The United Altered States of Maryam

Dear Readers (all five of you),
Since I’ve become somewhat of a Great Automatic Grammatizator Writing Monkey, I was going to write yet another lengthy, wittily thought provoking (*cough*), potential Nobel Prize for Literature-winning entry (*ahem*) today but I thought I would store my self-proclaimed genius for a later date and pimp my current favorite, resurrected 80s dance pop-rock party-pleasure band, INXS instead.

Like the song playing in the background? That’s a clip from ‘Hot Girls’, one of many sexy, dance-while-you’re-doing the laundry songs from INXS’ brand new album, Switch, out November 29th, featuring their brand-new singer, JD Fortune, the only one in the band that’s below 40 and doesn’t need Viagra (presumably, of course. Not that I’ve been given the chance to find out.)

Click here for the Full Version of Hot Girls
*Download link applicable for the next 7 days only

Or, listen to the whole album online at:
VH1


Want more? Don’t look at me you damn freeloader, BUY THE ALBUM


It pays to have Maryam love your band – I’ll promote you for free so that you can make more money and not spend a single dime on me.

Much love, your writing monkey and INXS’ no. 448 fan,
Maryam

Posted by Maryam at 2:21 PM | Permalink |

“This is your fault,” my mom hissed at my sister, spitting venom towards the 5’3” bright bank of ideas, sitting in the back of the car. My sister had her seatbelt safely strapped on but it wasn’t going to save her from our mother’s wrath – mommy dearest had previously eaten more than her usual intake of festive cookies and was on too much of a sugar high to calm down.

We were on our way back from visiting my father’s mother in Malacca, historical land of flourishing bougainvillea trees, houses painted in obscenely bright colors and unusually loud people. If you’re wondering why that one Malaccan you know is always yelling at you, wonder no more because they’re not. It’s just the way they talk. I think it was because a long, long time ago, Malacca was this really busy, bustling, over-populated trading centre and everyone had to talk louder than the other to be heard to get any chance at all at being heard. Quite possibly, what started out as a sort-of competition became a culture. KL’s not a noisy city – that’s just the conversations from Malacca being carried over.

Visiting my paternal grandmother itself proved to be a drama-free event. She sat in a wheelchair and spent a whole afternoon trying to remember my name. She’s not senile or anything; she just has 18 kids and close to a hundred grandchildren. I got a huge, sloppy kiss on the cheek from her anyway, a method of showing affection which stands in stark contrast to my maternal grandmother’s. My maternal grandmother doesn’t do hugs and kisses – she gives me money. I’m a big fan of the latter’s method. Fifty bucks gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, ooo… I feel love.

There were the usual asinine comments from my aunts and uncles. One uncle, my dad’s polygamous, wife-slapping bastard of a brother-in-law assumed that I don’t currently own a mirror and informed me that not only was I tall but I had also put on weight and positively looked the hideous giant. He told me that I should lose some weight and some height along with it. This, coming from a man whose protruding belly has prevented him from seeing his toes since 1990. He said something about how men don’t like tall and big women, that I should be more like my petite, 30 year old sister. Well, mister, I’ve got news for you: I DON’T LIKE YOU and I’m big enough to whoop your ass. One of my aunts mistook me for one of my sisters – the one living in Australia. When I told her otherwise, she looked surprised and gave some sort of backhanded compliment, “Didn’t you use to be ugly?” Now I’m apparently better looking, like my sister in OZ whom a cousin of mine once said shares an uncanny facial resemblance to the kid that plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies (sorry KJ, he said it, not me – I don’t agree – if I did I would look like Ron too, eh?). Yeah, what a looker. Another uncle asked me if I got his e-mail, the one with ‘XXX Naked’ in its subject line. I gave him a disgusted look and answered ‘no’. He told me not to worry: they were naked pictures but that of a chicken; a chicken without its feathers, geddit? Geddit, geddit? Neither did I.

None of these comments though resulted in tempers flaring (just lots of teeth gritting and fake smiling). The one that did was my sister’s. As we were leaving Malacca, late in the evening, she said, “Hey, I know this great alternative route back to KL. Why don’t we use that? It’s very scenic.” There was nothing particularly wrong with the usual route – the North-South Expressway, other than that it was really smooth and boring to drive on. My parents agreed to it; they thought it would be nice to take a slow, “relaxing”, scenic drive back home. I was doing the driving and should have known better than to say yes to my sister’s suggestion but as it turns out, I’m subconsciously, a sucker for pain.

I wonder if my sister’s definition of scenic was: Tons of stationary cars lined up, bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see. What would’ve been a quick, hour and a half drive back to KL already took two and a half and we were only halfway through. My legs were cramping and I read somewhere that smokers were at higher risk for Deep Vein Thrombosis or DVT. My mother, sitting in the front passenger seat, was suffering from a different kind of DVT – Diva Violent Tantrum. “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!!!!!!” she yelled at my sister, becoming more Malaccan by the day. “YOU AND YOUR STUPID IDEA!”

My sister looked like a deer caught in headlights with a screaming gun-toting hunter chasing after it. Except if the deer was caught in headlights in this kind of traffic; it wouldn’t have anything to worry about – traffic was so heavy that the cars were simply not moving. “B..b..but I didn’t know traffic was going to be like this! It’s normally smooth ………”my sister stammered.

Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild was playing on the car stereo… “Get your motors runnin, head out on the highway, lookin for adventure and whatever comes our way…yeah darlin’go make it happen, take the world in a love embrace, fire all of your guns at once ………”

“I AM GOING TO SHOOT ALL THESE MOTORISTS!” my mother proclaimed.

“Maryam, could we listen to something less noisy? My Harry Belafonte cd?” my dad’s voice piped in.

“Maryam’s driving. She needs to keep her hands on the wheel,” my mother answered for me.

