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Friday, 23-Jan-2004 9:45 AM EDITORIAL SERUAN KEADILAN Rebel without a cause “Masuk Melayu?” My late mother was flabbergasted. “I will have you know I am British!” she shot back at my father’s relatives. She certainly resented being classified as having “masuk Melayu”, the term used in the 1950s for those non-Muslims who embraced Islam. And to prove we are a “British family”, my mother insisted I be enrolled in the Alice Smith School, then a school for British expatriate children. Understandably I was the only Malay kid there, the only other non-English was a Chinese girl named Sarah Chin, my well…sort of, girlfriend at the tender age of seven. Yes, my mother taught me from before I even wore underpants that we must fight the system; go against the established norms; much to the horror of my father’s relatives who did not understand why I should be sent to a “Christian” school. The fact that I read the Bible a decade before I read the Koran frightened the daylights out of them. My first “local” school was the Malay College Kuala Kangsar. The rage then was the Beatles. When I was in form three, the late Tan Sri Yahya Ahmad sent me to the headmaster, Neil J. Ryan, for infringing the school dress code. Mr Ryan took one look at my “mop-top” John Lennon hairstyle and declared I would have to choose between keeping my hair and staying in school. I chose to leave school. My grandfather, Raja Sir Tun Uda, then the Governor of Penang, was shattered. I was the only grandson to continue the family tradition of going to Kolej and now I was leaving merely to defend my hair. But my mother supported me. My hair was my right and no one was going to get me to cut it. My father sadly enrolled me in the Victoria Institution (VI) in Kuala Lumpur. The headmaster, Murugesu, greeted me my first day in school with “six of the best”. I was then sent home to get a haircut. I just trimmed it slightly and reported back to Murugesu’s office. But he was still not satisfied and gave me another six cuts. I am probably the first VI boy to get caned twice on the first day of school and get sent home as many times. I decided to have the last word and told my barber to give me an American GI crewcut. Murugesu was furious. He kicked me out of school and told me not to return until my hair grew again. I eventually had to leave school and went over to the Methodist Afternoon School (MAS), a school for rejects. The MAS is the bottom of the heap. Normally, when no one else wants you, you go to the MAS, the school of last resort. But even in the MAS I was shown the door. The incident that prompted my departure was the many debates I had with my Islamic studies ustaz. He was expounding on how God has already decided when, where and how you die even before you are born. In that case, I retorted, it should be safe to smoke because we will not die early as what the anti-smokers say since God says we will never die one second earlier or later than destined. I then stumped him with my so many questions. How do we fast in countries that have six months of daylight and six months of night when the sun never sets or rises for six months on end? Also, how do we pray five times a day? We need to pray only twice a year, at dusk and dawn every six months. Which direction do we face to pray when on the moon? The ustaz knew my questions were not sincere but merely meant to trap him. My record still stands; I was the only student to be thrown out of Islamic studies class. In the 1960s, I participated in the demonstration the Chinese opposition organised in front of the Pudu Jail and tasted my first experience with tear gas. I joined the University Malaya demos led by Anwar Ibrahim that eventually saw his detention under the Internal Security Act. I never knew what all these demos were about, in fact I was not even a UM student but an "outsider", but that never stopped me. All my life I delighted in going against authority and was never one to toe the line. (And at 53 I am just too old to change). That was how I was brought up and my late mother stood by me in all those skirmishes I had with the establishment. And that is why I am in Reformasi, to fight the establishment. People ask me what I would do if the opposition were to come to power and it now becomes the government. I suppose, if that happens, Umno would then be relegated as the “new" opposition, so I would probably join Umno to continue opposing the government of the day.
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