Trains! Trains! Trains!
I love trains.
Before a long trip, I will make sure to buy some snacks to munch on. And I did in Sri Lanka.
This was about a month ago at Colombo Fort Station.
It is September 15, the eve of Malaysia Day. As I walk out of the train station into the atrium of KL Sentral, I see rows of the Malaysian flags draping down from the ceiling. Those red and white stripes are unmistakable.
The flag-flying fervor has not been as strong as it had been in the previous years. Perhaps all those third-world corruption controversies have dampened that patriotic sentiment. As it should be. Corruption the scale of 1MDB and Najib Razak should worry many, raise questions and stop us from engaging in petty excitement.
Even in its weakened form however, displays of patriotism disturb me. Here we live in an age where patriotism all around the world is increasingly provincial in nature, and that its jingoist version functions as a vehicle for racists. These racists would be fascists the moment they are given power, democratically or otherwise.
I dream of a cosmopolitan liberal society. I have never stopped believing so even as the idea gets bashed and its weaknesses get revealed by the receding tides. And that liberal ideal does not sit well with unmitigated patriotism.
The usual kind of patriotism that goes against cosmopolitan values typically targets outsiders.
But another version eats the society inside out, whenever it is unclear who the outsiders are. And in this cosmopolitan country we live in, it is never easy to differentiate between the insiders and the outsiders cleanly. It is a mixture of everything. An attempt at nativism would divide our society.
I fear, that is what Malaysian patriotism is turning into, especially when used by the corrupt in power. It turns patriotism onto us Malaysians. Anxious to preserve power despite their wrongdoings, the corrupt are trying to distract us the population from personal crime and justify their hold to power by claiming outsiders are interfering in our affairs. And increasingly, those Malaysians who disagree with the corruption of those in power are being labelled as traitors, working in cahoot with outsiders.
Near Kerinchi in Kuala Lumpur as well as other places, I have noticed yellow and black posters pasted on walls deriding those protesting against Najib Razak’s corruption as “talibarut Amerika.” It is a strong Malay term translating into spies, saboteur, stooges and anything similar. All invested in them the connotation of betrayal.
And to be a patriot is not to work with outsiders, as the narrative goes. Outsiders are out to destroy “us”, they say, as if it is “us” Malaysians whom benefited from the multibillion dollar corruption by the men and women sitting in the desolate distant Putrajaya.
The fact domestically, the corrupt are trying to save their skin and bring everything else down, is forgotten conveniently. Purposefully distraction, digression and misdirection happen to shift attention from 1MDB and Najib Razak’s corruption. Words are being inverted and subverted the way Orwell had imagined.
And so I look at the show of patriotism warily. I wonder when it would turn to people like me who would like to see the corrupt in prison instead of in Putrajaya.
I know on the other side of that corrupt patriotic wall is fascism. I will not worship that wall. Without a chisel, I will stay away.
Categories
[2830] Let’s go crazy
I tried to do some night photography in one of Galle’s narrow streets.
I’ve got a walking something instead.
Categories
[2829] Shoeshine, shoeshine
When was the last time you had a shoeshine?
Not my best photograph, but I like it. This was within the Colombo Fort.
Colombo is a hard city to love. Dusty, dirty, chaotic, ill-maintained. I got cheated for USD55 on the first day there and that soured my mood badly. And oh, the honking!
But the city facing the full might of the Indian Ocean is colorful and lively. There is a chaotic order imposed from the ground-up. There are surprises around the corner if you are willing to brave the sun and walk down the roads.
Colombo shows how a city is like without malls. There are malls in the Sri Lankan capital of course but they are nothing like in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Singapore. If you arrived here from a relatively prosperous Asian city, you will be unimpressed with Colombo malls.
Given the relatively lack of large malls, this means shops open at the street level, making the road busy with people on workdays even under the hot tropical sun. Such busy streets full of pedestrians are not unique to Colombo of course — you can see such street scenes in other Asian cities too — but there is something charming about it in this city. The narrow opened-air streets make it all the more liberating.
(By the way, whose idea was it to have that ugly green roof over Kuala Lumpur’s Petaling Street and Masjid India? Mr unelected Mayor, tear down that roof).
And the signs! The signs are everywhere, almost Chinatown-like.
I have always felt street level shops make a city more human. It creates things to see in the open air.
In contrast, dull big structures are all a stranger to a pedestrians and kill off foot traffic. Just move along. Just move along until you get to the entrance and disappear in the monstrous controlled malls. Such malls have its functions but they are just not a place for an adventure.