“Ma, I haven’t driven 5 cm in half an hour.”

“This is your fault too, Maryam!”

“What did I do? I’m just the driver!”

“You agreed to this stupid idea. You wanted to take a slow, relaxing drive remember?”

“Ma, when I said ‘slow’ I didn’t think we would be stationary.”

“Maryam, please change the CD,” my dad’s voice piped in again. I reluctantly switched my CD compilation of road-trip worthy songs with his Harry Belafonte.

“I wish someone would invent a flying car already,” my mother huffed.

“They did,” my dad said, “Helicopters – they’re like flying cars.”

My mother whipped her head around to glare at my father. “You, be quiet! You’re to blame for this too! Go to sleep!” she told him and he duly obliged. The only sound that came out of my father for the next hour was a loud, odious snore. My mother huffed again, turned to my sister and said, “But YOU are chiefly responsible for getting us stuck in traffic.”

“Sorry Ma, I really had no idea traffic was going to be like this,” said my sister.

In the background, Harry Belafonte was crooning – Born to forgive……born to forget………born to forgive…… born to forget…

“YOU ARE SHIT,” was my mother’s reply.

Posted by Maryam at 1:01 AM | Permalink |

Kate Moss - Arab Strap

“If you are in here and haven’t made a mistake, I’d like to meet you because I’ve been waiting for Jesus – and today would be the day.” – Sharon Stone, new face of Christian Dior’s Capture Range, defending Kate Moss & openly criticizing companies who were ending their contracts with the British supermodel after her cocaine scandal (source: CNN.com)

Ok, here’s the deal Ms. Stone – while I applaud you for your charming wit, I might have to use this entry to smack some Maryam-brand of sense into your silly albeit gorgeous Hollywood Liberal head. Of course, I’m not saying that I’m about to agree with the overly-moralistic masses out there and start campaigning for Kate Moss to be burned at the stake. Here’s what I’m saying: Many of us have done our fair share of experimentation with substances at some point in our lives, plenty have made it a habit but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be given a chance to live the rest of our lives in peace. But advertising has nothing to do with morals or divine forgiveness for human errors. It’s about selling the product, or more accurately, creating awareness and building reputation and rapport with the target consumer market which will ultimately, over an extended period of time, indirectly increase sales and profit for the company behind the product. While I have constantly spoken in the past against the apparent lack of ethics (which is a challenging term to define in itself) in the advertising industry, I have not yet gone so far as to delude myself into thinking that the main objective of advertising is anything other than money. Advertising works by creating space for need in the consumer and offering a “solution” towards fulfilling it. The space for need is created through the promise of a fantasy life for the consumer, provided of course, they purchase the product advertised. This fantasy life can be represented by a great many things – a lighter that works once you’ve brought it scuba diving for instance or in the form of a hot body, a gorgeous, symmetrical, age-defying face or a charmed, glitzy, fabulously glamorous, airbrushed life as a whole.

Kate Moss used to embody a fantasy many of us hold – beautiful, glamorous, rich and famous from merely standing around in clothes all day with an enviable (and for the majority of us, wholly unattainable) sense of style and oh, thin. She was also cool mostly because she made no pretensions about being anything other than a model and thus made no hilarious attempts at writing a novel (Naomi Campbell, do you feel the burn?), recording a CD (Naomi, Tyra, feel the burn, feel it) or being a “serious actor” (Cindy Crawford, you honestly think we stopped laughing at Fair Game yet?). She didn’t utilize her celebrity status to pimp her favorite spiritual cult or fad diet (Madonna, one more time I hear the word ‘Kabbala’ and ‘macrobiotic from you, my head’s going to go Kaba-BOOM!) In other words, Kate Moss seemed fabulous without even trying and because of this, plenty of women wanted to be her and plenty of men were fooled into thinking that if they bought a certain Calvin Klein perfume for their girlfriend, she would be magically transformed into Kate Moss. So you see, back then, having Kate Moss become the face of your product and company would be a psychotically clever and savvy marketing move.

Then along came the cocaine scandal. And suddenly, Kate Moss’ public image had gone from fabulous to err…. for lack of a witty phrase, not so fabulous. In the press and the public eye, she had gone from hip fashion maven, to troubled, drugged-up single mom with a heroin-junkie mediocre rocker of a boyfriend. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the latter is the stuff consumer fantasies are made of. When you think about it, it no longer makes any sense (or profit) for companies such as Swedish clothing company, H&M to have Kate fronting their ad campaigns anymore. She no longer offers a fantasy but serious issues we already have and could entirely do without. No Fantasy = Hardly Any Sales. Business firms have their bank account to think about so for you Ms. Stone, Robbie Williams and the rest of you idealistically “liberal” twats to ultimately say that H&M and the rest should “forgive” Kate and uphold her contract with them – who’s being a tad too moralistic here, eh? Business organizations aren’t divine beings, they’ve never made any claims to being Jesus (although some have come close)- they need to make money in order to continue to exist and pay the thousands of employees they have under their payroll – hey, non famous people need money to support themselves, their families and their cocaine habits too. To ask a company to put their future sales and profit at risk, to put thousands of employees’ job security at risk in order to aid one model in boosting her depleting income and cocaine supply – doesn’t it sound a bit ridiculous to you?

That said, no one, no matter how famous should be subjected to the intrusion of privacy Kate Moss had to endure. What Kate Moss does in private with her own time, money and nose is not exactly any of our business. If she chooses to reduce the glaring shine of stardom by powdering her nose, then so be it. But business is business and if companies decide to drop Kate Moss from their advertising campaigns for the sake of their own reputation and bank account, so be it too. Yes, I know it’s harsh Ms. Stone, but it’s the way the world works.

For what it’s worth Sharon Stone, I forgive you for starring in that god-awful movie called Catwoman. Apparently, Dior has too. We all make mistakes.

