Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 11 January 2016 issue)

Dear Kam,
The sea around Kuantan has been turned red by contamination from bauxite mining. This is horrifying and yet, oh well, I guess that’s just the way it is these days.
Orange is the New Black

I have friends who fled up the Pahang River on a boat when the Japanese army invaded Malaya in 1942. They told me how when they pushed their boat up the river, the water was so clear they could see all the way down to the bottom of the riverbed. That is not possible any more. Today, just like every other river in Malaysia, the Pahang River is brown and silted, and now, the surrounding sea has been turned red from bauxite mining. I don’t know much about the chemical make-up of bauxite but I’m guessing it’s not an essential ingredient in fi sh food. It’s probably the opposite.

For centuries, the rivers and the sea were the Malay landscape, being highways for trade and travel as well as providing an endless source of food. Malay life was adapted to the water. Visitors from outside noted that Malays were excellent swimmers (most European sailors couldn’t swim at all) and Malay sailors were seen as far away as the early 19th century American whaling ports of Moby Dick as well as the docklands of London. As a keen student of history, I have always been surprised at how quickly Malays have turned their backs on the rivers and sea and now happily allow the waterways to be liquid poison.

The amnesia and wilful destruction is not unique. The English are also a seafaring riverine people who used their expertise on the water to establish a global empire. But by the mid-19th century, their mother river, the River Thames, was a horrifyingly disgusting open sewer. In the summer of 1858, the Houses of Parliament had to be abandoned because of the stench from the river (that summer was called the “Great Stink”) and Queen Victoria’s husband may have died from cholera that crept up the toilets of Windsor Castle. As a result, Victorian engineers built a vast network of sewage pipes under London, but the river was only really cleaned after the Second World War, by which point containerisation of shipping had made the London docks redundant. Now, it is possible, I am told, to not only catch fish in the Thames in the heart of London but also it’s safe to eat that fish. I have seen catfish in the river next to KL’s Central Market. Catfish are remarkably tough survivors, but these looked like creatures from the brown latrine, and I wouldn’t want to eat them.

It has become fashionable in the post-colonial world to blame outsiders for all our misfortunes, to say they made me do it because they did it to me first. And yet, despite all the complaints, it has also become fashionable to buy property in their capital cities and send our children to their old schools (I went to one of those schools and don’t regret it for a second). At some point, we have to own up to our mistakes, and with the ongoing destruction of our waters, we have done this to ourselves. It’s almost as if we are deliberately trying to obliterate the rivers because they remind us of something embarrassing in our past.

My friends who tried in 1942 to escape up the Pahang River from the advancing Japanese army eventually gave up their attempt. The river became unnavigable and there was nowhere to go, anyway. I mean, they weren’t going to live in the jungle. Who does that? The British had been defeated and the Japanese were the new reality that had to be faced. In the intervening years, a new reality is that we choose to despoil our landscape at every opportunity. Killing our rivers appears to offer a chance to escape from our past. There is no escape. The reality is we harm ourselves. But hopefully, somebody managed to buy themselves something nice in London.

Dear Kam,
What’s your New Year’s resolution?
Curiouser & Curiouser

Many years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to never again make a New Year’s resolution and I’m very proud to announce that I have managed to stick to it. Over the years, I’ve told myself I’m going to stop doing this and start doing that instead, but none of them ever happened. Now, I’ve simply accepted that I don’t stick to impossible resolutions made in panic (I don’t know about you, but panic is what I feel when I survey a year just gone). So, why set myself up for disappointment on the fi rst of January when I’ve got a whole year ahead to achieve staggering new failures? And perhaps some triumphs?

But I will tentatively make one resolution. I’ve got a horrible feeling I’ve made this resolution before, but I want to read more books. I want to try to put away the smartphone because although it might be smart, it isn’t making me smart. When I’m scrolling through Facebook, I get to see what is making everyone excited, angry or sad. I think that’s a good thing because I get to see what is the national conversation (it’s bleak), or at least, I get to see what is animating my kind of people (it’s bleak). But diving into a book helps me go sideways, away from that conversation and experience a silent conversation between myself and the author and a subject that might seemingly have no relevance to the troubles that beset today’s Malaysia. So, I’m going to read more books.

Or — I’ve just had an idea — I could simply take selfies of me pretending to read a book and then post it on Facebook. And isn’t that the same thing? I’m pretty sure it is. Happy New Year!

Reprinted with the kind permission of