The Death of Fluffy Bunny (2008)

Fluffy Bunny died today

In a way I feel guilty about not giving him any other name but Fluffy Bunny, but that is exactly what he was – a fluffy bunny.

About two years ago we bought a white rabbit and then shortly after that we bought this small bundle of black and white fur, so hairy that you could barely discern the rabbit within except for the dark frightened eyes.

He was nicknamed Fluffy Bunny in want of a proper name and while the white rabbit instantly became peter, for literary reasons, Fluffy Bunny never really got another name because he so lived up to that nickname.

Initially we thought both rabbits were males – hence the name Peter for the white one, but after ‘playing together’ for a while Peter began to grow quite large, good eating and well taken care of we thought, but then one day there were small naked things eerily inching their way around Peter’s hutch and then we knew that Peter, our male white rabbit, had just given birth.

For me Peter never lost her name, but my wife and the children insisted that she become Missapee, a sort of Miss P - an adaption of his initial name. And as her rabbit kittens grew Missapee became a proud mother of her first litter of black and white fur balls about seven in all. Months later the same thing happened again, but this time it was controlled and we were ready and were delivered of another five naked rabbit babies (kittens).

After the second batch we decided to separate the two adult rabbits, especially so as Missapee (Peter) developed a very nasty side to her nature during pregnancy and would take to attacking us when we gave her food, not to mention the ferocious digging she undertook in her pen. So Missapee and Fluffy Bunny lived side by side in adjoining wooden huts sharing a mutual pen, but were only let out one at a time as a contraceptive measure.

And that is how they lived out the next two years, one day Missapee was let out the next day it was Fluffy Bunny’s turn. They would ‘talk’ through the wire netting on the front of their hutch, sniffing each other and communicating in the way that rabbits seem to do and the days just rolled by until the last couple of days.

Yesterday Fluffy Bunny was off his food and his fur was looking pale, he sat at the far end of the pen and refused to move for a long while, but eventually went into his hutch. Today Fluffy Bunny seemed to have little energy and refused to take food. My wife prepared some carrots and a drink for him but when she took it to him he had gone.

We looked at his rabbit body which somehow seemed smaller in death and saw that his eyes saw nothing of this world and his breathing had ceased. His warm body told the lie of life and we knew that he had passed over to that grand rabbit pasture in the sky. We blessed him and gave him burial in the way that animal lovers tend to do and I began to write this.

 

A New Dawn (2008)

 

On Saturday 8^th March 2008 a margin of hope was sparked across Malaysia by the outstanding progress the opposition parties had made against intransigent government forces.

Amongst the reverie and excitation a new dawn seemed to glimmer on Malaysia’s political horizon. The dark clouds of cronyism and nepotism, seen hanging over Malaysia over the past few years, appeared to move slightly in the breeze of change engendered by a salvo of public opinion. At present the breeze will only ruffle feathers and maybe bring a few durians down on some people’s heads, but should this momentum continue for the next few years it promises to be the maelstrom much needed to bring a permanent change for this green and endearing land. With the maelstrom will come the much needed rain to give sustenance to this country and a pleasant cleansing rain where negativity, oppression and egocentric small-mindedness will be swept away to herald in the brilliant new future Malaysia much deserves.

Hope, hard work and community spirit will return to transform Malaysia, already being highlighted by faint rays of the new dawn, into the once proud and prosperous nation it deserves to be, once again holding its head high in the global family as the noble soul it already is.

Saturday was but the beginning, the Rakyat and those that govern must now take the next step to consolidate on the gains already made by the bravery and courageousness of the people and the new leaders. It will be a time of hope but with that comes responsibility, the responsibility for the people to ensure that the old ways of bribery and corruption are left behind and the path of honesty and truthfulness is taken instead - then and only then will The New Dawn really arrive.

One too many brothers (2008)

 Abel had Cain, Romulus had Remus, Don had Phil and Donny had a whole heap of brothers - only going to prove that one can have too much of a good thing.

Obviously my brother feels the same way.

That winter produced crisp layers of white snow on tarmac roads, heavens heavy with leaden grey except for brief moments of startlingly white cloud and piercingly blue skies. On rural roads snow compacted into gleaming white ice while hazardous black ice waited in patches for inexperienced motorists, footpaths occasionally sprinkled with a slight dusting of powdered snow, concealing treachery beneath.

