Let’s embrace the disruption
By MARINA MAHATHIR
MUSINGS
Sunday, 29 Aug 2021
If this Merdeka is to have any meaning at all, we need to free our minds from the same old formulas.
IN years past, every time Aug 31 comes around, inevitably reporters will ask me for my thoughts on Merdeka because I was born in the same year as independence. But this year, I hope nobody asks me what my thoughts are. I am too exhausted for any such thoughts.
I can’t think of anything to say because the last thing I feel is free. Merdeka means freedom or independence, but I feel shackled in every way.
First, I am physically tied down, unable to go anywhere meaningful because of our prolonged Covid-19 lockdown. Apart from walks around my neighbourhood and occasional trips to the supermarket fully masked, I remain in my house day after day. I don’t mind it much because I do have a nice spacious house and work has continued online. But only seeing my colleagues online has become increasingly surreal, as if none of them are flesh and blood, only images on my laptop screen.
We recently had an intern none of us met from the time she joined us to the time she left. I only know her up to her shoulders; I have no idea how she carries herself in person which would have told me so much more about her. If asked, I can only describe her in one dimension, that of the work she produced and nothing else.
This is what we lose when we continually work from home, the ability to see our colleagues as whole persons. We’ve only mildly overcome this with occasional social Zoom calls where chats are about everything except work. It’s not enough.
I also feel imprisoned by not being able to see my parents. They are well and they are safe but at their age, only by seeing them in person will we notice the little things that matter. How one seems a little wobbly on her feet or how she wants to know every detail of their grandchildren’s lives, questions that don’t always occur to them in the chaotic conversations of a Zoom family gathering. We’re not there to grieve with them when they hear news of friends who have succumbed to the virus or just old age. Nor are we there to oversee a house that might so easily endanger fragile bones or have plumbing problems that might escape the notice of poor vision. We can only care so much for our families from a distance, with voice-call admonitions to take care or to send over needed equipment but without being able to show them how it works.
There are of course people worse off than us, those who have lost their family members and who have been unable to say goodbye in the final hours. I can’t imagine what that must feel like, especially if you weren’t able to see them for months on end before they fell ill. No closure, no freedom from grief.
Perhaps the worst feeling of being imprisoned is the one that beleaguers your mind day in and day out. All the “what ifs” if you didn’t have to be confined to home, district, state or country. But even more so, when you notice the very real attempts at locking down your mind and body that has been happening in our country for the past year.
Efforts at thinking seems to be not only discouraged but downright suppressed so those who have something to say that even mildly dissents from the norm are punished as if they’d committed the most heinous crimes. Anyone who mentions the many white flags that have sprouted over people’s homes are told to delete the posts or take down the flags. Young people wanting to memorialise those who died of Covid-19 are taken away in black Marias. Parliamentarians wanting to do their jobs are stopped by no less than the riot squad.
Has anyone given a good explanation for these nonsensical moves? “Violations of SOPs” is the weakest and least believable excuse. These reactions are really motivated by embarrassment at the truth laid bare.
They underscore our government’s total failure at safeguarding the people through well thought-out science-based policies instead of political jujitsu’ing to ensure the survival of some of the most unfit leaders we have ever seen. Leaders who cannot fathom a simple fact: pandemics thrive when democracy dies.
Through what can only be described as sleight of hand, we now have a leader that the entire world’s press cannot help but describe as coming from a scandal-tainted political party. On that score we must be a world first: the only country where the government in power is the one that lost the last general elections. Our new leader is not even the leader of his own party because those are so tainted, none of us can endure the shame of having them at the helm again. You must wonder what Malaysians did that we are handed scraps at the bottom of the barrel like this?
If this Merdeka is to have any meaning at all, we need to free our minds from the same old formulas. Covid-19 has up-ended everything that we thought we knew so we might as well embrace the disruption and think differently.
Maybe we should look at people we never thought of as leaders before. There have been so many ordinary people who have stepped up with ideas to help the needy far more innovative than anything the government has come up with.
There are those who have not waited for support or contracts before they did anything. They’ve simply gone and done, thinking of themselves least of all. Those are the leaders we need.
If this Aug 31 you’re feeling like you can’t breathe, not because of a tiny virus but because of the virulent strain of anti-democracy, start prying that chink of hope open by supporting people with the leadership qualities you want. It’s our only chance.
Marina Mahathir is wondering why, despite two vaccinations, not going out and always wearing masks when she does, she still feels as if something is not letting her breathe. The views expressed here are solely her own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Star.
