Down but not out

After a long time I managed to put some art into my life, at my wife's insistence.

We were fortunate to have caught a staging of "Thondan" at the Esplanade last night, the Tamil literary interpretation of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Staged by Miror Theatre and supported by Ravindran Drama Group, the play boasted several excellent actors, great sets, an intimate audience setting and one of the bloodiest tragedies ever conjured up by Shakespeare.

The dialogue was in literary Tamil... and that's the part that made me ashamed of myself. You see, I used to take this subject known as Higher Tamil in primary and secondary school. I used to top it every time, and I skipped Tamil in JC altogether because of this. Unfortunately, it was to be my undoing. I was totally lost in the first 30 mins of Thondan, as the actors spewed dialogues of fury in high-powered Tamil lyrical. My brain tried and tried to understand the little speaking Tamil that I could pick out, but failed. It was only well into the last one hour that I understood about 70 to 80%.

It brought home the point how much contact I'd lost with my mother tongue, the language I speak with my parents and close Indian friends. Heck, I even think in Tamil, ask God in Tamil. But I had not kept in touch with the language enough.

The director, Mr Vadi, later spoke to the audience, and said that it was his aim to stage the play in literary Tamil so that those of us who seem to hear it for the first time can fall in love with it all over again. In this respect, I think he has succeeded with me.

Once you get past the syntax and verb-noun structure confusion, literary Tamil is like smooth-flowing honey down your throat. There is a beauty to it that appeals to even self-declared non-literary persons like me. (I guess all of us have that capability in us - to appreciate and to love beauty.)

Which brings me to the other literary masterpiece of all - the Qur'an. There are countless writers, thinkers, poets who have extolled the unmatched literary beauty of the Qur'an. I, for one, have always longed to understand the Qur'an in its Arabic form, to be immersed in its irresistible power. But for me, Arabic is a difficult language to grasp, and needs a lot of practice - and the Arabic that the Qur'an uses is a different ballgame altogether, with totally different rules and grammar. But I see why the Qur'an penetrated the hearts of the early Arab speakers, and millions still today.

Although I don't see myself grasping the literary power of the Qur'an in the immediate future, the beauty of literary Tamil, my mother tongue, is enough an example for me to see how a beautiful language, put forth in a beautiful style, can make the hardest of hearts soften.

As for the producers of Thondan - congratulations for a job well done, you can be sure you've gotten yourself another follower. I might have been down on my Tamil, but not out yet. I'll be flipping through some Tamil books in the coming weeks for sure.

Malacca - Part 2

In this concluding part on our trip to Malacca (as if this was some long-drawn epic serial, bah!), let me just go in a bit more detail on a particular place I had visited.

The Islet

Facing our hotel (club) room on the 18^th floor of the newly-constructed Holiday Inn hotel, was this strip of land which we initially thought was a small islet. It had a striking row of yellow and red-striped houses in exactly the same size and shape. They could either be (a) shops or (b) offices or (c) apartments. In my mind,

I called these the Mysterious Buildings That Look Strange or MBTLS for long. If you take a close hard look at the photo on the left, MBTLS can be found on the left-hand side of the islet.

At the end of the islet, there was another striking piece of architecture – a mosque that looked as if it was floating on the water! The islet, the MBTLS on them plus the mosque, against the backdrop of the historic Straits of Malacca – it was a marvelous feeling.

The time came for Friday prayer, and I decided to make a trip to the Mosque. The mosque was called the Floating Mosque, and since the trip there seemed like a million miles, decided to let the taxi driver overcharge me in return for a safe trip to and fro the islet.

MBTLS

During the taxi ride, I had many revelations, courtesy of the driver.

It was not an islet – it was a piece of totally reclaimed land called Malacca Island. It was to be a powerhouse tourist and business attraction to rake in the moolah. However, it was now nowhere near such a description.

We entered the main road, near the MBTLS. Then the next revelation came –

The MBTLS were none of the above – they were just empty. Abandoned. Nothing there. And trust me, it was bloody freaky and totally eerie. Apparently, during the great hooha after the creation of the islet, a developer built the rows and rows of identical flats for shop rental. But due to the unrealistically high price of the space, and after some other problems, the developer fled, leaving the buildings imcomplete and uninhabitated and unused. The taxi driver himself had wasted his money on one office space, pointing his finger at one of the few hundred rooms. And the whole islet had been abandoned for the last 10 years.

We reached the mosque, which was beautiful, but also had some abandoned areas. Nonetheless, the whole floating concept was superbly executed, and many others were snapping away long after the prayers had finished. The view from the ends of the mosque were a sight to marvel. Indeed, it was the place to contemplate the signs of Allah after a few rak’ats or a recitation of the Qur’an.