Because of hazardous conditions driving was slow, but dad’s light, yellow, fibreglass three-wheeler made good headway as he drove us – mum, my wife and I through the worsening climate towards my brother’s semi-detached suburban house.

The air was as crisp as the roads and our breath came out in puffs of white, making us all resemble small human steam engines - relics from a more homogeneous 1950s. We were, I admit, a little elated. It was Christmas, there was snow, and I was meeting the brother I hadn’t seen for about seven years.

Distance had kept us apart. Not distance measured in miles, but distance measured in age. Nine years may not seem much gap, but for my brother and I it had become an almost unbridgeable one.

My brother’s teens disappeared into a safe and secure married life with children, while I began to experience thrills of dating and the seemingly endless pursuit of alcohol and the female form.

His Tony Curtis quiff dropped as Cliff and the Shadows became more respected and more respectable - my hair crept ever downward towards the nape of my neck and beyond.

His Lambretta was swapped for a Jaguar 2.4, his symbolic parka hung in the closet, his furry foxtail stored away alongside fond memories of skiffle and rocking around the clock - I donned a trendy blue military jacket, knee-length black patent leather boots and black crushed velvet trousers edging ever closer to halcyon psychedelic days.

He and I were generations apart. We were the epitome of sub-cultural difference.
His world of two point four nuclear children comprised of mortgages, insurance, badminton clubs, nappies, while mine was full of sex and drugs and rock and roll – to quote Ian Dury.

It was the tail end of the sixties. Mod had turned its page and discovered Timothy Leary’s Psychedelia. Harold Wilson had met with The Beatles and according to Roger Miller the rest of London swung while tambourines turned green, hazes purple and Sunday afternoons became lazy. The Fugs suggested that we all Tuned in, Turned on and dropped out. So we, obligingly, did.

Suburbia was effectively split between the first and second waves of prosperity emanating from post war Britain. The first wave, with re-constructed middle class values, clung onto their Britishness, conservatism and stiff-upper-lip jingoistic nationalism, while also becoming adept at drinking Java and jiving.

The second wave edged even closer to the American neo-cultural revolution having its nascence in post war opposition and an intellectual youth revolt via the American Beats and folk protest, fuelled by a mentality incorporating both optimism and hedonism.

In a sexually liberated London freer cash prospered the new modernity of Twiggy, Mary Quant and Cathy Mc Gowan, soon to devolve into the seedier side of protest and pseudo-revolution championed by Oz magazine, International Times and The Black Dwarf. Quant mini-skirts became Biba midi-skirts, with beads, bells, kaftans and the IT girl replacing Mc Gowan as sub-cultural icon.

Jukebox cafés were replaced with free concerts in Hyde Park. Beer and Ale were replaced with marijuana and cheap wine, while music sought its influence both from technology and other cultures.

It must have been difficult for my brother, now living in his personal land of plenty, to see his brother degenerate into a long haired, scruffy Hippy. His world and my world clashed in so many places that he found it easier to figuratively and literally cross the road to avoid me, rather than say hello to the creature he believed I had become.

That walk to the opposite side of Colchester high street was the beginning of the unmeasured divide. Those few steps symbolised the difference between our two worlds, one that could never be re-trod. Like Armstrong on the moon, one small step took us to an immeasurable distance.

There had never been a closeness to revert to afterward.

Living nine years in my future effectively alienated my brother from me. Closeness had not been achieved in early youth, and so was not there to call upon when the world returned to its conservative self post 1960s.

Time and years dragged on with little chance of reconciliation, both changing, both going through the remaining of Shakespeare’s seven ages, getting older.

Eventually, and not without a certain difficulty for the tallest of us, we scrambled out of dad’s Reliant Robin, careful so as not to slip on the icy pathway. We waited for dad to finish locking the vehicle and with him in the lead trod snow up the path to my brother’s green ivy wreath bedecked front door.

Introductions were swapped with the male figure upon opening the door, my brother no where to be seen. The gentleman, a long standing close friend of my brother’s it would seem, looked a little quizzical as my father introduced me, and said, somewhat baffled “I never knew that Victor had a brother.”