So why don’t we just untwist our panties, sit back, relax, pop a couple of Xanax and smoke a big fat joint? Just make sure those nasty tabloid reporters aren’t around with camera phones ………………

Posted by Maryam at 10:33 PM | Permalink |

It was one of those afternoons that I spent doing the nothings that don’t speak well of my ability to be productive. Three o’clock in the afternoon and slumped in front of the TV in my pajamas, watching an episode of that never-ending daytime soap by the name of The Bold & The Beautiful with my mother, my retired 50 something year old mother, I could hardly remember a time, though I’m convinced there was a time, once upon a time, a long, long, time ago when I had a life.

“Is she wearing Channel or just imitation Channel?” my mother asked of some outfit some girl on Bold & the Beautiful was wearing.

It took me awhile to figure out what my mother was talking about. “You mean Chanel?”

“Yes, Channel,” my mother said pronouncing the French designer label as she would a TV station.

“Ma, it’s pronounced Sha-nelle.”

“CHANNEL. CHANNEL. CHANNEL. CHANNELCHANNELCHANNEL!”

“Ma, I know you know how to pronounce Chanel. I’ve heard you say it a thousand times before. You’re just doing this to get a rise out of me aren’t you?”

“Channel.”

Don’t encourage her. I stopped responding. I continued watching Brooke Logan Forrester Forrester Forrester get pregnant for the hundredth time and not age a day since 1983. You would think with all the kids she’s been having, she wouldn’t have time to make new ones but no….That’s the magic of daytime soaps: no one ever invented birth control, there’s no such thing as menopause, kids age faster than adults and when in doubt about life’s challenges, acquire amnesia.

“Maryam, are you sick or something? Do you have a fever?” my mom asked, right after someone on The Bold & The Beautiful saved someone from a burning building who later, no doubt, will have trouble remembering that she was ever in a burning building in the first place.

“N..no,” I replied with suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

“Nothing, it’s just funny to see you at home…Normally, you would be out all day, everyday. With your….what do you call it….your friends.”

“Ma, I’m always at home.”

“No, not always. Don’t exaggerate, Maryam.”

“No Ma, you’re exaggerating.”

“I never exaggerate!” my mom said indignantly.

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“Maryam, I’m too old to argue with you,” huffed my mom.

“Then why are you?”

“I’m not arguing. You’re arguing,” my mom said, feigning innocence.

“It takes two to argue,” I pointed out.

“No it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

There was a moment of silence in the room as a new blackmailer shows up onscreen. Another issue with paternity it seems. Has anyone on this soap ever heard of monogamy? Or condoms?

“So why are you home?” my mother asked once more.

Truth was, I had cancelled plans with my friends for the afternoon because my muscles were aching in such a grand manner from over-exerting myself at the gym the day before. Now when I say ache, what I actually mean is crippling pain, so crippling that in the morning, I could hardly stretch out of the position I fell asleep in the night before. I wasn’t in the mood to socialize. The drama queen in me found that my current state required for too much pain and effort to change out of my pajamas and go out.

But I told my mom…“I’m at home, Ma, because err…I thought it would be nice to spend time with you.”

My mom seemed flattered but hardly convinced. “Doesn’t explain why you’ve been lying there, not moving an inch since lunch”

“I might have overdone it at the gym yesterday. My muscles ache.”

“You know who you remind me of, Maryam? Garfield.”

Yes, how wonderful it was to know that I reminded my mother of a fat, lazy, orange cartoon cat. Don’t respond, don’t encourage her, I told myself. I kept repeating it in my head like a mantra. Onscreen, the drama unfolded – some lady in a ghastly pink silk-shantung suit was begging some dude who recently had his triangular sideburns shaved off to not reveal her secret of meddling with some paternity test. Girl in Fire wakes up and gives lots of uncalled for attitude to the heroic fireman that rescued her. A previously buck-toothed kid grows up to a set of perfect teeth but bushy eyebrows. The end credits for The Bold & The Beautiful rolls around – bold, white letters above Los Angeles in the night time, backed by cheesy saxophone music.

My mom spoke once more, “Maryam…….”

Don’t respond. Don’t encourage her. “Yes?” Too late.

“CHANNEL. CHANNEL. CHANNEL.”

Posted by Maryam at 2:39 PM | Permalink |

Beads of sweat dripping down my forehead, face frozen in a tight grimace of pain, dance music playing in the background but this is not a nightclub, there is no dancing, if God is a DJ then Satan with bulging biceps in place of great horns, dressed in head-to-toe Nike exercise gear rules this coop……

I was lying on an exercise bench at the gym on the verge of what could possibly be both a physical and mental breakdown. My friend loomed above me, arms crossed, smile on her face toeing the line between encouragement and sadism. She was chanting, “One more, one more, Maryam, just one more leg raise….” She tempted me with promises of having, sculpted, enviable abs like The Pussycat Dolls, like Britney Spears . Long-abandoned fantasies of wearing tight pants with crotch-skimming waistbands, cropped tops and string bikinis resurfaced in my mind. Yes, I told myself; one more leg- raise and Britney can kiss my belly button. The problem was, by that point, my abdominal muscles had severed contact with my brain and was largely unresponsive to any sort of mental command. It had taken a lifelessness all its own. My legs gave a little jerk, one last attempt at obedience to the motivated spirit, before flopping to the floor in defeat.

Drowning in my own sweat with muscles too tired to swim for life, I began to think that beauty, in the most conventional, physical sense, is nothing more than a willingness to suffer pain. The beautiful are masochists. Madonna is the mother of all masochists. You don’t get a hot, beautiful body like that without lots of pain – be it pain in the form of cosmetic surgery or exercise. How many times have you heard Madonna championing power yoga? I once took a power yoga class and ended up with my kidney in my forehead. Stuck in a “downward dog” position, I thought I was going to start peeing through my nose.

