The Orlando shooting that took the lives of 49 innocent people and injured more than 50 in a bar brought a sense of deep sunken-ness in my heart; I was grieving inside. Disagreement over one’s lifestyle choice should not lead one to take the lives of others. Only a bad religion would urge such a diabolical jihad. Grief brought me to my childhood memories and into my teen years at a high school I fondly call Bauxite High in Kuantan, Pahang in Malaysia.

My thought was: how could one commit mass murder - just like that? As if I have not understood well the complexity of psychosis and mental illness emblematic of this society called America - a society, as I have always spoken about in my lectures on Globalisation and Human Consequences, always a work in progress and in experimentation mode as a republic that chose, wisely, to keep Religion and the State separate.

A society that continues to struggle with definitions such as of equality, democracy, and justice.