Books (or the lack of) (2007)

Please, come in, sit yourself down and make yourself comfortable.

I’d like to tell you a little story.

Please wilfully suspend your disbelief and I will impart my tale to you.

Imagine, if you can, a small country, oh somewhere out in the tropics, you know the sort of place where bananas and coconuts grow and the sun sends small rivulets of sweat down the nape of your neck making you shiver ever so slightly.

Imagine further that reading was becoming quite a rarity in this small tropical country, so much so that this small country’s government was becoming quite concerned, concerned enough to mount literacy campaigns on a year by year basis.

Ok, are you with me so far? By the way are you sitting comfortably? Just shift yourself around for a little while if you need to, it’s ok. Would you care for a cushion? No! Ok!

Well, where was I, Oh yes!

Can you now stretch your imagination just a tad more, no, further than that, yes, that’s it just fantasise that this country had only one international author, and he had lived only in the country just a few years when he was young. Imagine that all the other international authors writing about this country came from outside, and some got it wrong, oh so wrong that this little country became angry and banned books by these international authors.

Book banning became very popular in this little banana and coconut country, so they started to ban books on a monthly basis even if the books they were banning had been allowed before. Some people say that the banning also spread to films, but maybe that would be too much for you to imagine.

Now in this little country there were libraries. No, not like the libraries that you and I are used to with rooms full of book shelves and book shelves full of books, these libraries were different.

In the libraries in this little banana and coconut country the rooms were huge, but the book shelves were few. The book shelves were few and the books were fewer. Many book shelves were empty, and those that were not empty had few books and those books were old and dusty. Of the old and dusty books, library users were only allowed to take some away to read – two books to each person with a special pass, and then only allowed to read them for two weeks. But the nice books, the books that some people wanted to read were not allowed out of the library.

If you were too young, or didn’t have the special pass you were not even allowed to have the two books that other people were permitted.

So, I hear you ask, what did people do to read? Well, listen closely and I will explain.

As only people who were old enough and had special passes were allowed to take the two old dusty books away to read, other people stopped reading or turned to book shops to buy the books that they thought they could afford.

Unfortunately people could not afford to buy all the books that they wanted to read, and they couldn’t borrow from the library because either the books were not there to borrow, or they did not have permission to borrow them, so the people went without.

Some people visited the big bookshops, but there were many books that were not on those shelves because those books were banned, and others were not there because they, sadly, were out of print.

Other people went to small dusty second hand bookshops, and rummaged around in the dust trying to find just the one useful book, but, as time went on there were less and less useful books available in the second hand book shops.

The government still encouraged people to read, but there was less and less to read, and so the people of the little banana and coconut country fell behind other peoples in the world, only relying on second hand knowledge and snippets of information from the internet and television.

Books became a thing of the past, and the little banana and coconut country got smaller and smaller until, one day it disappeared because no-one wrote about it and no-one read about it, it simply just disappeared from memory.

Indian mesmer (2007)

 

A black and yellow Bajaj, 150cc, Indian auto-rickshaw, stood looking for all the world like a gigantic bumble-bee, amidst the rural English countryside secreted in the hamlet of Elmstead Market - on the borders of Essex and Suffolk. The Great British summer sun glinted off its lovingly polished paintwork reflecting particularly English grass, verdant by days of sunshine and rain, and stroking the Bajaj’s South Asian wheels with considered affection. Condescendingly English bees wove their pollen laden ways in and out of the vehicle’s open structure, oblivious to its anomaly.

Tiny spiders, unaware of the surreality of their situation, spun their delicate webs hoping to catch English flies in the Indian-ess of the rickshaw’s interior. On a wooden post nearby a solo majestic magpie preened itself, one crow eye on its onyx and ivory feathers, the other mesmerised by a small shaft of light sparkling off the Bajaj’s exterior chromium.

A centaury before, in waning Edwardian England, Elmstead Market had stood on the main thoroughfare from the ancient Roman town of Camulodunum (Colchester), to the, then, fashionable coastal town of Clacton-on-sea. The eager gentry had frequently traversed intervening miles with high expectations of sun and sand, beach huts and bathing machines. Yet over the years few shops now remained in Elmstead Market, and those that continued to reside stand jumbled along the modernised main road. An obligatory local pub overlooks the rustic-ness of a greensward with its cluster of aged and ancient houses.