There’s a machine at the gym that possesses an uncanny resemblance to the guillotine. I wonder if some French dude had witnessed the public execution of Marie Antoinette and thought, “Wa-‘ey, I could use ze same contraption zey use to chop ‘er ‘ead off to work out ze deltoids and ze triceps instead. All it takes is ze few minor adjustments and….. Voila! An exercise machine zat will make ze fatties very ze beautiful and haute!” There’s another machine that looks like the spitfire grill at Kenny Rogers Roasters with you as the roasting piece of chicken. I bet if a guy from medieval times were to be magically transported to a modern-day gym, he would think that he landed in the torture chamber of a nearby castle, where everyone had too little clothes on and were made to wear spandex, just to add to the horror. Medieval Man would think that the crappy Euro-dance music being played in the gym were the ghostly voices of those that had died hellishly of torture. He wouldn’t be entirely wrong. If I had died on the exercise bench that day, I would come back to haunt my fellow gym members as a Tiesto song.

But lets not just focus on the body, let us now talk of the pain we put ourselves through for that supposed-aesthetically perfect face. Take the eyebrows for example – one is told that neatly arched eyebrows work wonders for the face. Yet, how many of us are actually born with the perfect arch? Most of us are only lucky enough to barely escape having eyebrows that look like a cross between Colin Farrell’s (don’t worry, I still love you, Colin , bushy eyebrows and all) and King Kong’s and if we care enough, which many of us do, will have to go through the process of tweezing, waxing or threading our eyebrows– any of which will require some degree of yanking, pulling and tugging, all of which will result in Pain, all done in the name of Beauty. Don’t be surprised if your face looks frozen in a single expression (part surprise, part horror) after an eyebrow grooming session – the pain caused by all that yanking out of hair doesn’t allow for more expressive movement of the facial muscles without causing even greater discomfort. It’s like Botox only without the potentially fatal, paralysis-inducing toxins. Who needs Botox now? Oops, I forgot lots and lots of ageing people ill at ease with the usual course of nature. Look at that needle. You’re willingly letting them stick it in your face? You go, girl. Cosmetic surgery? Cut, cut, crush, crush, stick, stick, sew, sew – you’d only have to watch an episode of MTV’s I Want A Famous Face or Extreme Makeover to know that getting that perfect nose/ cheekbones/ boobs you weren’t born with is not all thumb-sucking, painkiller-induced joy.

I was watching a documentary called ‘The Science of Beauty’ some time back, and they mentioned something about how a woman’s physical beauty is greatly linked to how fertile she is. Among the physical cues to a woman’s fertility is a) an hourglass figure and b) long legs. Hence, in an effort to make ourselves look more fertile, thus more attractive, we stick ourselves in a corset, for that coveted baby-making hourglass shape, only to have a)our breathing restricted, depriving our body of much needed oxygen and b) our internal organs to get dangerously squished and mushed together. So much for being fertile when you’re dead. What about the long legs? What do we do if we’re not genetically blessed with such proportions? Well, there are high-heeled shoes, classic fashion item noted for its leg-lengthening effect and also, the great aching pain it causes to one’s calves and back. Try walking a whole day around town in them and you might find yourself thinking that you might not be able to walk another day, ever, again.

Of course, some people are just born more aesthetically-pleasing than others. But hey man, those looks aren’t going to stay that way forever. Without proper maintenance and beautifying applications of pain, it’ll all start to go to shit after their 16th birthday. No one remains effortlessly slim, taut and gravity-defying forever.

Now, here’s where I would usually start my rant on the pressure society places upon us, particularly women, to be physically beautiful. Here’s where I would usually question the reason behind why even the most “liberated” and intelligent of women still obsess and place such great importance on appearing physically attractive. Here’s where I would usually start tearing apart society, the media (the society for influencing the media, the media for influencing society, society for swallowing media crap which was initially their own crap in the first place.). But I would save this all for another day, another entry, maybe.

Right now, all I’m really going to say is that more and more, it seems to me as if conventional physical beauty is nothing more than a willingness to suffer pain.

But I once saw a t-shirt that read: Pain is weakness leaving the body. If this is true, than beauty is really a willingness to free yourself of weakness. If this is true, than Beauty is Strength.

With this in mind, I felt my body come to life again on the exercise bench. I gritted my teeth with a new found resolve and determination to see my exercise routine through. I breathed in deeply and blew out hard -my ab muscles contracted and up my legs went. “Tt…tw…twenty!!!!!!!” I said. My voice was strained yet triumphant. I’ve won the battle.

Then my friend, still standing above me, grinned and said, “Right, just forty more leg-raises to go, after we work on those triceps….”

I might have just lost the war.

Posted by Maryam at 1:51 PM | Permalink |

Inspired by an article on the recent urban riots in France (Paying the Price of a Failed Integration by Craig S. Smith, New York Times)

It’s not the key. It’s a lock-pick. While I do not doubt that there is some truth in the solution offered above, I will say that I think it’s only a partial solution to what is an entirely large, age-old problem. Admittedly, realizing what we all share in common is instrumental towards racial, religious and cultural harmony but it is also only the first step. We need to move on towards recognizing our differences and celebrating them, not set them aside, sweep them under the carpet or bury them in the basement (and of course, not use it as an excuse to deny the other the rights and privilege that we ourselves enjoy). To turn a blind eye as to how another person differs from you is to disregard vital elements that makes up a person’s identity in its entirety, to discredit the person as a whole being, – we are who we are but we are also who the other is not. In my humble opinion, racism and all manner of prejudice is not only discrimination based upon an over-emphasis on differences but also, the complete non-acknowledgement of it. It offends me when people say they choose to be color-blind to a person’s skin tone, to a person’s race – I’m brown and I’m proud; it might not be the only thing that I am but it makes up a significant part of who I am and for someone to say that they are blind to the fact that I might come from another racial, religious and cultural background that is different from theirs is like saying that they are blind towards me.

