Tin Pot Crooks (2009)

 JUNE 27 — One week on and still this silvery state is as dry as a snake’s underbelly wrapped in sand paper slithering across parched, hot sand at midday, during the dry season. It is dry in the sense that there has not only been no rain, but even the memory of rain is buried so deep within the collective subconscious that it would take a particularly adept hypnotherapist to delve there, wade through amassed dream symbols, cultural icons and stigmas to retrieve it. However, this week has not dried in the news sense. But before I launch into this week’s theme I would like you, dear reader, to reach into your mind, grab hold of your imagination and give it a good hard tug, stretch that stiffening imagination for all it is worth. Now, if you are ready, read on. Imagine, just for one second, imagine, way back to the days when tin was a household word across the world. Imagine if this silvery state, which had produced enough of that particular metal, had placed a trademark on the word tin. Imagine the revenue that word alone would bring. From L. Frank Baum’s original books there would be enough income, but when Victor Fleming and Judy Garland made the Technicolor film, the profits would have soared exponentially, over the rainbow in fact. The yellow brick road would have led all the way to the silvery state coffers with every mention of the Tin Woodsman (or Nick Chopper as he is oft called). Every time that hero dog Rin Tin Tin bound across the silver or TV screen, bent on rescuing small boys from wells or big boys from even bigger boys with guns, money would trickle in. From Belgium to Europe and across to the Americas, the merest mention of the boy detective Tin Tin ( pronounced Ton Ton) would aid the state bank account and bolster the treasury. Then, with our country so rich, there would be no need for crime, no need for hapless individuals to ram forklift trucks into ATM machines, with the thought of enriching themselves at others’ misfortune. No need, indeed, for these characters with little imagination, then to abandon their project having slammed the forklift truck into said ATM, to no avail. The attempted, and failed, robbery makes me wonder, if after ramming the vehicle into the wall the wannabe robber, dressed in helmet and jumpsuit, then sat around like one of the vultures in Disney’s “Jungle Book”, obviously in two minds, saying to himself “What am I gonna do?” “I don’t know, what you wanna do?” “I don’t know, what you wanna do?” unable to make a decision. The same could be said for those enterprising fellows who, having attempted to break into a jewellery shop, in Seremban, gave up after discovering that there were two walls to drill through, not one. Obviously their hearts were just not in it. Perhaps they too had been lured into a life of crime by Tamil films, as three Serdang robbers were reported to admit. Only Tamil films – I am certain that both Bollywood and Hollywood might be quite upset that their combined efforts had come to no avail – and that it is only Tamil films (or Kollywood, as the South Indian film industry is referred to) that have the power to turn clean-cut, honest, everyday citizens into ferocious criminals. Perhaps the courts, in their in-depth understanding of the human psyche and forensic psychology, may seek either to turn these men’s minds around by using reverse psychology, or plump for the tried and tested horrors of abreaction trauma theory. In the former, the criminals may be made to watch nothing but love stories with Rajinikanth, Kamal Hassan and Vijay singing and dancing around trees, protesting their undying, and non-violent, love for the likes of Trisha, Meera Jasmine and Jyothika, to A.R.Rahman tunes. The idea being that, if Tamil films about crime can make honest men criminals, then nothing but Tamil love films would do the opposite. In the second scenario, said criminals would be strapped to chairs, with small electrodes attached to their bodies, in a small cinema. They would then be force-fed a diet of the worse criminal Tamil films ever, but every time a criminal act was committed an electric current, strong enough to hurt, but not cause any additional mishaps, would shoot through their bodies, resulting in a conditioning so severe, that they could never watch another criminal act without jumping with shock. But then, maybe I am too unkind to all these apprentice criminals, maybe it is the fault of the police themselves that so many individuals are trying out for a new career. Perhaps if police personnel spent less time sending 900 of their number to gatecrash functions like the 43rd anniversary of the DAP, in Klang, or arresting innocent bystanders talking in mosques, there might be more of them to patrol the streets and deter people considering a career change into criminality. Certainly if more police were on the streets, then they would have been on the lookout for the notorious ‘Arab’ gang – three men and two women wearing purdah, who stole RM50,000 worth of jewellery from a goldsmith’s shop. It is curious, is it not, that many stores, banks, etc., request people not to wear crash helmets, so that their faces can be readily seen by surveillance cameras, but do not give a second thought to women covered from top to toe. Perhaps that may change now. Still these Middle-Eastern, possibly Arab criminal women may have secretly been hankering after a refreshing spa, or the salon services now offered by seven inmates at Kajang Prison. According to sources there is a queue for such services and desperate people may resort to anything to obtain them. But as the heat continues all I really want to break into is a cold drink, to arrest my thirst. And, as I do so, I must remember not to watch any Tamil films and to stop pontificating upon revenue lost by not trademarking tin. As seen in The Malaysian Insider