Sajakkini

Just as I don’t know exactly what it means to be a Malay, or whether I really prefer dogs or cats, I also don’t know what it takes to be a man, much less a REAL MAN. There. You can go back to whatever you were doing before this now. Or were the metrosexuals among you somehow hoping that I’d share some godforsaken secret that would help you redeem your self-esteem? You must think my surname is Spice, mate.

If you’re that interested to know more, well, all right, then. I shall tell you. But I warn you: I grew up without having any usable father figure type to model my behaviour after. (That’s why I’ve always had a problem with authority, but we’ll talk about that another time, I think.) So whatever tips you might find below, I’ve made it all up.

If you’re busy and stumped for time, here’s all you need to know about being a REAL MAN: stop wearing women’s accessories in your hair. Or anything that was designed for women, for that matter. In case you feel compelled to protest, let me ask you this: do women look good in a bushy mustache? There you go. Same dynamics apply. So kindly refrain from whupping my ass with your man-bags, please.

RUHAYAT X is a thinker, writer and teh tarik philosopher. He can get grumpy too. His publishing company, Neohikayat Press will be rolling out anthologies soon: Wilayah Kutu and Aweks KL.

Macho Man 101

For those who are always on the lookout for something else to do rather than working, you’ve come to the right place, my son. Step right in and make yourself comfy. Would you like some green tea in a dainty bone china while we chat? Be sure to raise your hairy little finger when you bring the cup to your cherry-flavoured-chapsticked mouth, yeah (I prefer peach myself). And don’t chew the scone with your mouth open, it’s disgusting.

Right. Here we go.

First, you have to understand something: I didn’t exactly have a conventional childhood (as if anyone ever does). It’s all my maternal grandfather’s fault. He didn’t really like people. That’s why when the Pahang State Government told him he could have whatever land he wanted as a retirement gift in recognition of his long service, he chose the top of a hill flanked by a rubber estate and a Chinese cemetary, with a secondary jungle at the back. It was still near enough for him to drive into town every morning, but let’s just say that for my sister and I, it was a cause for celebration everytime we saw someone climb up the hill.

It didn’t help that my grandfather used to chase half of them back down with a stick. I kid you not (do I ever lie to you? Come onnn).

Let me explain. My mum and my eldest cousin, who stayed at the House on the Hill before she got married, are only a few years apart, and both were lookers in their heyday. So it’s not uncommon to find men fawning over them. These days we call them stalkers, of course, but there wasn’t a word for it in those days.

Anyway. On more than one occassion the balls of these lovesick courters would drop in their sacks, and they’d come visit. Which, if you knew my Tok, was a big mistake indeed. You’d do less damage building the Bakun Dam.

One time, my grandfather was sweeping dry leaves in front of the house, as per his regular habit, when Bachelor Number 157 appeared, giving the salam and grinning like a week-old cockle, as we Malays like to say.

“Assalamualaikum, pakcik, Cikgu Rokiah [my cousin] ada?” said the man, probably thinking the salam was like some kind of tangkal (charm) that would dissipate any malice on the part of the host. To which my Tok replied, “Aaa ni dia Cikgu Rokiah awak!”

My Mak Long - my cousin’s mum - swore the guy’s feet didn’t touch the ground while my grandfather chased him all the way down with the broom called Cikgu Rokiah. My Tok stopped chasing at the bottom of the 57 stairs (I used to count them on my way up from school). The guy didn’t stop running until he’d reached the T-junction, some 200 metres away.

How to (not) court a woman

Another time - and this must have been a really persistent little pest for my grandfather to have been so pissed with him - yet another lovelorn guy was met with the scary vision of a shirtless, pelikat-wearing, absolutely humourless, short brown man with greying hairs standing on top of the stairs, aiming a shotgun at said visitor’s head. I think this time the guy must have flown all the way down.

The thing you just have to admire about my grandfather is, he never let up. Some 30 years later, when my sister was waiting for her SPM results, the guy she was going out with took a bus all the way from Ulu Cheka to visit her in Kuala Lipis (look it up in the map and gasp, if you will, at the lengths men will go to in pursuit of true love). He only got halfway up before a cangkul came flying down to greet him. It missed, but what do you expect? My grandfather must have been close to 80 at the time; his eyesight was going.

When she found out, my sister boarded a bus for our parents’ home in Raub in a huff that very same day and didn’t speak to my grandfather for a year. I, on the other hand, still chuckle at the mention of that story and can only thank God’s supreme grace I was not born a woman in my Tok’s household.

He wasn’t just the ultimate chauvinist, my Tok. An equal opportunity racist, he didn’t like his own people most of all. By that I don’t mean that he hates the Malays, necessarily - err, us Malays, I mean; it’s just that he’d prefer it if the British were still ruling us. “Better to be colonised by foreigners than your own kind,” he told me once. “At least you get higher quality discrimination.”

He didn’t like the way he was treated by the new, post-Merdeka breed of civil servants. He especially didn’t like the post-NEP ones because they liked to yell at him whenever he went to collect his pension because he moved so slowly (yes, this is true; I have seen it myself once when I accompanied my Tok - one or two of them were incredibly rude to the kampung folks, while the others didn’t do shit to intervene).

Think of England

My grandfather had served under the British all his working life. (He was darned arrogant to boot - when the Bintang Tiga briefly took power in 1947, my mum said my Tok went white for a while because he feared the Chinese would come and kill him for the way he’d been treating them.)

When he retired in 1955, our glorious Star Spangled Banner - I mean Jalur Gemilang, of course - wasn’t even a spermatozoa in the mind of Mohamed Hamzah or Idris Rauf or whoever it was that had “come up” with the idea for the most blatant case of plagiarism our children salute to every morning in school. So it goes without saying that he didn’t appreciate being treated like an idiot. And by idiots, no less (which, if he’d had thought about it, would have made him a sub-idiot, which was even worse).

But for some reason my Tok never responded, until one day, when he fluently berated this one kakak in full hearing of everyone else in the office as well as those passing by outside. Two weeks later we heard she’d transferred out. She was lucky: if my Tok had been just a little bit younger, it would have been much worse, I guarantee it.

Let’s not get all warm and fuzzy about my Tok, shall we. The way I have portrayed him throughout might make him seem funny and quaint, but he was one hard-assed son of a bitch. Again, I kid you not.

One night, before I was born, he came home after a meeting and my grandmother was a bit late in opening the door. The minute she got the locks undone he kicked the door as hard as he could and sent my poor Wan flying backwards. (For the record, my Tok never beat his wife; but then again, he didn’t have to.)

How do you love someone like that? With much, much difficulty. It wasn’t until he was nearly at the end of his life that I could make some sense of what made my Tok the man he was. The turning point for me was when I’d picked him up from my cousin’s place in KL the year I started working here. He’d wanted to go home to his house in Kuala Lipis to check on it. He spent the entire journey reminiscing.

Let’s just say that possibly my biggest regret in life was that I didn’t spend more time driving him home.

He was quite a character, my Tok. Tough as nails, but that’s how they used to make ‘em. There’s always a lesson to be learnt anywhere you look, and for me this one is clear.

In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo was the grand patriarch who commanded total obedience from those around him. When the years passed on he was unable to change and adapt, and so his fall was even more tragic: “A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”

It’s always sad, for me, to see how the mighty falls in the end. It’s not a fate I’d wish on any man, real or otherwise. And that’s my tip for you.