The recent urban riots in France, involving children of immigrants is proof that the French government’s failure to recognize differences and diversity in their policies has resulted in an unsuccessful integration process. The New York Times article mentioned above stated that “…..France provides little money or support for ethnic or religious-based organizations………………the Government has suppressed cultural expression like the Muslim veil in schools, leading to a sense of alienation among French-Arab and French-African youth. Despite vaunted ideals, immigrants feel ghettoized and abandoned.” The article also quotes Patrick Weil, a Paris-based expert on immigration and integration for the German Marshall Fund as saying, “The picture of France as a country that doesn’t want to recognize diversity – that’s partially true.”

I’m not one to usually comment on another country’s internal affairs, particularly one that I’ve never lived in and only visited once (for a week) in my life but the problem here is not just France’s problem, but an issue which is prevalent throughout the world (including mine), albeit in varying degrees of severity. So I suppose, I do have some right to throw in my two cents worth of thought regarding the matter.

From what I understand, France prides itself on being a role model of secularism for the global community. While I myself am more or less in support of the separation of State and Religion; for me, religion is a personal matter; I do not believe that the State should become the only religion for the people. France’s decision to ban the Muslim headscarf from schools is an affront to one’s right as a human being – the freedom of expression and the freedom to practice one’s beliefs. I don’t wear a headscarf myself and I would not appreciate being forced against my will by any form of human authority to wear one but I also wouldn’t appreciate it if I wasn’t allowed the option of wearing one, if one had to choose between getting an education and fulfilling what one might consider one’s religious duties. When you think about it, this brand of purist secularism, of uniformity brings the big, dirty C-word to mind (well, according to the United States it’s dirty) – Communism, something which most of the world fought so hard against in the 20th century but since Sept. 11, has been learning further and further towards, not in an economical aspect (no, no everyone still wants to be richer than their next door neighbor. Start wars for control over lucrative oil supply all in the name of democracy, won’t you? Yes, US, I’m talking about you!) but in social, cultural and religious aspects.

What is so wrong with recognizing diversity? How liberated can we be if we are not allowed to be different, nor gain acceptance in choosing to be so? And most importantly, what harmony will there be without diversity and liberation?

A little bird of answers whispers in my ears, “None at all, my dear. None at all.”

Posted by Maryam at 9:52 PM | Permalink |

Definitions & Introductions
1. Hari Raya Aidilfitri -
celebration to mark the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Celebrated by most people here by eating everything in sight for the next month or so (not prescribed by religion). Family members get together, insult, tear down each other’s self esteem (not prescribed by religion) but not before officially asking for eachother’s forgiveness for any wrongs they may have committed against the other in the past year (prescribed by religion). Traditional Malay outfits – the kebaya, the kurung, the Baju Melayu is the fashion statement of choice for celebrating Raya in Malaysia. Oh, and if you see a kid with three fingers walking past, he would have most likely lost the rest of his fingers during Raya from playing with illegal fireworks. Please don’t give this kid the thumbs up or the middle finger.

2. Balik Kampung – A phenomenon which occurs every festive season in which usually hustling, bustling KL empties out into a ghost town. Apparently, a large percentage of KL residents aren’t native to Malaysia’s capital city, they hail from places with names like Permatang Rambai, Kampung Kandang (Barn Village), Batang Berjuntai (Stuck-Out Stick) and Pedas (Hot/Spicy) where their ageing parents still live. Public holidays such as Hari Raya sees naturalized KL-ites return to their hometown to celebrate the occasion with the rest of their family, leaving the streets of KL empty for that one native KL-ian to finally drive naked down Jalan Tun Razak (Tun Razak road) at a speed above 30 kph.

3. Duit Raya – Like Christmas presents. Only in the form of money. And it’s not Christmas. And there’s an age limit to receiving duit raya. Usually given by working adults to random, visiting children. Something I no longer receive from anyone but my grandmother. Bless.

4. Ops Sikap – Nationwide police operation held every Raya on every other street corner to catch those driving above the speed limit and fine the duit raya out of them. Apparently the balik kampung phenomenon also leads to significantly higher road accident rates. Ops Sikap is a simplistic solution coined up by smarmy government officials to curb the problem. Except people are still dying from road accidents left and right. And I’m broke.

5. The Grinch – Who Stole Christmas. Character in a book written by Dr. Seuss. I am the Hari Raya version of The Grinch. I’m rotten, I know. It’s embarrassing to see that my non-Muslim friends are more excited about Raya than I am.

6. Festive – contraction of “festering relatives”, something you won’t be in short supply of during the festive season.
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The 10 Tales of Raya
One: This is J.D. Fortune Calling
Here’s a rule I should stick to: If the phone rings before 9 a.m., don’t fucking answer. It’s not a friend calling. It’s not the sex god rock star of your dreams. It’s not destiny. It’s your mother driven positively mad at the thought of spending the next five days of Raya with her mother and she’s taking it out on you. In the ideal world, I’d wake up to the sound of J.D. Fortune softly singing INXS’ ‘Need You Tonight’ in my ear. In the real world, I have my mother yelling at me on the phone to get up, pack and be ready to leave for my grandma’s house in 15 minutes. Don’t ask me why she’s telling me this over the phone. We live in the same house.

Two: Gods of Tourism, why did you forsake my mother’s hometown?
My maternal grandmother lives in a place no one below the age of 70 should have to live in. It’s the ultimate boondocks – Permatang Rambai, Seberang Perai -the place is rural without being idyllic which really, beats the point of it being rural in the first place – all the inconveniences and none of the fun – welcome to the half of Penang the Gods of Tourism forgot – paddy fields, patchy roads and shabby, carbon monoxide emitting industrial plants, no wonder my mother turned out the way she did. On a good day, it takes about 4-5 hours to get to her house from KL. During Raya, it could take up to 8 to 10 hours, depending on how many idiots haven’t been killed yet and are still driving around idiotically hogging the fast lane on the highway.


