Dirty story, stinky city
I get my mental libido, amongst from other divine sources, through language and how it structures my inner reality - assuming I know what inner reality means and what it looks like. Which I don’t. And that is the beauty of imagining what each word, ie concept or noun, looks like in my ‘mind’s eye’. As a child, I have this hypersensitivity towards words. I get OD-ed (in gangsta slang it means overdosed) by words.
I get high on them, sometimes I would go higher than the Empire State Building or doubly higher than the Petronas Twin Towers. I’d repeat a new word I learn over and over again until I feel nauseated and at times feel like blackening out.
As in the character in Jean Paul Sartre’s story, Nausea. I’d sit on the bus (usually at the back, unlike Rosa Parks of the Civil Rights movement,) look out of the window, and get high first on the rugged and gangsta lullabying motion of the monstrous vehicle such as the T Hakim Bus service in my village or the Johor-Singapore Express from the Sinfully Smelly City of Johor Baru to the Rochor Centre in Singabore (oops, Singapore City I mean). I’d get high on words.
I’d notice the signboards, read them words, read billboards, read the captions, read name of streets and figure out what they mean. Then like, the mythical Malay Frankenstein who ate human vomit to get high and become as mighty as Smoking Joe Frazier, I’d get high on words my little eleven-year-old pea brain worth two cents for that two-pound universe would get clogged and fogged with words that I felt like having a word vomit - like Badang.
I’d close my eyes and take a deep breath and I’d be happy again. I would feel that I had photographed the words and archive them somewhere in my micro-mini-midget brain. Then, I’d search for the best ais kacang and cendol in town to cool myself off and to have a brain freeze high. Words would be alive in me and I’d become some of them.
Sitting here now in my library amongst these few thousands of books perhaps of a billions words, I’d close my eyes at times to go back the times I first encounter words, and in this case, names of people and things associated with my life in a drug-infested Malay kampong in the Sinful and Smelly City of Jay Bee. In the hippies-high-on-pills ‘pil khayal’ seventies. Of Tasek Utara radicals-against-golf-course protest times of the Deep Purple and Rolling Stones seventies.
Yes, Johor Baru of the seventies was the stinkiest and smelliest and sweatiest city in Malaysia. The bus station smelled like a concoction of petrol and piss. Of dust and dung and people walking around like mutating American Yankees in dungarees. Thanks to her river of life - the Segget River. Smells like the rottenest of all eggs on planet earth.
A cross between a rotten Johor-Malay telor pindang and Chinese thousand-year-old egg, Kelantan budu, Malacca cincalok, North Korean DMZ-Gangnam-styled kimchi and ten-year old Swiss cheese - all in one that gave the Johor Baru city, like its politics, that stinky, eggy, rotteny, cheesy, pungently feel. Cross-culturally stinky.
Like AliBaba-1MDB-Bujang-Jones-Lapok-Trump-Syrian-murderers kind of rotten stinky. Stink-to-the-heavens kind of stinky. Like how it is described in Sasterawan Negara Shahnon Ahmad’s great Malay late 1980s post-mo novel titled ‘Shit’, written during the Dr Mahathir Mohamad Era - about that period of stinkiness.
But hey, did I have a choice to be born in and live, say in Kuala Lumpur, the second stinkiest city then, or even Kuantan the third, which smelled like dead fish at times? Smells like Bauxite Red Planet kind of stinkiness. Kelantan illegal logging kind of stinky.
Gua Musang-bullying-of-the-Orang-Asli-kind of stinky. Islamic State-hypocrisy kind of stinky. Cartoonist-Zunar-arrested monthly-kind of stinky. No I did not have that choice of a birthplace. I wanted my city to smell like Singapore’s Marina Bay - when I was growing up as a teen, it smelled that way. Smells like teen spirit. But I supposed a city ought to smell as nice as her politics. And the stinkier the city, the stinkier the politics.
I get my mental libido, amongst from other divine sources, through language and how it structures my inner reality - assuming I know what inner reality means and what it looks like. Which I don’t. And that is the beauty of imagining what each word, ie concept or noun, looks like in my ‘mind’s eye’. As a child, I have this hypersensitivity towards words. I get OD-ed (in gangsta slang it means overdosed) by words.
I get high on them, sometimes I would go higher than the Empire State Building or doubly higher than the Petronas Twin Towers. I’d repeat a new word I learn over and over again until I feel nauseated and at times feel like blackening out.
As in the character in Jean Paul Sartre’s story, Nausea. I’d sit on the bus (usually at the back, unlike Rosa Parks of the Civil Rights movement,) look out of the window, and get high first on the rugged and gangsta lullabying motion of the monstrous vehicle such as the T Hakim Bus service in my village or the Johor-Singapore Express from the Sinfully Smelly City of Johor Baru to the Rochor Centre in Singabore (oops, Singapore City I mean). I’d get high on words.
I’d notice the signboards, read them words, read billboards, read the captions, read name of streets and figure out what they mean. Then like, the mythical Malay Frankenstein who ate human vomit to get high and become as mighty as Smoking Joe Frazier, I’d get high on words my little eleven-year-old pea brain worth two cents for that two-pound universe would get clogged and fogged with words that I felt like having a word vomit - like Badang.
I’d close my eyes and take a deep breath and I’d be happy again. I would feel that I had photographed the words and archive them somewhere in my micro-mini-midget brain. Then, I’d search for the best ais kacang and cendol in town to cool myself off and to have a brain freeze high. Words would be alive in me and I’d become some of them.
