It is Merdeka season again, time yet for another orgy of portentous patriotism.

The government propaganda machinery must be throbbing again with yet another explosive campaign to manufacture a ubiquitous display of patriotic love for this Land of the Free, Paradise On Earth, Homeland of the Great Warriors etc.

So the imagined space of our citizenry must now be flooded with the images of Tunku Abdul Rahman raising his right arm and shouting "Merdeka" three times to the deafening cheers of the enthralled masses in our National Stadium in 1957. Or was it 1963?

Pardon me for getting confused about the date of our independence.

I, like other citizens from my generation, did live through those days of uncertainties and turmoil before and after Merdeka. .

It was on the stroke of twelve past the midnight of Sept 15, 1963 that I - with a few other young scrappy boys in Kuching - witnessed the lowering of the Union Jack for the last time, and the debut appearance of the then unfamiliar Malaysian flag in its place, at the Pangkalan Kota in front of the Clock Tower beside the placid Sarawak River.

The streets were deserted; most people preferred to stay home, glued to the radio (yes, we did manage to live without the idiot box happily) and listening to the first Chief Minister of Sarawak, Stephen Kalong Ningkan (an Iban CM!), declaring that we had become independent from British colonial rule through the formation of Malaysia.