An Ode To My Mother

An Ode To My Mother

A few days ago, a friend of mine was telling me about how her six-year-old son was beginning to assert his individuality in a quest for increased autonomy. An inquisitive and highly intelligent child, he could not see why his being prone to illness and the fragility of technology should stand in the way of his sole custody of the remote control to the air-conditioner in his room. No slight matter, this was a question of sovereignity as he could not, in his view, feel secure in his possessory rights until he had control of the remote. Needless to say, two remotes and several bouts of fever later, his mother has a very different view of things.

Leaving aside the fact that in my considered view his insecurity was not unreasonable, bearing in mind the recent decision of the International Court of Justice on Batu Putih, it got me thinking. About personality, identity, the what and why of who we are, and the bonds that keep us together.

I remember an early attempt to wrestle with the nature of my relationship with the world at large. I was about five, in the back seat of my mother’s car, on the way home from somewhere, and I suddenly wondered what would happen if I opened the door. There was only one way to find out, and so I did. It was amazing, a real ‘Ben Hur’ moment for posterity; wind in my hair, ground flashing by, the neighing of horses in my mind’s ears. My mother took a different view. Till this day I have not figured out how she was able to slap me, into the car and not out of it, close the door and lock it, all while she was driving.

This was to be a recurring theme in my relationship with my mother; the narrowing of the eyes, the hiss of breath expelled and the sudden blur of hand, every single time my sense of individuality collided with her perspective of how things should be. Like when I decided that having hair was just too much trouble at thirteen and shaved my head or when I cut school at fourteen to conduct an anthropological study of a toddy shop.

The slaps stopped into my late teens but I still got the narrowing of the eyes and the hiss. Like when I called in from Benares during the height of the Barbri Mosque riots and tried to fool her into believing I was safe by telling her I was in a quiet, sleepy town called Varanasi. I could not see her eyes then, but I could feel them narrow, just before I heard the hiss.

One would think that when in 2006 posters calling for my death as a traitor to Islam were being circulated, there would have been much to think about. There was simply no space in my mind; I was worried about how I was going to tell my mother. A few years earlier, together with three other lawyers, I had been involved in an important Internal Security Act case in the Federal Court. We won, and got ourselves on the front page of the newspapers. I called my mother and got hissed at. The prospect of stardom apparently did not quite balance out the probability of reprisal.

So it got to a point where I thought that I had to take the offensive. I sat my mother down and told her that I was a product of bad up bringing, that I did what I did because I had been raised the way I was. And if she did not believe it, I could call upon at least five to six thousand Islamists who shared my view. She at least had the courtesy of laughing before narrowing her eyes.

To be fair, if I was in my mother’s shoes I would be having serious anxiety issues. It has not been easy for my parents and I owe it to them to acknowledge that fact and their continued faith in my knowing my own limits. Amidst the scolding, the lectures and the hissing, there was an understanding that the only way they could protect me from harm was to allow me to find myself, and that this was a journey all of my own. I think, above all, it was this that persuaded my mother not to refer me to a psychiatrist when she discovered the short stories I was writing at fifteen (she came close to it though).

I am still on that path and the eyes still narrow, though less so for my brother having dutifully, and very usefully, provided grandchildren that serve to distract. My family gives me the space to do what I need to, and the space to find my way back to them, life continuing its cycles in its own time. It is the same for my friend, her son and her family, as it is for countless other Malaysian families throughout the country.

And I wonder, when did we stop doing that for each other as a community?

(Malay Mail; 8th July 2008)

MIS