On these idyllic days the lush border landscape aches for John Constable’s return - such is its quintessential Englishness. White and overly fluffy cumulus clouds scud as only cumulus clouds can scud, while beneath them - an intrusion of former Empire, a poignant token of post-colonial responsibility.

A momentary glance through my Ford Fiesta Zetec’s windscreen brought an apparent incongruity to my sight, my amazement and momentary disbelief. I doubted my sight and my senses and instantly constructed all manner of reasoned explanations as to why I could not be seeing a singular Indian vehicle standing in an exemplary English village.

I turned my sleek new vehicle around in the road and re-drove those few yards in near heart-stopping apprehension, only to have my original sighting re-affirmed. I sat, motionless, staring through my side window at a sight I could only have imagined in my most ludicrous and bizarre dreams.

As if it was a dream’s residue the essence of the Indian Bajaj seeped into my consciousness, stirring memories of India, begging me to recall past journeying and eccentric sojourns. Recollections of Goa and labyrinthine excursions from Candolim to Panaji came unbidden as did memories of dusty Chennai with its crowded streets between Anna Nagar and the Thyagaraja Nagar (T Nagar) - where the tailors stitch their livelihoods. A soporific flood of reminiscences sought to overwhelm my senses as dream and reality became blurred - I imagined hearing rasping hawkers call and emaciated Brahma bulls low. My senses assailed, I cognized the disturbed street dust along with the acrid essence of borneol camphor, and ever sweet smell of jasmine flowers.

I reposed in my own vehicle transfixed and transported spiritually to the Indian realm. My consciousness awash with vistas of that grand Asian subcontinent as my subconscious mind continued piloting the Cartesian machine.

Kipling, Gandhi and my own dear father spun as symbolic wraiths drifting in and out of focus, blending into the exotica of my imaginings, subsumed into the beckoning daydream and lost to the world of reason. An enchantment bewitched me, an elvish glamour sought to unseat my understanding as my mind danced a crazed dance among temples and rivers, statues and hazy coromandel beaches with cooling maritime breezes. Transposed and transported I became at one with my imaginings, subsumed into the opiate dream of conjured recollection.

Silken saris gracefully floated before me, maidens in fine cloth and cottons smiled beguiling smiles, third eye marks punctuating their foreheads as a fitting accolade to their sublime beauty. Enraptured, my senses floated to tunes of sitar, veena, flute and tabla, my ears straining to catch the delicacy of lilt and profundity of melody. Classical ragas caught and transcended my soul each new melody and rhythm uplifting my being to ever newer heights.

And what colours there were - bright, dazzling hues of be-saried ladies, golden yellows and vibrant pinks, stunning blues and oranges, a veritable kaleidoscope of colours clamouring to lay themselves before my sight. The ever present sun shone, reflected, refracted, ricocheting from chromium here and a golden bangle there bringing a feast of hues and shades to constantly delight my sight.

A sound, just beyond my reason, began to assert itself into my labouring mind - a tap, tap, and tapping, rapping itself into my consciousness, as if someone, or something, was trying to attract my attention. I was loath to emerge from my dream, reluctant to re-engage with the world as it is. What passes for reality, but is in essence but a construct of agreeing minds, began to reassert itself - inviting me to rejoin this mundane existence.

The sound grew louder as my senses began, slowly, to adjust to my surroundings. The tap, tap, tapping was still in evidence as gradually my eyes began to open, and there, standing on the bonnet of my vehicle stood a stupendous kingfisher, his coat resplendent with the greens and blues of his sensuous feathers. Tap, the kingfisher’s head darted to the bonnet, tap again, as he struck the still moving fish against the grey paintwork of my Ford, a further tap to bring the stillness of death to the freshly caught aquatic denizen, slight smears of fresh water blood evident as the master angler launched himself, and his recently caught prey, into the brightness of the English summer’s day.

A final glance, and mental salutations to the Bajaj as I ignited my automobile’s engine, turned the car back onto the highway and drove away from Elmstead Market, the Bajaj and memories of India.

As I sit here, several thousand miles from England, I often think about meeting with the anomaly which was the Indian auto-rickshaw in the depths of the English countryside. It was strange, but then I have since learnt that life is frequently strange if you allow it to be……..