Sitting here now in my library amongst these few thousands of books perhaps of a billions words, I’d close my eyes at times to go back the times I first encounter words, and in this case, names of people and things associated with my life in a drug-infested Malay kampong in the Sinful and Smelly City of Jay Bee. In the hippies-high-on-pills ‘pil khayal’ seventies. Of Tasek Utara radicals-against-golf-course protest times of the Deep Purple and Rolling Stones seventies.
Yes, Johor Baru of the seventies was the stinkiest and smelliest and sweatiest city in Malaysia. The bus station smelled like a concoction of petrol and piss. Of dust and dung and people walking around like mutating American Yankees in dungarees. Thanks to her river of life - the Segget River. Smells like the rottenest of all eggs on planet earth.
A cross between a rotten Johor-Malay telor pindang and Chinese thousand-year-old egg, Kelantan budu, Malacca cincalok, North Korean DMZ-Gangnam-styled kimchi and ten-year old Swiss cheese - all in one that gave the Johor Baru city, like its politics, that stinky, eggy, rotteny, cheesy, pungently feel. Cross-culturally stinky.
Like AliBaba-1MDB-Bujang-Jones-Lapok-Trump-Syrian-murderers kind of rotten stinky. Stink-to-the-heavens kind of stinky. Like how it is described in Sasterawan Negara Shahnon Ahmad’s great Malay late 1980s post-mo novel titled ‘Shit’, written during the Dr Mahathir Mohamad Era - about that period of stinkiness.
But hey, did I have a choice to be born in and live, say in Kuala Lumpur, the second stinkiest city then, or even Kuantan the third, which smelled like dead fish at times? Smells like Bauxite Red Planet kind of stinkiness. Kelantan illegal logging kind of stinky.
Gua Musang-bullying-of-the-Orang-Asli-kind of stinky. Islamic State-hypocrisy kind of stinky. Cartoonist-Zunar-arrested monthly-kind of stinky. No I did not have that choice of a birthplace. I wanted my city to smell like Singapore’s Marina Bay - when I was growing up as a teen, it smelled that way. Smells like teen spirit. But I supposed a city ought to smell as nice as her politics. And the stinkier the city, the stinkier the politics.
Names ease the stink
But I love names. I love names I came across in my kampong. They ease the stink. The make stinky smells rosy. Names of people I know - of friends and the elders, I have many of the memorable ones in my head now. Gay names. Straight names. Happy names. Sad names. Names, names, names.
Abong. Abu. Mat Kempong, Mat Lambong, Engeh. Mat Lantok. Mak Embon. Mak Piah. Mak Arah. Mak Som. Haji Leman. Haji Lihin. Pak Itam. Mak Itam. Mak Tekah. Mak Bone. Mak Embon. Mak Minah. Mak Munah. Kak Jah. Kak Ros. Kak Noi. Pak Ya Tukang Rumah. Pak Haji Dolah Daging Lembu. Pak Bilal. Pak Mudim. Pak Man Burung. Pak Mamek. Pak Man Porres (Osman who worked with the Forestry Department). Pak Ali Asko (Ali the Army man).
Pak Man Batman (the shopkeeper who looked like Batman). Petom (raped by someone by the huge water pipe that ran from Johor to Singapore and got pregnant - baby father unknown). Adik Petom (Petom’s sister, later raped as well). Bhai Roti. (the Bengali man in a flowing dhoti who sells freshly-baked bread on a WWII German-Army-looking motorbike).
Names I remember. Names, for some, associated with their occupation, as Karl Marx had said that “man’s existence is defined by the economic activity they engage in". Man - the homo economicus, therein.
Names. Of village folks. With stories to tell me as I sit here in my library. Thinking of that stinky city, called ‘JB’. A microcosm of the dirty story of Putrajaya’s 1MDB. With words I am now OD-ed.
DR AZLY RAHMAN grew up in Johor Baru, Malaysia and holds a Columbia University (New York City) doctorate in International Education Development and Masters degrees in the fields of Education, International Affairs, Peace Studies and Communication. He will be pursuing his fifth Masters in Fine Arts, specialising in Fiction and Poetry Writing. He has taught more than 50 courses in six different departments and has written more than 350 analyses/essays on Malaysia. His 25 years of teaching experience in Malaysia and the United States spans over a wide range of subjects, from elementary to graduate education. He has edited and authored six books; Multiethnic Malaysia: Past, Present, Future (2009), Thesis on Cyberjaya: Hegemony and Utopianism in a Southeast Asian State (2012), The Allah Controversy and Other Essays on Malaysian Hypermodernity (2013), Dark Spring: Essays on the Ideological Roots of Malaysia's General Elections-13 (2013), a first Malay publication Kalimah Allah Milik Siapa?: Renungan dan Nukilan Tentang Malaysia di Era Pancaroba (2014), and Controlled Chaos: Essays on Mahathirism, Multimedia Super Corridor and Malaysia’s ‘New Politics’ (2014). He currently resides in the United States where he teaches courses in Education, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Political Science, and American Studies. His forthcoming book, One Malaysia, under God, Bipolar, a joint project between Gerakbudaya and World Wise Books of New Jersey, USA, is his seventh compilation of essays on Malaysian Cultural, Creative, and Critical Studies. He is currently working on his eighth book, on Gifted and Talented Education in Malaysia, honouring a prominent educator. Twitter, blog
