From tawkthewawk.wordpress.com – Yazmin

Sunday, 9th of March 2008

That day, the future of thousands of people had a rebirth. A momentous occasion I will tell my children about one day, when we realised that all hope is not lost. When the people realised that the power was still in their hands.

But that’s old news really.

My mother has been buying rice and fish and cans of sardins. The NEP, she says as she packs food away in cupboards and freezers, has been abolished in Penang. You don’t know, she chides me, what it was like during 13 May. Laugh if you want, she grumbles, but you’ll be thankful if anything happens.

I reminded my mother about what Tun Dr Ismail said – that the NEP was like a handicap in golf which “will enable them to be good players, as in golf, and in time the handicap will be removed. The Malays must not think of these privileges as permanent: for then, they will not put effort into their tasks. In fact, it is an insult for Malays to be getting these privileges.”

It is all well and good, my mother replied, to know that we don’t need the NEP. But don’t forget, the Malays are a hot headed emotional lot. All it takes is one person to say something stupid, and you might not have your Chinese friends tomorrow.

It’s a painful time for her. My mother grew up in Kampung Baru during 13 May. She often retells the story of her Chinese best friend who walked to and back from school with her every day. She had long pigtails, my mother would say. And one day, she was gone. My mother didn’t get a chance to save her. Her whole family was killed and their house was burned to the ground.

I drove past my old house earlier, my mother whispered quietly to herself. The land where her family’s house used to stand is still empty, still vacant. No one survived to inherit that square piece of land. Whole family wiped out. Wiped out, just like that. When I went to school, her desk was empty, and my Chinese friends stared at me like I was the one who did it.

I know it’s painful, Ma, but it has to be done. This NEP nonsense is like a drug. We Malays are high, living with the purple hippos and the pink elephants dancing.

I know, I know. I’m just worried that’s all. Not everyone sees it that way, unfortunately. You and I do, but all it takes is one person who doesn’t understand, and all this will come to nothing.