G.E Wallpaper Grafitti

“What is he trying to write? Death?!!”

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That’s what I imagined people reading through this piece would exclaim. Bad choice of topic they’d say. Last time he was talking about work and now death? People cringe to hear this word, while some others would put their head down, eyes cast on their feet to exhibit repentance. Some may be unaffected but just say “Let’s find out what is he trying to say”. My reaction usually is that I would put my head down to respect the “tabligh” guys trying to preach me about the ways of God. In a sinister manner, I would challenge their words quietly in my mind. I’m trained that way I think. A rebel.

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Now, what had happened to him to have this thought of death occurred in the numb mind of his, you would probably asked yourselves. Well, maybe I imagined too much of people reaction. Imagination is just part of a writer’s blood, please excuse me. I’ll tell you my story.

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I was sick for the last 3 days including today. But today, I’m feeling a lot better. I was constantly coughing and sneezing with a high fever to top it off. In my sick times, I got bored and spent my times reading, watching the television for the ever lousy Malaysian-made drama series or just try to sleep it off, trying to take the ache and throbbing away from my mind. I have to try to find a mean of escape from this torment.

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Maybe you readers would say, “Just a petty fever and he’s making a noise out of it like a small child”. I’m not trying to get attention the way my one year old nephew would with his constant wailing, and yelling and nagging. I want to bring another topic to the mind of all of you which is death.

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In the days when you’re sick, when you’re deadly sick, the thought of death sometimes occurred to the mind. It’s normal. I fear that probably I got a disease called pneumonia. In Bahasa Malaysia it is called “Paru-paru berair” or direct translation to English “Wet lung”. That fear made me think of death. Of my death.

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Death is something tucked away from our minds. We intentionally put it at the back of our minds knowing that this ‘death’, is the dead end to our life enjoyment. We’re busy with our lives that we forgot something which is quite near to us which is death. You’ve heard it thousands of times before even if I repeat them, these words won’t sink into your heads, and I’m assured of it. I’m going to say it to you anyway: “Death comes to you whether you’re young or old. It does not recognise your age”. These word have no bearing to me, I have to admit, in weeks ago before I was sick. I was looking forward to my career.

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Waking up each morning, brushing my teeth, taking a nice cold shower, putting on perfume, all dressed up smartly, ready for a new day and rushing to work with thousands of people trapped in massive traffic jams. Never in such moments has death occurred to me. I was too absorbed with life. I wasn’t ready to leave this life just yet. I am young just starting my career to become a rotating equipment engineer. I want to get married my with girlfriend. I want to have a family, have kids. Have lots of cash. Get a nice car, a bungalow to add to it as well. All sorts of ambition which are normal to a human being. After writing these made me think, am I a materialistic person? One who never thought of the hereafter?

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These ambitions are part of our life and we never did think death being near to us. It could happen in any moment. God doesn’t need car accidents to take away our life. It could just easily happen in your sleep! It could happen even while we’re awake. When He said ”Be”, it will just be. As easy as that. This reading could somehow make you drowsy, sorry abut that. It so happen that not many people have this realisation, like something hitting them in the head, knocking them off their sleep, a product of deep thought and reflection.

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My experience when I was sick is that I couldn’t stand the fever, hard coughing (hurting in your throat) and flu as it is a disturbing nuisance to my life. I couldn’t carry out life as I had used to. No more going to work, no more engineering work, no more driving, no nothing. The sickness has disrupted my daily routine and this usually made food for thought. You stopped doing your daily stuff and reflect back on your life. Time had stopped for you to reflect. My sickness didn’t go away after all the medicine I took. It made me worry. My girlfriend was caring all the way, attending to my phone calls and reminding me to take the pills. She had mentioned something about pneumonia and I was afraid that I might actually have this illness. She described the symptoms which almost similar to mine. And afterwards I read in the newspaper of an old 80’s Malaysian rock band (which I never heard of anyway) telling the story of the singer who died recently due to pneumonia. I also heard recently from my ex-school mates that one of their friends had died of the same illness. Now, I’m really afraid of death.

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My over-reaction might be construed by you fine readers as pure act of silliness but the chain of events had profound effect on me. I’m not ready yet. I have missed many prayers and I haven’t yet repented. I realised my life which is deceitful. I was deceiving myself. I forced myself to forget about death in a subconscious sort of way. I have forgotten that God is All-Hearing, All Seeing, and All-Knowing. Allah knows what is in my heart. I was trying to conceal and forget about what was to come.

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The subject about death is part & parcel of religion. It comes in package. You eat cornflakes in the morning surely with milk. You can’t have just cornflakes without any milk to go with it, can you? Emmm, maybe you can but it would just be like eating crackers and who would want that? The inter-relation of death and religion is simple. It’s the question of after death where do we go? Only religion provides such answers, whereas no existing scientific experiments can tell us where we would go after death. Does soul exists? Is it immortal, the soul? What qualities does the soul possess? Undiminished, undying and immortal qualities? These sorts of question philosophers usually ask. Why philosophy comes into it because science cannot provide an answer. If souls are immortal, where do these souls go after death? We fear things we don’t know. Death is such an unknown mystery that people are frightens by it.

