I cannot believe that I have met, spoken to, even take picture with the person that – I should say – living my dream.
Kee Thuan Chye came last week, and believe me I had fun hearing him speak. What marvels me is that, he came from a background that is just painfully ordinary. I always thought that people who ‘made it big’ had the basis of their birth to stand on and reach for the one thousand stars on the ceiling of victory.
Kee Thuan Chye made me realise that I HAVE NO MORE EXCUSES, I too can make it big. When Istana Budaya refuse my entrance for their script writing competition that day, I thought, that was IT, I am not meant to be a writer, never meant to.
Now I know that I have to try, Kee Thuan Chye was so inspirational that I even think to start another blog, and talk about things that I want to talk about – MY truth, and if I got detained by any legal bodies, (of course I don’t want to) that would be an achievement… (or like Lear, right down FOOLISH)
Talking about legal bodies and foolishness, Kee Thuan Chye made me realize the importance of a writer that could change the perception of the public. Growing up being not so Indian and not so Malay made me live a life of very quiet desperation, I had a lot of things to say about racial and harmony and prejudice and stereotyping and stuff, I could create even a satire now – thinking about doing it for theatre course next year.
And then he talked about the play, swordfish then the concubine – I mean come on! Whole my life I have been studying literature, I always say that I wish Shakespeare is alive and I can talk to him about the plays he wrote – or even smacked him on the head for creating such stories (maybe this is the point why he is already dead). However my point is, I could, then, ask him about the things that I found weird and confusing in the play, sadly I had only twice talked to him (by which, he called me a smart reader! Kee Thuan Chye called me a smart reader!!!), there was a lot of things that I wanted to ask him, like his latest involvement in 10 minutes scriptwriting competition – the play that he created, about a journalist named Moomtaz, it depicted the real life as it is, though he left the play quite ‘tergantung’, I wanted to know what HE thinks happened to Moomtaz. Also, why did he chose the name Nurhalisa, a really modern name for a setting that is legend-like. I know his play was only a parody, but why there was only one modern name in the whole play?
Maybe there will be other times that I can annoy him, not that day but nevertheless, Dr Edwin, if you are reading this – THANK YOU for bringing him to UPM, thank you so much.
yes...a writer does possess that power...to inspire the public and alter perceptions. a wordsmith possesses the power to mend words into meaningful, beautifully written works that have the power to even change the world. the best thing about it - the power of inspiration is able to go on and on even after the writer's death - the power of merely words.
ReplyDeletesometimes, in some situations, i do feel that i'm not malay nor chinese - i'm basically in the middle - but i see it as an advantage. i mingle around with people from many walks of life, from different races that i'm able to see how different our views are. misunderstandings that happen among us are due to our lack of open mindedness and we basically speak about the unknown - i mean, we practice prejudice and stereotype - we're biased at making judgments and sometimes, we become hypocrites because of the need to be faithful to our so called people though we may have different perspectives about things.
come to think of it, we talk about integration, being malaysians, malaysia boleh and those sort of things but how many of us really practice and inculcate the spirit of nationalism in our daily lives? some of us can't even stand still while singing Negaraku (that just piss me off! i mean, really....). meeting kee thuan chye has certainly made me reflect on how malaysian i am. what we do today has an effect on the future generations either directly or indirectly. if we can't really be united and practice integration now, what would be the state of our nation in the future? i think, we have to STOP looking at ourselves as malay, chinese, indian or even bidayuh...let's just label ourselves as Malaysians...that's possible,right?