The time to head back came, and as we drove past the abandoned buildings, I could not help but have a sense of loss and regret that this place had so much more potential to offer to the Malaccan folks. The sheer waste of human effort, time and money on those buildings, and the look of neglect and dilapidation of the entire place is indeed sad. As I drove past some rusting pieces of foundation which I was told were the first irons bars put in place to build a lavish condominium, I recalled reading about the year 1795. Like how the British sacked Malacca in the 1800s to prevent it from being used by the Dutch, and thus making it look like a ghost town (or “sleepy hollow” as they call it), this little islet has become a sleepy hollow itself owing to economic pressures and poor planning.

Malacca - Part 1

After a cramp-inducing 5-hour bus ride, we finally reached Holiday Inn Malacca. The view (overlooking the Straits of - you gussed it! - Malacca) from our 18th floor room made the bumpy ride all worth it.

I observe all that is around Malacca, quite a rustic place, and feel a bit of the wonderment of nature. Last night, as I was reading the late Martin Lings' "Muhammad - His Life Based on the Earliest Sources", a chord struck in the corner of my heart when he explained that one of the purposes of the Qur'an, which is the Word of Allah made into Book (like how in Christianity, Jesus is God-made-flesh), was to remind Man of the wonderment of His creation in nature, the wonderment which over time has been misdirected.

More so in current times. Where I live, I see more buildings, cars, pavements, roads, media messages etc than anything else. Of course, the Clean and Green City thingamagic has worked. But the things in front of our eyes are mostly man-made, and don't necessarily bring our attention to Allah's creations. Slowly, but surely, we are brought to believe that our surroundings are man-made, and probably always have been man-made. So we are probably accountable to Man, since all the built environment is his work.

But the truth is that underneath all the roads, buildings and vehicles, lies the ultimate miracle of creation - the earth, and the sky, and the huge expanse of water in oceans and seas. And more close to ourselves, the miracle is the self itself - each of us is a sentient being, living, breathing, thinking and talking at this moment. And the Creator of these things has sent a clear message to confirm and explain these signs. What more proof of a higher existence than this does one need?

Malacca's town planning may not be Singapore-style, but it sure helps to see a lot of natural stuff. I'll hop down later to the mosque which I see built on this little islet opposite the hotel.

A Life

His tiny fingers grasped my index finger. I spoke to him about the political turmoil in Myanmar, and after giggling, attempted to give his opinion through a variety of sounds and facial expressions. He was so adorable that I couldn’t pull myself away to mingle with my other friends who had attended the openhouse. It was little Krishen, the son of my friend of 13 years. This friend of mine, we had studied together in secondary school. From talking about our Tamil teacher and discussing our future options on which JC to attend when we were teens, to now me playing with her kid during my Hari Raya open house at my place – it was surreal.

Time flies. When relating the incident where a group of people will be asked how long they stayed on this world, Allah says in the Holy Qur’an:

"“What number of years did ye stay on earth?”

They will say: “We stayed a day or part of a day: but ask those who keep account.”"

23: 112-113

This life, in retrospective, will seem like it lasted only for a day! We can catch glimpses of this even by recounting a past period in our lives – just recollect the first day of Uni or NS. The memory will be fresh, but it would’ve probably happened 7 or 5 years ago. You would probably recollect many, many such instances. The crux of the matter is, time is constantly fading away and remains only as memories in our minds (and/or Flickr, Facebook, etc). It is as if we are each like meteorites, each approaching our own impact (or end) with a tremendous velocity, and eventually forming a ‘crater’ in this world but continuing our lives in the Hereafter. The most logical thing to do would be to realize this end destination, and prepare for it during the extremely short trajectory here.

As we expect our first child, I am filled with marvel, curiosity and anticipation. When I first learnt that my wife was pregnant, I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I’ve never felt before – I felt as though I had been part of an ordainment from Allah Himself, to create a child in this world, as our own. It is indeed a heavy responsibility. Already our responsibility as Allah’s vicegerent is heavy – to care for another life is indeed another aspect.

Every visit to the gynecologist at Thomson Medical Centre reveals something beautiful about Allah, about us, and of course about our child.

The progression of a tiny blood clot, the existence of which could only be ascertained by the rapid blinking of the heart (shown by a flickering white spot in the ultrasound scan), forming into a foetus, humbles my wife and I as we see how we ourselves came into being in this world. It is nothing short of a miracle. As the days go by, the intensity of the marvel builds. Now, when I speak to the child as it is in the womb, it seems to respond, with tiny movements, Subhanallah!

In this, there is a symphony of Allah’s unmatched Beauty and Grace that pierces through our hearts – no, our very souls. The creation of the new being among our midst also makes us appreciate the value of the life, and the immense responsibility on our shoulders to make it a true Servant of Allah, one who realizes his or her role in the Plan of Creation, and abides by it. Insha Allah, may He give us the energy, ability and knowledge to do so.

Alhamdulillah, as we’re in the second trimester, please pray for the well-being of our child, and its healthy delivery into this world.