Of vending machines selling alcohol and the closing of 4-D outlets: The Reality of Racial Relationship in Malaysia

The story of this old couple, just like the story of the Malays and non-Malays in the country, will probably just meander along, punctuated with one annoying and irritating incident, one after another, until someday, it just ends, like everything will someday end, without anyone missing it or finding any meaning behind it happening at all.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

There is this old couple I know. They have been married for decades and have children who are today in their forties, but throughout most of their marriage, they have likely never been happy with each other.

You know they are unhappy with each other as soon as you meet them. They are forever together but they will constantly bicker and undermine each other. The last time I had to meet them, for example, the husband and I couldn’t find each other, despite communicating multiple times over the phone to meet at an agreed point. When we finally found each other and did a post mortem on why we couldn’t find each other earlier, the wife immediately made it sound like it was all the husband’s fault from the get go. She told  me that I was absolutely right, that she had even said the same thing that I said to her husband multiple times, but as usual he ignored her and insisted on doing things his way and that is why we all had to waste so much time and endure a lot of trouble before we finally met.

In return to his wife’s criticism, the husband just ignored her as if she was not even there. It was one of the more surreal conversations I have had in my life. On one hand the wife was talking to me like she hoped I understood the sort of difficulties that she has to put up with on a regular basis, while on the other hand, the husband was talking to me as if his wife was not there.

According to their children, one of whom I know, the passive aggressive nature of their relationship has been going on for decades. In one example their son gave me, his mother, or the wife, will regularly and purposely not prepare tea for the husband, although she knows that her husband is a punctual person who will be home for his tea at a particular time in the evening.

She will only boil the water to make the tea after the husband becomes upset that the tea is not ready, and complain about how his wife should have prepared the tea before he had arrived, not only made the tea before he arrived, because he had already told her that he was on his way or because he is always home around that time to have his tea.

To this, his wife will recount the occasions when she made the tea but he was late, or that she too was not doing nothing – that she had other things to do, not just sit around and wait for him to come back so that she can make tea for him.

Despite their constant bickering, the couple is ironically, always together. Whether it is at a wedding or a temple festival or wherever, where you find one, you will always find the other. Their lives are so intertwined that it basically revolves around each other. They depend and need each other, they share many things – like children, family and friends – but they are also deeply annoyed with each other, and will take any chance that they get to upset the other.

I suspect that they regularly intend to upset and annoy each other, because it is likely the only pleasure that they can find in their relationship.

They cannot find any pleasure in being themselves or being with each other, because they are both constantly making the other feel bad about being themselves, so the only thing that they can do to find a measure of joy in being stuck with each other, is take pleasure in making each other feel small or unwanted.

In each of their minds, I suspect, they probably regret ever getting married. They probably think that their lives would have been better if they had found somebody else who would have appreciated them better. They likely do not think that the other appreciates them enough or deserves them. They both probably believe that they have done a lot for the other, although the other has done very little for them, but despite feeling that they have been wronged by the other, they do not hurt each other to the point of permanently harming them, although they do hurt each other regularly, because despite their frustration with the other, they are also aware that they need each other and that their lives are intricately entwined and entangled.

Whenever I think of them, I see in their relationship uncanny similarities with the relationship that the Malays and non-Malays have in our country. Just like the old couple, when the non-Malays are able, they will criticise the civil service as being ineffective or bloated or speak about cases of underage marriage to spite the Malays and when the Malays are able, they will try to stop the sale of alcohol or close down 4-D outlets to spite the non-Malays.

The reason why they criticise the civil service, address cases of underage marriage, prevent the sales of alcohol or close down 4-D outlets is not important. Like every clever person, they will know how to mask their intention with logic and rationales so as to make it appear that they only seek what is reasonable, good and fair.

You will know that that is not their true intentions however, because if there are 9 things that the one does which is good and  perfect and only one thing that they do which is faulty or questionable, the other will completely ignore or diminish the 9 perfections that their other half does and define them only by their one flaw.

Words, to tell you the truth, are only useful when it is used to reveal one’s intention. When it is used to hide one’s intention, it is just a clever intellectual trick that leads to empty talk. It will be like talking to a lawyer who knows that their client is guilty. They will throw at you all the words they can find in the dictionary, not to make anything clear to anyone, but just to confuse everything so that they can win.

The fact of the matter is, the logic behind why people want to close down 4-D shops or criticise the civil service or sell alcohol in vending machines doesn’t really matter, even if there is a logic behind it.

At the end of the day, the only thing we need to know about the entire thing, is that it is the result of two sides who are just doing and saying whatever they can, to spite each other.

They want to spite each other,  because despite being unable to find any pleasure in being with each other,  they find themselves stuck with each other, and being stuck, they have both decided to pick on each other’s fault or find situations that they can use to undermine the other, to punish the other for wasting their life away while thumbing the other down to the point that they can make the other submit to their wishes.

When I think of the old couple that I know off, I sometimes wonder how each would feel if it comes to the point that one of them had to die.

Will the other be happy that one of them is gone ?

Personally, I don’t think they will be happy that the other is gone, because although they have their grievances with each other, the other is really the only thing that they really have in their life. Without the other, it is doubtful as to whether they will have anything else worth living for in their life.

But at the same time, I don’t think they can ever be happy as long as each other is around as well. There is just something about the other that makes each of them unable to be happy being themselves.

I suppose this is what happens to people who enter into a relationship that they regret. They wish they could turn back time to undo their mistake, but they can’t, so they will spend the rest of their lives just regretting their mistakes while holding the other accountable for having a life that they can neither appreciate or enjoy.

There is no happy ending to this story, by the way. The story of this old couple, just like the story of the Malays and non-Malays in the country, will probably just meander along, punctuated with one annoying and irritating incident, one after another, until someday, it just ends, like everything will someday end, without anyone missing it or finding any meaning behind it happening at all.

I think what the races in Malaysia want to do with each other, like what the old couple want to do with each other, is bear with each other for as long as we can, in the hopes that if we just bear with each other until they part from us without us having to ask them to leave , in our next life, if there is a next life, we will not have to suffer being with them again.