At my old house in Kelana Jaya, there was this small dark store room under the staircase. You can only enter the room through this really small door that’s accessible from the outside. The size of the door reminded me of the doors that Alice had to choose to open to go to Wonderland. That store room was my perfect hiding place when I was a kid. Whenever I was in trouble (or trouble came looking for me), I would hide in that room. It was filthy. Cobwebs everywhere, smell of rat piss, cockroaches & other (not so) friendly insects. Even at night, whenever I couldn’t sleep (or trouble came looking for me), I would hide in the store room in total darkness, accompanied by the sound of crickets. By sunrise, I would quickly get back into the house & change for school. Sometimes, whenever I just feel like it, I would just go to the store room, locked myself & just stay in the darkness for hours and hours. While this may sound weird & strange to you, but that store room was my place of solitude. Even as a kid, I was already displaying some sort of eccentric behaviour.
I miss that store room right now. And I miss the strange places I hang out to just be in the dark for the simplest reason: To be at peace.
Even as a grown up, I still yearn for that time in darkness. And the sound of crickets.
Getting injured is a good thing. It forces you to stop and look back to realize that maybe it was karma hitting you back. Something that you did wasn’t right or something like that. I took the time to catchup with what’s happening in Malaysia from the tube. I’m not much of a fan watching TV, so with an icepack on my ribs I listened to how stories are being told on TV.
Looks like we’re fighting with each other about who can use the term “Allah”. Seriously, is that really an issue? I personally don’t give a fuck what God you pray to. As long as you believe that is your faith & that faith is good for you. All religious text in the world strongly profess that their religion is the best for all mankind. All of them. Including mine.
The real issue that I see here is that insecure people, people who stubbornly refuse to learn what makes other people different, are trying to deflect their own fears by using fear mongering tactics to the rest of the world. I recommend reading Erna’s strong affection towards the real Malaysian way, which kind of reflects my stand against the 1Malaysia concept. It’s an interesting concept and I believe it was a direct copy from Singapore. But we don’t need it to be shoved into our throats. That is because I believe in Malaysia. Critically & affectionately.
In my own life experience, I have seen what makes other people different in body & soul. So far, I can tell you one thing: we are praying to the same divine spirit. We just didn’t make time to catchup with everyone else. With these experience, my faith has grown stronger. Not the other way around.
Allah S.W.T is my God. Mohammad S.A.W is my Prophet. Al-Quran is my Holy scripture. These are the core values of my Islamic faith. And I chose to be liberal about it because I’ve also observed that almost every religion in the world has a similar structure: God, the Prophet & the Holy scripture. Only the names are different. Some added very good visualizations to represent their beliefs. These are differentiation in practical manners. Spiritually, they are almost the same.
It saddens me to see the rakyat wants to fight this out without any use of tolerance & any sense of thinking. They are feeding on fear and that makes them weak.