By Farouk Gulsara
I had the same feeling during my last visit to my hometown, Penang. After doing all the rituals I needed to, I decided to go for a run around the places I used to run more than 30 years ago.
The quarry where I used to run has now become a cluster of towering apartment complexes. New roads leading to new housing estates were everywhere. Secondary forests had disappeared.
I have noticed this over the years as I visited my mother periodically. The view from the balcony constantly changed as more buildings sprang up and greenery shrank. More renovations were taking place, and fewer and fewer familiar people were seen around. It seems they have either moved away or passed on. The ambient temperature became intolerable. I remember we did not even need a fan to sit in the sitting room; now even the air conditioning seems not enough.
As the days go by, I feel more and more like a foreigner in the very environment where I spent my growing years. I feel like someone waking from a coma after spending 20 years in a vegetative state. It seems as if the world has moved on while I was in deep slumber.
This must also have been the feeling my late mother experienced in her twilight years, when she was unable to keep up with the changes around her. She never could order a ride on her phone. She found a smartphone too problematic. Despite my sisters and me teaching her again and again, she simply could not master it. She found it too complicated. She had to depend on physical paper or TV to consume news. After some time, even reading or watching TV became incomprehensible. I guess she reached a point where she simply let her favourite pastime of keeping up with current affairs just slip away.
I wonder how she must have felt, watching these changes unfold right before her eyes — the eyes that watched pre-Independent Malaya, the people with spirits high as they embraced the new Malaysia, the racial calamity, the new social order in Malaysia, and the seedy, megalomaniac years of the 90s, which saw Malaysia slowly spiral down the ravine of bigotry and discrimination.
Would she have been thankful to have lived through a time of dramatic change, from a black-and-white world to a colourful digital one that morphed into one of virtual reality and deep fakery? I do not think she felt intimidated by all the changes happening around her; she let others live as they wished. For a start, she stuck to her car with a manual gear. For the love of her life, she was never convinced that a car with an automatic transmission was easier to drive. Maybe she lived through the times but did not change with it. She must have thought, “Let others live their lives, I will live mine!”
That brings us to the question of whether there is only one way to live. Is there only one prescribed way to live? Should we live the way we want, while reminding ourselves that others choose their own unique way to carry on? Perhaps we should live our lives the way we want, whilst remembering that others have their own way. Who is to know which is right? One thing is for sure. There would be peace on Earth when everyone is mindful of others. I would take a leaf from the pages of my mother’s book of ‘Life Lessons’ – Just let us live and let others live too.
Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely that of the author and not of Borderless Journal.
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