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For myself, I have faith in my religion that I do believe that if I die, Allah won’t be pleased with me for I had sinned too much. It’s not too late to dive into the lake of truth, finding death on the bottom of it. It is real. It is as real as life itself. Just have to reflect hard without deceiving yourself. All these worldly things will be taken away from me. For your info, my sister who is a doctor assured me that I only have a virus not pneumonia, and I hope she’s right…

Emotions are like roller-coaster. It’s a journey through ups, and downs, and circles. What I’m feeling now is just like having a dead sharp knife slicing a piece of what’s under my chest, cause it feels hard to breath, undescribeable pain. Yea, maybe I’m a bit too sensitive. Just have to disregard this sign of depression.

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Women… it’s pretty hard to please them and yet you’d get heart pain each time. I feel that she doesn’t take good care in formulating words which comes out of her mouth. Yes, hurtful words. Without thinking. The more you talk the more the act of thinking is absent from that dead brain of yours. Knowing if I try to pick a fight out of this thing, it would come out worse. Gracefully, I backed out. Through the phone I said to her, "Ok, takpe la. Bye".

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Now, I’m saying to myself, "God-damn it, you’re bloody too sensitive. Fuck it".

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Sensitivity has been part of me since I was a little kid. How did I realised it? Too personal to relate the story anyway. That’s why I view myself as a bit artistic instead of using the wimp word of "sensitive". I’m not a wimp. Yea, this is a weakness for a man. We don’t need to feel sensitive. It shows weakness instead of stronghold shelter for women. Our disregard to the feelings of women are very well documented. It’s just in our nature. While watching sad movies, no tears present although the girl beside you are creating massive flood in the cinema. In a way, it’s good to have little bit sensitivy. Maybe that’s why I ‘m good in poetry.

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Yesterday, I met an ex-girlfriend of mine. She’s already married. Actually another friend, Lee Yan Wuu who wants to meet both of us (my ex- and I) and he set up the meeting. It’s just to catch up with time and build contacts. I came late to KLCC food court. I walk to their table as soon as I spotted them. They were in animated discussion or chatting, you know, hands up in the air while talking, laughter bursting, and I don’t know what was being said. Slowly, I approach them. I saw that she was holding her baby girl. I guessed the baby is a girl from the pink baby clothes she wore. Small little creature she is. Drinking milk from the bottle.

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" Hi Lee. How’s it going? " I said whilst shaking hands with Mr Lee Yan Wuu. Then I looked at her and just smile and nodded. It felt really strange having your ex-girlfriend holding a baby. It takes me back and forth from reality, I really could believe this is happening.

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" You looked ‘healthy’ ", she said looking at my fattened stomach.

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Lee Yan Wuu continued’ " Ya lar, you looked berisi sikit". He could speak impeccable Bahasa.

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It made me lost my appetite to eat here. Have to get thinner. I’ve gained 10 kg since coming back to Malaysia 1 year ago.

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We chatted away and I couldn’t look at her most of the time. Although she’s talking, I would look at Lee’s reaction and only look at her in a fraction of time. Just can’t do it. She betrayed me while I was in Australia. And this guy whom she’s marrying is the culprit. I was defenseless. There was nothing I could do being too far away. I guess it’s just fate. I’ve already embraced this fate a long time ago. Her husband came joining us a few minutes later holding with him two plates of huge kebabs and some drinks.

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At one time she asked me, "Does your company needs more mechanical engineers?"

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"He could apply." pointing to her husband. He had a goatee, looked pretty manly but a bit fat.

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I didn’t respond positively to it. I just said "Yea, I heard they need two or three more mechanical engineers". I did not offer for his CV to be sent to me. Why the hell would I want to do that? That bastard.

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Thinking back and reflecting while I was driving back home, I guess the angry feeling is still there. The animosity although long buried, has been dugged back. I’ll just leave it as it is.

In the name of God, Most Beneficient Most Merciful.

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Relating to my personal experience, I go through life, unsuspecting of evil and mischievous deeds happening around me. Life actually extends to beyond the walls of my own little universe to the horizon of the society, the global community, where there exist people with their own set of agendas and to influence the masses in their community with their set of idealogy. This is done to achieve what has been set of their agenda and main goals. From the worlds of global politics to what transpired in the small place called Gombak.

