ignore, forget, forgive what happens on a daily basis in Malaysia. As much as I would like to, I cannot. I feel a sense of responsibility, of duty that does not permit me to pretend like all is fine and good with the system when it is clearly not.

Malaysia is like family to me I suppose. No matter how bad things get, I cannot let go of it.

"Do you miss home?"
"No. I don't."

Perhaps there is a better question to be asked then.

"Do you love home?"
"Yes."

"Lost Home". Taken in New Haven, December 2013. OKJ All rights reserved.
Click for larger image.

The Old And New

"Wait a minute… how old are you again?"

That's usually the standard reaction I get from most people when they realize that I'm a 20 year old freshman. That expression of incredulity is most swiftly followed by watching them struggle to do math backwards to find out what year I was born, along with some sort of slow revelation on their part, usually something along the lines of: "Woah... So you can get us booze next year?" Yeah that's right, looks like I might get a lot more popular come February next year.

Sometimes I do wonder though: What do people think of me when they find out how old I am? Does their opinion of me change? Am I some sort of walking fossil, a freak anomaly that somehow ended up in the wrong class?

To be honest, it's been something I have struggled with in the past few years. Spending time working for NGOs and activism in Malaysia, taking the unconventional route of doing the International Baccalaureate program under a scholarship, added to the already late nature of the idiosyncratic Malaysian education system made me a year or two older than many of my classmates.

When I was doing the IB in ISKL (International School of Kuala Lumpur), I felt almost defined by my age. At times, I found it difficult to let go, to let loose and just have some crazy, unfettered fun. At the back of my head, always there was a nagging feeling that there were larger things at stake, be it the economy, politics or some lofty ideal. There were times, especially when seeing friends of the same age go into higher education while I was still in high school, that I wondered deeply if I was making the right decision.

It came to a point when I almost felt embarrassed whenever someone asked me how old I was. I would skirt around the question, answer indirectly, allude, hint, imply, and just do anything short of actually stating flat out that I was 19 years old. And of course, the dreaded "Ah that explains it." Much of what I had done or achieved felt diminished because of it, that somehow it wasn't that I was out-competing people or studying harder than people but more because I was just older than people. It was as if my age had become the primary explanation for all my actions and accomplishments, my entire existence as a student stood upon a number I had grown to distance myself from. Most frustrating of all, was to see how some of my classmates would use age as a reason to reassure themselves they could not do anything about their own situation. I wanted to tell them that age should not matter, and that so many of them could do way better than I did if only they realized it.

Outside of school life, where I volunteered for NGO groups, wrote research papers and organized protests, I received the same reaction but to a different slant. In these activist groups, I would most often be the baby, the spring chicken of the group and people would be genuinely surprised that I was still in school and not a working adult. A lot of people responded positively to this, praising me effusively for "maturity beyond my years". Though well-intended, such comments often held somewhat disparaging assumptions about "people my age" and predicated a lot of merit based on my age.

Really though, I was just a conflicted teenager like everybody else. The two worlds collided frequently, and made me feel too young and too old at the same time. I felt like some kind of circus freak, walking on a tightrope, straddling a thin thread that divided two worlds, one a blistering inferno and the other a freezing arctic wasteland. In short, Katy Perry's “Hot & Cold”.

Initially, I found it rather difficult. Straddling both worlds as old and young; the two extremes pulling me apart created an underlying resentment. There was always this cloud hanging over me, pressuring me to "act my age". I tried to hide it. Suppress it. Pretend it was never there.

Things went by like that for a while, until I recognized there were others with the same struggle. In particular, there was this guy in debate, an Egyptian called Ahmed Elkady. Ahmed is a brilliant guy, funny, smart, and mature. The only thing was he was a senior, and he was 15 years old. Like myself, much of his high school experience had been defined by his age. We were in the same boat but at different ends. There were others like Ahmed, who by the way, I consider today one of my closest friends.

Gradually, I came to terms with my age. More than that, I embraced it. I took pride in my role as the default big brother (though not in the Orwellian sense). I played and teased on my "long years of worldly experience" (I can barely type this without laughing). I took it as a cue to be patient and humble, when so many people younger than myself were doing so many great things I would never have been able to do. I rejoiced in being chauffeur, driving people around and being able to introduce my friends the hidden secrets of Kuala Lumpur restaurant and bar life.

At the same time, I also took on with ever greater fervour the perks of being young. Chatting away the wee hours of the morning on the merits of Games of Thrones, dancing and looking like a complete fool in the process, and just YOLO-ing the simple things in daily life.

My age stopped becoming a rubber band that was being stretched by opposite forces. In the midst of the late night debates, the chauffeuring and the eating, the fire and ice had melded together to form a lukewarm pond, its waters tranquil but for the occasional foray of an animal or two.