Three: Who the Man??!
Driving with my mom in the car is no easy task particularly if it’s an 8 hour drive. No wonder my dad made me drive to Seberang Perai while he snored away in the backseat.
My mother is the world’s worst passenger mainly because she thinks she’s the world’s best non-driving driver. My mother doesn’t have a license, has never driven in her life but you wouldn’t be able to guess that by hearing her talk. You would think she taught Michael Schumacher how to drive. “I may not be able to actually drive, Maryam, but I know exactly how to, in theory,” she says. Yes ma, in theory, I know how to split an atom but that doesn’t make me a nuclear scientist. Then, my mother goes, “I may not actually be able to drive, Maryam but I’m telling you, I’ve sat in a lot of cars, I’ve been driven around by many drivers so believe me when I say I know a lot about driving.” Yes ma, I’ve done that and I can actually drive so ….WHO THE MAN???!!! WHO THE MAN?!!!! WHO THE MAN?!!! I’M THE MAN!!

And then my mother hisses, “You think you’re better than me just because you know how to drive?!!” and I go, “No ma, of course I don’t think I’m better than you just because I know how to drive. I just think I’m a better driver than you.”

My dad wakes up and says, “Maryam, you’re a good driver!!!!!” And then he goes back to sleep.

Four: Don’t bring J.D. into this
I stuck a cd in the car’s cd player – a compilation of JD Fortune’s performances on Rock Star: INXS and having lost The Driving Argument, my mom must have decided to start a new one.

“I hate your JD,” my mom said.

“What does JD have to do with anything?” was my reply. I liked how she referred to J.D. Fortune as “ your JD”. Heh. My J.D.

“I hate him. HATE HIM, HATE HIM, HATE HIM!”

“What did he ever do to you?”

“I just hate him. Hate the way he looks. Hate the way he sings. Hate the way he acts. I hate everything about him,” my mom said. She looked like she was about to spit on the car stereo.

“Well, I love EVERYTHING about him.” I answered.

“What good does that do you? You don’t have a degree. You don’t have a job. Is JD going to marry you and take care of you for the rest of your life?! No!” said my mom, World’s No. 1 reality check specialist.

“You never know, Katie Holmes had posters of Tom Cruise up on her bedroom wall as a small-town teenager. And look at her now, having his freak Scientology spawn and all…” I said. I was joking.

“Maryam, if you marry that rock star, I’m going to have him shot. SHOT DEAD, YOU HEAR ME?!!” was my mom’s response. She didn’t sound like she was joking. We had this argument before. She didn’t sound like she was joking then, either.

“Who says I plan to marry him? Maybe we’ll just live in decadent, fornicating sin.”

“THEN I’LL HAVE YOU SHOT DEAD!” my mom, still not in joking form, said, or rather, her voice boomed ominously throughout the area. It started to rain.

Five : I see trees of green
I should probably describe the scenery along the North South Expressway, but I would rather not, not at great length anyway. All I can say is, the scenery alternates between long stretches of greenery and limestone hills, short stretches of limestone hills that have been blasted to death to provide marble for some gaudy nouveau riche’s living room floor, and further up North, the landscape gets flatter – paddy fields, more paddy fields, and factories. Compelling stuff if you don’t think too much about it. Otherwise, you might start to panic at being more than 20 minutes away from the nearest, decent shopping mall. Oh, and at one point along the highway, few kilometers from the Ipoh toll plaza, is a tunnel. Tunnels are always very interesting. Really, it is. Especially if you’ve watched Daylight – that Sylvester Stallone movie where he plays a truck driver that gets trapped with a bunch of people in a tunnel. Underwater. Compelling stuff. No, not really.
After the tunnel, there’s a sharp downhill, hairpin turn. My mother will be more than happy to offer you tips on how to maneuver this part of the highway.
She will also be happy to nag you the rest of the way for driving above the 110 km/h speed limit. Once you decide to slow down, you can have my dad complain about your slow driving. And then you can watch my mom launch a tirade against my dad about how he always undermines her authority in front of the children. Then you might understand why I turned out the way I did.

Six: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six
The night before Raya was dull. I was told that I was too old to be running around my grandmother’s kampong in my underwear playing with fireworks so I didn’t. I have 10 fingers. According to my aunts and grandma, such a display of festive joy is improper for a young lady. Fuck that, I feel like a 10 year old gay boy inside.
Half the family and random strangers think I’m at the cusp of feminine failure anyhow.
Spent the earlier half of the night crouched behind my grandmother’s house smoking with one of my cousins. An old guy passed by and gave me a dirty look. I suppose in his day, a woman who smokes danced at the local cabaret and was arguably the town slut or something. Under normal circumstances, I can’t really dance. The old guy smiled benevolently at my cousin though, in some kind of Secret Male Understanding of Cancer Causing Habits.
After awhile, my cousin and I got tired of slowly killing ourselves. We got tired of throwing insults at eachother. We came to the peaceful conclusion that he’s the thin one and I’m the smart one. We got tired of having the old guy frequently pass by. We went out and drove around in circles, trying to convince our KL-ite selves that Permatang Rambai is not as wasteland-ish as it appeared to be. The mission was a failure. We headed for Penang Island, about 40 minutes drive away. Bought a pirated DVD of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. We returned to my grandma’s house, waited for everyone to go to bed, sat in the dark and watched the DVD on my laptop. There’s a scene in the film in which the priest asked the “demon” within Emily Rose for it’s name and the demon answered in a raspy voice, “One Two Three Four Five Six…..”
After the movie, my cousin and I thought it would be funny to sneak up on eachother, put on a raspy voice and go, “One, two, three, four, five, six!!!” It was funny the first few times. Then it just spooked me out of sleep.
All the bedrooms were taken so I had to sleep alone in the living room. On the couch. I kept hearing, “One, two, three, four, five, six……” even though my cousin had gone off to sleep upstairs. Permatang Rambai is spooky at night. And across the street from my grandmother’s house is a cemetery. Lovely.