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As what was reported in the newspaper of the scientists’ findings that all of human being that currently resides on earth are genetically linked to one man. It doesn’t matter whether you’re of Chinese descents, Malays, Caucasians, Africans; we’re all linked to one ancestor. I don’t know if this finding contradicts Darwin’s absurd theory of evolution, but this has certainly not come as a surprise to all Muslims. This proves that all of us kind of like ‘distance relative’, we’re of one big family of billions residing on various areas of the planet. We’re one. “Semua Bersaudara” or “All are brothers”. But what has made us view each other differently to set apart from one another, made us view each other as aliens? The two main things that made human beings categorised themselves apart are Religion and Race. It’s like in sports at schools for example, whereby the students are divided into groups of houses distinguished by colours. My school had six houses: Green, Blue, Black, Red, White and Yellow. These six groups are further categorized as the “North” (Green, Blue & Black) and the other three as “South” due to the location of the hostels being on the North and South area within the school border. The division is actually to create the competitiveness and not disunity. When we’re competing against other schools, the members of all the different houses unite and the best among them chosen to represent our school. Let’s leave aside the facts about my school.

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In the real world, we can see that the difference between “groups of human” whereby the colour of the skin or religious belief being the criteria of division. When this division exists, there is no unity or the philosophy of “We’re of one family”. When there is no unity, the emotion, the urges to compete and be above the other group are fashioned inside of them. This is normal for human beings with their passion running inside of them. The competitiveness usually creates animosity amongst each other and thus all the evil scheming exists. Each group have an agenda in their mind, of wanting to come out tops in terms of advancement in knowledge, technology, economic, ideology and political dominance. In terms of religion, the concrete faiths of the teachings or theological ideology made them want to spread them out as much as they can, this could be termed as “recruitment exercise”. The bigger the group, the more powerful they are, and the more likely that one of their members could achieve high feats in politics, economic, and knowledge wise, as such resulting in greater means and resources to spread out their ideology and to protect “their kind”. It is important to have unity within one “group”. War amongst human exists because of the competition and unacceptance of the enemy differentiated by mere skin colour or belief and to have peace we must tolerate. Each group have differentiation of culture and morality. This differentiation made their thinking being uneven or not on the same ground. Unfamiliarity and lacked of understanding of others on the minds of the fanatics or radicals in one “group” propagate hate which could lead to war. Why such disunity between groups exists? Why can’t we all human beings around the world be united, throw away all the prejudice? Some of you might say what’s this mambo jumbo? I’m actually relating what is recently experienced in my life through this brief summary without the specifics.

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I was watching my one year old nephew playing around the house the other day. The technology around him such as television do made him acted weird as he is in a learning stage. He’s absorbing and learning about the things around him. The other day, we were watching some movie on the telly. When the movie ends, as usual there are credits coming out on the screen. The lists of actors, people involved in the making of the movie are all in the list of credit. The list kept on moving up and disappeared through the top of the screen (try watching the credit and you’d see what I mean). My nephew was in awe; he went to the telly and tried to touch the screen because in his eyes, he saw something moving. But he didn’t feel any movement. He was confused as what he saw is deceiving him. All the sounds and pictures coming out from the box intrigued him. As he grows up I suspect, he’ll be like the rest of us, uninterested in the credit as the movie ends because all of us are so used to the television that we’re not in awe anymore of the technology. We take the technology for granted. We’re so used to hand phones, laptops, calculators, cars, etc that we had not stopped and say, “Wait a minute, this is incredible” to express our appreciation of the ingenuity of the creation.

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What I want to relate with the experience of watching my nephew is that what happened around us in nature is really a work of a genius. Who creates all this? I was driving through a heavy rain the other day, and a sudden realisation struck that it is something extraordinary, something magnificent that such abundant of water could come out of the sky, falling onto earth, freshen up the air with smells of the soaked earth, and that whoever thought of creating this must have brilliance beyond human capability. It is the work of God the All-Mighty. All praise be onto Him the Lord of the worlds.

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In pondering upon the nature, we will be like my baby nephew, discovering all the obvious things around us of which we never thought of before because we’re so used to the things surrounding us. In discovering all the things around us we realised there’s a law unto them. So, who dictated all the laws? Who determined the laws of gravity, or the moon must follows its orbit without fail, fuel can be burned and water can’t, the plants grows through the existence of water and sunlight, photosynthesis, etc? Who actually determined this? We’re discovering these laws by research onto the nature. And our findings help us create technology. Force equals mass times acceleration. It is the laws of physics using mathematics. Helps us design F1 cars, turbo machineries, etc. While our understanding of nature is compressed in mathematical formulas and whole heaps of facts and names given, we stopped in appreciating the ingenuity of the creation, we stopped to philosophise on what we had found, and that there exists greater power that govern the entire universe with all the laws abiding them. With this, we should be more of a believer of religion and that God exist.

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So, what is our mission in life? If everything in nature abides by a “Law”, what’s the definition of our law or ‘human law”? What should humans do to abide by the “Law”? By this I mean what’s natural to us? If the moon’s job is to circle in its orbit around the earth and the earth’s job is to rotate and circle around its own orbit around the sun, what’s ours? To rephrase, what’s the purpose of our existence? Does our limited intellect can define our “Law”, our purpose? The most important set of questions for us to ponder. For Muslims, that’s to know our Creator, worshipping Him and abiding by His rules. It is to follow the holy Quran and our Prophet.

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I’m really tired, I can’t think of what to write anymore. I just want to say that toleration among different race or religion is most important.

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Cheers