 

Black Shirts (2007)

In life we are presented with opportunities to enrich our lives, and today was no exception.

This morning (Sunday) I had watched the eloquent Riz Khan (One on One – Al Jazeera) interview Deepak Chopra, a gentleman famed for his interpersonal skills, belief in ‘respect’ and seemingly never ending quest to promote peace and global harmony.

Dr Chopra spoke about the need for mutual respect. Respect between people and respect between nations.

An hour or so later I was requested to attend a parent’s motivational presentation at my step-daughter’s junior school. I was informed that my step-daughter would be questioned at morning assembly if my wife and I were not to attend.

I knew in advance that the motivational address would be in Malay. It is my failing that I have little understanding of Bahasa Malaysia beyond ordering a Teh Tarik and remembering that a’s must be pronounced as u’s, as in Umpung (Ampang) and Peruk (Perak). So I was well prepared to stare at the ceiling and shuffle my foot-ware for the duration, so to speak.

I had forgotten that some people still believe that they get their message across better the louder their voice becomes. This syndrome is a favourite with English tourists in foreign countries, if in doubt - shout. And so the presenter shouted. The only word my English brain could catch was ‘professional’, and it seemed a little ironic to me that professionalism, which is inclusive of respect and dialogue, should be propounded in this presentation whereas what was being presented was monologue and provocation. There was something very Nuremberg about the forcefulness of the presentation, something that I had encountered in Malaysia before. It made me feel uncomfortable then and was making me feel uncomfortable today.

On coming to Malaysia over two and a half years ago I was employed, briefly, by a local private university. The university dress code was for all staff to wear black – all black. Sceptically I conformed. From Sogo, in Kuala Lumpur, I bought black trousers, black socks to wear with black shoes, a black umbrella and, yes you guessed it – black shirts.

One day while I was attending the university all staff were instructed to gather in the large hall, for a motivational talk by the founder of the university. I sat in the front row of the hall, along with heads of departments and various upper echelons, and happened to turn around to witness a veritable sea of people wearing all black. It came as a shock and it was then that the thought struck - where had I seen something like this before, answer -still photos of Oswald Mosely’s black-shirted fascist followers during their rallies held throughout 1935, in my home town, in England.

There was something about a hall filled with people of different ethnic races wearing all black which made it seem sinister, threatening. The directive to attend the meeting had been made more threatening by an attendance sheet passed from person to person, row to row, to ensure that all staff attended. I had forgotten that these things were done very differently in Malaysia, and that outward shows of power and rank were still considered to be acceptable.

While we sat there, dressed in all black, and expectantly looking around for our leader to arrive, we were told there would be a delay. After a few minutes of being told of further delays we were requested to exit the hall and re-group after half an hour. Almost precisely half an hour later, all black-garbed staff re-grouped in the main hall of the university - to be told that the founder would not now be attending.

Respect you see goes both ways. If you are a leader then you expect respect from those you lead, but respect has to be earned, it is not implicit in the mere fact of leadership. To gain the respect of those you lead you must treat them respectfully. To issue orders, expecting people to obey, is a trend that is popular in military establishments, as military people are frequently expected to react quickly to a given order and not to question it. Questioning orders in the military may cost lives. This is not so in civilian life.

To shout your presentation, bombarding your listeners with jingoist language is not respectful. Issuing orders for school children’s parents to attend such motivational presentations is not respectful, especially when a child may be ridiculed for a parent’s non-attendance.

Lack of respect for others, for other people’s space, time, ideas, ideals and yes religion too seems endemic in the world at present, it is time that we all remembered that the other’s other is we ourselves and the respect we have for ourselves is engendered in respect for others too.

Anniversary Song (2007)

anniversary song

you

have given me

warmth,

comfort,

love,

soft dreams

imbued

with

sensuality,

kitchens

filled

with

aromas,

scents,

exotic,

erotic

spices,

orchids,

bougainvillea,

nepenthaceae,

sarraceniaceae,

water buffalo,

otter,

civet,

flora

and fauna

to

delight

my days,

myths

to

fill

my

kampung

nights,

and

doing

this

you

have

filled

my

life

while

i

have

given

you

only

me