I went to the wet-market a week before Chinese New Year to stock up, knowing the stalls would most likely be closed for a full week of holidays. I have been going to this particular market for more than 20 years, so I count myself a 'regular'; many of the sellers have seen my children grow up. The lady at the taufu stall commented as she packed my normal order that there's really nothing special about new year anymore; it's the same year in, year out - first all the 'balik kampung' and reunion meals, then it's back to the same old grind of work, work, work. That's kinda depressing, but on the face of it, it really is just like a washing machine cycle... Hit Start, and it goes Wash, Rinse, Spin, Repeat. So what else is new about new year.Well, this is the second year running we didn't join the balik kampung jam. This time the excuse was one of my girls packed herself off to holiday overseas. Anyway I understand why my children are not exactly enthusiastic about seeing people they only meet once a year. Apart from the blood-tie, honestly , there's not much of a relationship to speak of. Maybe it's my fault, for not putting in the effort to cultivate the family bonds when they were young. Maybe we are just strange, in not being particularly hung up about reunions and "stuff like that."
Be that as it may, we had our own small 4 pax home-cooked reunion dinner , minus the one who had flown off. During the long break, my eldest princess sportingly agreed to watch The Garden of Evening Mists with me Widely acclaimed, based on a book written by a Malaysian, featuring a Malaysian cast, and to top it all, set in our very Malaysian Cameron Highlands, it's a beautifully-told if somewhat odd love-story, weaving a drama out of some of the most significant moments of our nation's history.
I have only read of the horrors of the Japanese occupation and Communist insurgencies in Malaysia; never having had to live through it, I could never pretend to understand the terrible trauma of the victims who experienced it. But terms such as sex slaves take on a different weight when the movie screen captures the indescribable atrocity- young girls forcibly pulled away, and men just going in and out of the door where they are "kept". Lest we forget wickedness is in every man, no matter what the race, the movie also captures the meaningless violence meted out by communists against the locals and British in the aftermath of the Japanese surrender. Lesson of the day: we are all human, we do really rotten things to each other in the name of war, power and (so-called) ideals.
So how could the heroine, who watched her sister ushered into a cave with other prisoners get blown up, love "the enemy"? And a weird one, too. Call the handsome hero the perfect inscrutable stoic... all aloof, proud, arrogant and every bit a hard task-master as he puts her through the harsh rigors of building a garden in the middle of nowhere. The only thing missing from this virtual slave-driver is a whip in his hands. This isn't your ordinary lover-boy; he just walks off and disappears into the forest one morning. He's no ordinary gardener either. He speaks in truncated English in mind-provoking riddles, so often that she has to ask "Do you always talk like that?" But it's precisely through him that she obtains the healing and finally closure of her painful past.
There was a scene where he calls her to sit with him and look out through the open door. Both see the same physical stuff - the garden taking shape, the stones, trees, grass, sky. As he puts it, outside all look the same, but if we look at it from our inside we all see different.
That's a simple but profound truth. What do we see in a new year 2020? Everything seems the same every year anyway; the new year becomes old soon enough. But the old can be different, if we 'see' from inside-out. The Bible calls it vision; it means a mental sight, a dream, revelation or oracle.
Many a time, it's hard to believe there can be a better tomorrow, especially when we are stuck, consciously or unconsciously, in the throes of yester-years, which for many, are not exactly the 'good old days.' Many a time , it's hard to believe for a bright future, especially when all over the world, there's still injustice, oppression, ill and evil which actually seem to be increasing....
Even before Covid-19 hit China, a billion animals had perished in Australia's disastrous bush-fire. And just when it seemed the worst was over for her, along came the floods - news report the weather as "apocalyptic" and unprecedented in history. Meanwhile 77 earthquakes have rocked Mt Taal in the Philippines, as the country keeps a close watch on the active volcano. And we are just talking Asia. Over in Africa, a plague of biblical proportions, what the UN terms the most devastating plague in living memory, is unfolding with hundreds of billions of locusts swarming over nations, even extending beyond Africa. Put it down to global warming, climate change or whatever scientists want to label it...that's just the natural physical sphere, not even counting the number of armed conflicts going on in various parts of the world.... the earth is literally groaning under its own weight.
All this when 2020 is barely 2 months old.... What do we see, can we see beyond the obvious ...the fear, the bad and the ugly? I see reality on the outside, like every ordinary human being, and it doesn't look good. But I also choose to see from my inside - from what I know of an extraordinary God whose ways and thoughts are much higher than human ways and thoughts. It's a theme repeated throughout the Bible; faith grounded in the goodness of God - no matter what the bad that happens - births a hope Divine, such that out of ashes come forth beauty, out of mourning springs joy eternal.
"Where there is no vision, the people perish "..Proverbs 29:18 .