I stopped conforming to what my age group was supposed to be. Oddly enough, the whole age crisis had spurred a change in me. It wasn't that I was more mature, or more happy-go-lucky or anything else. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I felt that for the first time in my life, I wasn't acting or behaving my age.

All my life, I had fought against categorization, from the issue of my race to gender to religion. I had faced all of them head on, confronted them, and exposed them in writing or in action. But my age, this was the elephant in the room I had not deigned to look at. Once I did though, I realized that age was another one of those social constructs imposed upon people to make them “behave”, to teach people to think what an ideal person of age so and so should be like. It was another lazy category to explain away things. “Ooh, Malala Yousafzai is so young!” Her deeds are incredible for any age of any circumstance, and though it truly is remarkable that one so young should be so strong, it’s not the sum total of who she is. It should never define or diminish her accomplishments.

By the end of it all, I was no longer 18 or 19 or 20. I was no longer old or young, a fossil or a baby. I was just, simply, me.

Somewhere, somehow, in the process of coming to terms with my age, I had broken free.

Straddling a thin thread that divided two worlds...
"Dichotomy", taken at Wellington, NZ, 19 January 2012. Copyright of OKJ.

To My Future Self

Author's note: I wrote this letter a while ago to remind myself what is important. With all the frustration spilling over from the recent crackdowns and GE13 results, many people have either given up or become disillusioned. This letter has been a source of strength for me all this while. I hope it helps someone out there too.

NOTE: I've included a voice recording of the letter too directly below just in case you're a more auditory type of person. I know I'm probably a tad bit dramatic, but hey, a guy has got to express! Besides it's am in the morning and I'm running on coke now. (The soft drink not the drug la!) Many thanks!

Dear Future Self,

If you are reading this letter then you must be upset, dejected or disillusioned with the cause. Perhaps there has been an incident where you have realised your ideals are well, less than ideal. Or perhaps reality has just given you a giant slap on the face and somehow you do not know what is right or wrong anymore. Or maybe it's one of those moments where you look back, reflect, and think, how can there be any hope? What can man do against such reckless hate?

You will no doubt, go through a period of deep thought, reflection and meditation as you ponder upon the meaning of it all. You will tear yourself apart thinking of a barrage of questions that will assault your conscience. You will cease to know what is right and what is wrong, what is black and what is white, what is dark and what is bright.

You may even contemplate retreating into your shell to recover. You may even think of just resigning and let others do the fighting. You may feel tired, burnt out, and wonder out loud if all your efforts were for nothing. People don't seem to listen, situations don't change fast enough, or your dreams are shattered.

If all this strikes true in your heart, then it is now my duty to remind you why you began caring in the first place. It is my duty to make you remember.

Remember who it is you are fighting for. Remember who it is you started this journey for. You began it with the jeering insults of your schoolbus mates, racism thrown at an innocent child. You began with witnessing the injustice of a disabled girl being made fun of for being different. You began with the heartwrenching sight of that old woman, rummaging through 7-11 garbage bins to fend for a living, abandoned by her children.

"Splash in the Sea" Taken Jan 2012. (C) OKJ. Click for larger image.

You started your awakening with the bedroom conversations of your parents as you pretended you were asleep, where they spoke of the state of our nation, migration and resignation. How you pained to transform the sighs and cries into glimmers of hope.

You began your journey in the streets and trains, where you silently watched Malaysians from all walks of life passing through with busy lives. On the rubbish-strewn reclaimed beaches, gazing upon long forgotten mansions, wondering what it was like in a golden age long past. In the canteen where you used to sit with that policeman's son, and where you always lied and pretended he would ever pay you back for treating him to breakfast, because he could not afford it.

Remember the tears from BERSIH where it was not the tear gas but the realization of a lost freedom that drove you to despair. Remember the sorrow in that Orang Asli man's quivering voice as he confessed to you that sometimes, in between being ignored and being taken for being stupid, he felt life was not worth living. Remember.

The politicans will continue to bicker. The ideologues will continue to spout. Life will go on. But you cannot just "move on". You must move forward.

Can you make a difference? Yes. And no. I don't know. Can you tell what is right and wrong? Again I have no answers.

You are asking all the wrong questions. Instead of asking all this, why do you not also wonder: Am I going to do nothing? Are you going to give up, seriously?

The Gandhis, Mandelas, Martin Luther King Jrs of the world have suffered far more than you. No meaningful change was ever brought about without rejection, dejection, frustration. The night is always darkest before dawn. Remember, remember, never surrender.

Now get off your ass and get to work.

Always with you,
Your naive, idealistic and eternally stubborn younger self.

"Horizons for Hope" Taken Jan 2012. (C) OKJ. Click for larger image.