Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 16 May 2016 issue)

Dear Kam,
I’m thinking of going away for a quick trip. Where should I go?
Starship

I’ve just come back from a weekend holiday in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I really like Colombo. Every Malaysian would find it so familiar.

I have a Sabahan friend who went to school in England back in the Seventies and his mother went to visit him. She had never left Sabah before, I don’t think she had even left her hometown before and she could only speak her Chinese dialect.

Her return flight went via Colombo and when she landed, she thought Colombo was Kuala Lumpur because the name sounded the same, so she got off. Everything seemed normal because Colombo looked like how she imagined Kuala Lumpur would look. It had a lot of Indians, although perhaps more than she had expected. She was stranded there for a week until the next flight.

The last time I was in Colombo was during the war, and the transformation is remarkable. In many ways, Colombo today reminds me of KL in the Nineties. There is a mood of optimism in Colombo as the economy is finally growing, high-rises are rising at a rapid rate but, unlike KL, the architectural heritage is being preserved.

I noticed quite a lot of Chinese expatriates in Colombo because China is making some big infrastructure investments in Sri Lanka.

Colombo has its rough edges and away from the developing downtown areas, the street lighting is as gloomy as I remember and yet perhaps Sri Lanka is finally approaching the promise that was expected of it when Ceylon gained independence back in 1948 (the name change to Sri Lanka happened in 1972).

During the war, there were army checkpoints everywhere and a constant fear of that tragic Sri Lankan invention — the suicide bomber. The checkpoints are gone but it cannot be forgotten that the war was absolutely devastating and brutal on an island that is smaller than Peninsular Malaysia.

Sri Lanka feels so placid, safe and familiar but there must surely be a dark and sad legacy. It must be lurking somewhere. Too many Malaysians play with divisive language like it’s some kind of toy but when you see a country like Sri Lanka that has gone through the real thing, then it becomes horribly clear what a stupid game they play.

We tend to think of the Malaysian and Singaporean demographic as being made up of Malay, Chinese and Indian, but that forgets a community that has had an enormous impact on the Malaysian mindset: the Ceylonese.

Ceylon was an older and more developed British colony than Malaya and when Malaya was being opened up in the 1880s, it was only natural for Ceylonese to make the short journey and bring their expertise in plantations, civil service, railways and the English language. From Ceylon came management experts who were British, Tamil, Sinhalese and Dutch and Portuguese Eurasians. The flow wasn’t entirely one way because there are Malays in Sri Lanka who are descendants of soldiers who fought for the British in the early 1800s.

The Ceylonese brought their expertise and (I think) they also brought something that has left an indelible mark on the Malaysian mindset. They brought middle-classness. I can’t define middle-classness, but I know it when I see it and Malaysians are effortlessly middle-class in a way that you won’t find in, say, Indonesia. Perhaps Malaysian middle-classness is made up of two essential tropes: a lifestyle with Anglophile ceremonies like teatime and a fear of falling into poverty with its resulting loss of prestige. The Ceylonese brought both these tropes in their tiffin boxes and all of us have been following their lead ever since, whether we like to admit it or not. Personally, I am happy to admit that I am very middle-class.

If you haven’t yet, then you should visit Sri Lanka.

Dear Kam,
Is it my imagination or will Donald Trump become the new Supreme Classy Leader?
Stumped

President Trump. Just think about that for a moment. President Trump. It might happen. American political pundits say he cannot win the general election but the Philippines has just voted in the scary-sounding Rodrigo Duterte and he wasn’t supposed to be able to win. It feels like there is a global trend with people lurching to the right and the brain fever will surely reach Malaysia.

The spread of the internet was supposed to make us better informed and wiser, less beholden to fear and more aware of nuance and context. Instead, we just share stories about danger and anarchy. We share them fast and we whip ourselves up into a frenzy of fear.

These stories share a common theme of fear of the outsider who wants to harm us and destroy our civilisation. He’s close, he’s among us, he’s right next to you. The world, it seems, is a terrible and scary place. It probably isn’t any worse than it ever has been but the speed of danger clickbait makes us think it is and fear trumps understanding every time. And so we run into the arms of the strong man who promises to protect us from the outsider. Unfortunately, he always ends up protecting us from ourselves, and only protecting himself and his pals.

If it’s any consolation, America’s voting map suggests that it is impossible for Trump to become POTUS. He has angered just about every minority group as well as a majority group — women (American women go out and vote in larger numbers than men). Demographic projections suggest that America is actually moving to becoming more liberal. We’ll have to wait and see if common sense trumps Trump.

Reprinted with the kind permission of