Seven: Selamat Hari Raya
I managed to fall asleep at around 6 in the morning and was rudely awakened half an hour later by someone ruffling my hair and poking my shoulders. I thought it was my cousin and duly told him to fuck off only to open my eyes and realize that it was my uncle, wearing an unnecessarily generous amount of eyeliner and funky Afghan headgear – such a rock star-ish look is ill suited to a 53 year old English teacher. His recent divorce must have had some strange effects on his psyche. I went back to sleep thinking that my uncle’s experiment with the Jimi Hendrix look was all a bad dream.
An hour later, my grandma comes along and starts yelling at me, something about how unbecoming it was for a young lady to be seen sprawled out on the living room couch so late in the day (it was 7 o’clock in the morning for god’s sake!!!!!). It’s tradition to wake up at the crack of dawn on Raya but the kooks that came up with this probably never watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose. She starts chastising me for missing out on my morning prayers especially on a holy day like Raya and then adds that girls should be in the kitchen at this time, helping out with the cooking and the cleaning and what nots (my grandma’s old skool). I gave her a smile, thumbs up and went on sleeping.
I woke up around noon and stumbled to the kitchen, expecting to find traditional, rich, fattening Raya fare – ketupat pulut, rendang, cookies and cakes but instead, I discovered a limited choice of bland, “healthy” dishes courtesy of my sister and my mother – the Two Headed Health Freak Serpents. Think noodles made from unprocessed, organic flour in clear vegetable broth. I complained but ate the whole pot anyway. After all, it wasn’t like I was going to do any cooking.
My relatives were all dressed up in their brand new festive outfits. I was still in my pajamas and stayed in it for another good hour, soliciting disapproving stares from everyone (funny how my male cousin, the one I watched Exorcism with wasn’t picked on as much). My mom made a loud, public comment about my hair looking like a lion and that I even smelled like a wild animal. That was when I decided to shower and change. I re-emerged in a traditional kebaya top which I paired with jeans and had to field questions for the rest of the day from the fashion-backward about where the other half of my kebaya outfit, the kain (long, mermaid tail-like skirt thing) was. One distant relative asked me if I had gotten dressed in the dark. One of my little cousins kept telling me that the top of my underwear was showing. My grandma then said something about how if possible, I would probably choose to walk around naked. I tell her I would except I was worried that it would bring great shame upon this family and that she would be shunned by her fellow village folk.
Seriously, if anyone’s going to say anything about bad fashion statements, they should look towards my Jimi Hendrix uncle.
In accordance with tradition, I went around asking various older members of the family for forgiveness for any wrongs I might have committed against them during the past year. My uncle (the non-Jimi Hendrix one), wore a giant silver and jade ring on his hand and as I was wishing him a Happy Hari Raya he told me to “Kiss the Ring!” At first he was joking but I think, by the end of the week, he truly expected it from his nieces and nephews. I gave apologizing to my older sister, (the oldest, shortest one) a miss. I hadn’t talked to her for 2 months (due to several incidents that I couldn’t be bothered to elaborate upon) and no age old tradition or festivities will make me do otherwise. Yeah, yeah, I’m a bitch I know.
I spent the rest of the first day of Raya catching up on sleep. At night, my cousin and I went out to drive around in circles again. The family labeled us “Kembar Nakal” (rough English translation: The Naughty Twins) – we’re the same age, we’re both considered by our family to be under-achievers and apparently, we both have a knack for trouble. Except I’m smarter. And he’s greasy. My mom breastfed both of us when we were babies (my cousin stole my share of the milk!) and there’s this ongoing joke within the family about how my mom must have fed us expired breast milk.
We were back at my grandmother’s house by midnight. Everyone else in the house had gone to sleep. We sat on the patio and traded ghost stories over a pack of cigarettes. When we had ran out of stories to tell, we went inside and for lack of anything better to do, watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose again. “One, two, three, four, five, sixxxxxxx…” and spooked ourselves out of the possibility of sleep once more.
Plus, one of my aunts was also sleeping in the living room and as a kid I witnessed her behaving like she was possessed on a number of occasions. I doubt she was actually possessed; she was probably suffering from some kind of mental affliction but it was scary nonetheless. That night, she was talking and screaming in her sleep.
Besides, the living room couch didn’t make for a comfortable bed. And if thoughts of the unknown and my aunt’s sleep-talking didn’t keep me awake, the buzzing, biting mosquitoes would.

Eight: ‘Normal’ is Mob Stupidity (Second Day of Raya)
I woke up to find a strange, old lady that I was supposed to know sitting in the living room with my aunts. I plastered on my fake smile and went to greet her. She was saying something about how my sisters are much better looking than I am. Right in front of my ugly face. She said something about what a pity it is that I take after my dad instead. My aunt (the formerly possessed one) told bitch of an old lady that I actually scrub up really well. Bitch of an old lady replied that it must take a whole lot of scrubbing to get rid of my “unsightly freckles”.

Yes. Thank you. Come again. Asshole.

I love my freckles, moron. It’s an asset not a flaw. Happy Hari Raya to you too, wrinkly old hag.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Later in the day……….

My aunt (wife of Kiss the Ring Uncle): Maryam, do you have a boyfriend yet?
Me : No.
My aunt : Why not? Is it because you can’t get one?
Me : Just don’t want one.
My aunt : What?!!
Me : It’s not a priority for me right now.
My aunt : Well, that’s not normal ……

Shut up and go watch Desperate Housewives already.

My cousin : Maryam doesn’t need a man, she is a man!

Shut up and go grease your hair or something.

Nine: We need a Revolution (Third day of Raya)
I was sitting in front of the TV in my grandma’s living room with my mom, two of my aunts and my “Kiss-the-Ring” uncle. An advertisement for a hair product came on. It showed a girl walking in with slightly unkempt hair. She looks at the “hot guy” expectantly but the “hot guy” doesn’t give her the time of day. She then goes to the bathroom, puts on some funny hair product, comes out with unnaturally smooth hair and suddenly, the “hot guy” is slobbering at her feet.

I launched a lengthy, fiery tirade about how ads like that are demeaning to a woman’s worth as an individual, as a human being. As if a woman is nothing more than how smooth her hair is. What message is this sending to impressionable, young girls out there? What message is this sending out to people in general, in regard to how they evaluate themselves or other women? I understand that the people behind these ads just want to sell their product, but do they have to do it at the cost of our value as a whole, complicated person?

My mom rolled her eyes and said that the only reason why I was against such ads was because I couldn’t be arsed to comb my own hair half the time. Then she added, “That’s just the way society works, Maryam. They want their women beautiful. You have to learn to accept it and work with it instead of sitting there looking like Mowgli (from Jungle Book) and complaining.”

My aunt, wife of Uncle Kiss The Ring gave me a look of pity, a look that read like Oh, poor ugly child. You don’t have a man in your life. You must be bitter and jealous.

My other aunt, the sleep-talking one had little to say in her waking hours.

Uncle “Kiss the Ring” was the only one on my side. Surprisingly. He said, “You know, that’s what I like about you, Maryam. People like you and I, we’re not followers. The world needs people like us in order for it to socially evolve. We don’t conform to current societal norm, we set it for the future. We’re revolutionaries, leaders, not followers!”

My mom shot my uncle (her younger brother) a deadly glare and hissed, “Sometimes, it’s good for our children to follow.”

My uncle smiled sheepishly at my mom, turned to me and said, “Anyhow, you should always listen to your mom.”

So much for being revolutionaries

Ten: Homecoming

I’m back in KL. I’m home! I’m home! Ah, sweet civilization …………………

Posted by Maryam at 11:05 PM | Permalink |

Twilight Singers - Verti Marte
Warning: I’m in one of those sentimental moods. Macho image at stake.

I went out for dinner / buka puasa with the old college gang last night and I must say, I forgot how much fun it was just to sit around and chat (or rather, mercilessly tease and insult the living daylights out of each other) with those jokers. I haven’t seen some of them for months (and some, I see every other day. Bless you Zher!) and a few months is a long time considering I used to see them every single day, 8 hours a day, for a period spanning over two years. It was nice for all of us (or at least, nearly all of us – Jeff, where the fuck are you?) to be back together again, just like old times. We laughed so hard all throughout dinner, I’ll be damned if we didn’t develop tighter, firmer abs by the end of it (checked my abs this morning. Still look like Jack Black. Dammit!). It was inside jokes galore last night, jokes no one outside the “Circle of Trust”(oops, another inside joke) will get.

There were lots of rehashing and reminiscing of old tales and experiences. Two and a half years is a short time considering that the average lifespan these days is like what, 70 years but somehow those two and a half years felt like a lifetime. Ah, the nostalgia –the Salem Revelation Rave at Genting Highlands where the strange feeling that I was about to die was immediately followed by a sudden and utterly temporary ecstatic feeling that I was in love with everyone (including the giant glowing plastic fruits they hung up in the lobby of the hotel we bummed at after the rave) and where a friend got his first experience of a male-on-male pseudo lapdance. There was also the time we skipped class and drove 45 minutes to the Ulu Yam Waterfalls for kicks, in the pouring rain with the half of us drunk on cheap whiskey. I remembered one friend standing in a tiny pair of shorts, hairy-legged on a rock in the middle of the river, flexing his arms in all its skinny glory, a sight another friend described as one of the most disturbing moments of his life. Then there were the birthday parties, oh, the debauchery. But most of all, it was the little moments that mattered the most, moments when we did nothing but sit around and laugh, laugh at things that logically speaking, couldn’t possibly be funny, moments like last night. I think we all got a little sentimental by the end of dinner but being the macho fucks that we are, no one could muster up the balls to say it. One of them did mention however, that this, will probably be one of the last times we’ll be together in a long time and that caused a moment of silent melancholy.

The Cosmic Order is a master of separation, and already some of our friends have left the country, chasing the young adult dream, chasing degrees and jobs and lives we aren’t even sure we want to have. By next year, the other half of us will disperse to far separate corners of the world, chasing the same bloody thing in different ways. Our paths are quickly diverging and though we joke about getting together at our weddings in 10 years time, who is to say that we’ll even remember to invite each other to our nuptials by then? (By the way, I don’t plan on getting married so don’t hold your breath for an invite)

We’re good friends, but some of us, we aren’t the best of friends. Our friendship is based on the immediate moment, the present, on a shared sense of humor and environmental circumstances, which is not to say that it’s of any lesser value than friendships based on ….I don’t know, sharing of a kidney? The half of us might not ever be crying on the other’s shoulder, we might not share our deepest woes and darkest secrets with one another, some of us might not even know the other’s full name (though we have about 5 nicknames each to make up for it) but heck, we laugh a lot, and laughter is perhaps the most under-rated aspect of friendship. If you only find yourself laughing when Jack Black reveals his butt crack for the billionth time then err….well, I feel sorry for you. But hey, if it makes you happy who am I to pity you?

I’d like to think I’ll be at their wedding.

I’d like to think that my kid (the one that I won’t have) will be the one teaching their kids how to smoke and insult random strangers. The little bastard.

I’d like to think I’ll be at their wedding.

Posted by Maryam at 10:36 PM | Permalink |