Sunday, March 30, 2008

It'll happen

It’ll happen

I know it will
Its in my heart, its wedged between the orifices of my soul
Like it always has been

It’ll happen

The tears, the laughter, the fight and the love
Will in the end give way
Like it always has

It’ll happen

The success, the fighters, the struggle and the sacrifice
Will soon be forgotten
Like we always do

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The Campaign against Nescafe... Or Why I think Nestle is evil.

"When people try to dismiss those who ask big questions as being emotional, it is a strategy to avoid debate. Why should we be scared of being angry? Why should we be scared of our feelings if they're based on facts? The whole framework of reason versus passion is ridiculous, because often passion is based on reason. Passion is not always unreasonable. Anger is based on reason. They're not two different things. I feel it's very important to defend that.”

The above passage is by one of my heroes, Arundhati Roy. I felt no need to repeat the sentiment, as I doubt there is any reason and any way to express it better. It is common for people to react to activists in this way. To pass them off as passionate and idealistic. In my opinion, these are good emotions. These are emotions that create change. But for some reason emotional arguments lose credibility.

But as said above, passion and anger are borne from real experiences and real facts. So why do people do this? They do this to protect their guilt conscience, because you know what? Its tiring to care. Its tiring and inconvenient to care.

But I don’t feel like I’m here to protect people guilt consciences anymore. I used to hate being called self righteous, idealistic and naïve. Now Im okay with it, because there are things I have to say, things I have learnt that outrage me. These are things that I know the good, decent people reading this blog will want to know, if they don’t already. Because as my very clever friend Sneha says “These things, once learnt, cannot be ignored”

Its so difficult to be ethical. People boycott all sorts of things, for all sorts of reasons. So why do they do it? The reason I personally do it- is so people will ask why. I don’t do it because I think Nestle will go under if I stop drinking Nescafe, or that Pfizer will stop producing useless doctor paraphernalia if I resist the urge to snatch up one of the hundreds of drug company pens available to all drs and med students out there. Its about awareness.

Its so people will ask me questions, and I can tell these stories…

Spattered across the world, there will be people who refuse to drink Nescafe. This is a form of boycott of Nestle. Nescafe was chosen because Nestle being the massive MNC it is, has products far and wide, and it is extraordinarily difficult to boycott all nestle products, but I can assure you there are people who go to these lengths. It was also chosen because of its undeniable association to Nestle, whereas Maggi or Milo (god forbid) has less of an obvious association. So why the hullabaloo?

In a nutshell, Nestle promotes Lactogen (baby formula) as a superior alternative to breast feeding in developing communiies- In health circles, this is pure evil- there is no superior option to breastfeeding except in specific cases. There are significant reasons that range from health to economic reasons for this. Nestle also distributes these products with NO CLEAR instructions on the formation of the milk- These business strategies of Nestle resulted in inordinate rates of malnutrition, diarrhea and subsequently a rise in mortality rates in these communities.

The worse thing of all is that this issue has been happening since the early 1970s! Since then, many struggles against this have been made. A guideline was introduced on introduction of milk products in developing countries- but with the companies not having any real incentive to follow them. As part of their business strategy, Nestle also gives free or low cost samples to begin with, which raises the incentive for consumers, with the added thought that this is the healther option for their children. So on one hand, you have nestle almost giving away milk product that is detrimental to infant health, and on the other hand you have major pharma companies denying these same communities a lower price for HIV/AIDs medication. If that is not evil, Im not sure what is. But that’s for another day!

Nestle is not the only company that does this, other companies like KLIM (did you know, that’s milk spelt backwardsJ) advertised their milk powder to new mothers, without further explaining that it was a milk substitute not a specific formula for babies. I watched on a documentary once, that these multi- national companies are able to do these things, because not one person was responsible for actions – there was no collective (or individual) conscience held responsible for actions. Hence here was a massive strength/power/resource, with no one individual to be held accountable for any atrocities that may occur under the companys name. Hence a form of invincibility is created. This is what these boycotts are trying to do- trying to say – No, you are not invincible, No you WILL be held accountable. But this hasn’t happened. People are not angry enough. Children are dying. When will they be angry enough?

There are many more- McDonalds, Starbucks, Conflict diamonds (watch Blood Diamond!)… if you don’t want to join in these Boycotts, struggle with us in other ways, tell people about it, discuss it, think about it- Anything.

When I first started thinking about these things, I decided I wouldn’t boycott. Didn’t think there would be enough of an impact for me to sacrifice things I had come to enjoy. Frankly though, every time I order a Nescafe tarik – it simply tastes like shit.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The Comfort of Conformity

Now for anyone who doesn’t know me, I’m painfully idealistic (some people say naïve, I prefer idealistic). Just imagine what I was like 10 years ago. And damn impressionable, to boot.

This is when I first watched the movie Dead Poets Society for English literature in Taylors College. So we didn’t just watch the movie, we studied it. And boy, did it affect me- especially the conformity part of it- Captain (Mr Keating) had all the schoolboys marching in the schoolyard and told three of them to all walk in their own individual ways, and eventually they all start marching in the same rhythm. The rest of the boys start clapping in time. When they discover they are marching in rhythm, they exalt in it. He stops them, and he says he has tried to illustrate the point of conformity.

He describes “The difficulty in maintaining your own beliefs in the face of others.” And he says to them “Now, those of you -- I see the look in your eyes like, "I would've walked differently." Well, ask yourselves why you were clapping. Now, we all have a great need for acceptance. But you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular”

Now lets bring it back to now, 2008, 12th general elections- I see a mobilized, excited society, in particular the youth. I see a change from as early as two years ago. I remember when I first started reading and becoming interested in politics not that long ago, the crowd I would be speaking to, regardless of age, were people who simply did not know or care, or cared but were too cynical about things to even engage in conversation about it. Now, what a change! What a breath of fresh air! How heartening to read the responses to the blogs, to the alternative news websites. How exhilarating to see people standing in the bludgeoning rain sharing umbrellas with their neighbours to hear what the opposition has to say. How exciting for us, Malaysians.

I am as thrilled as can be imagined that the change in mentality that people previously flippantly and callously brushed off as ‘never gonna happen’ is happening right in front of our eyes. But I worry, because are we suddenly just blindly following what the ‘in’ thing right now is? Since I have come back from Australia, I have noticed a massive change in the air - it is suddenly ‘cool to care’. And that is phenomenal. And very, very rare. But its similar to the anti American bandwagon traveling all over the world, what we have here in Malaysia is an anti-BN bandwagon. Now, don’t get me wrong, I would drive the anti BN bandwagon, or the anti American bandwagon if given the chance. There are so many reasons to be angry at these institutions/empires for the wrong they have done. But I want the people jumping on to jump on because they are angry, and they know why they are angry.

If they don’t, then suddenly it becomes a crowd mentality, where no one person is responsible for anything, and we are just a mass of people, not individuals. Initially full of different voices, saying different things. Different, interesting, colorful things, and then slowly becoming one voice chanting out a slogan. That sounds kind of beautiful doesn’t it. One Malaysia, one voice. What the hell!? How can we be one voice, each one of us is different. We care about different things. I care about leprosy and TB in rural Malaysia, the person next to me cares about roadworks, someone else cares about racism, others care about corruption and inequality. We are not one voice. We are a united people fighting for issues that affect the Malaysian rakyat.

The only reason I have started thinking about these things is because I am guilty of it myself. For the last two or so years, I have begun reading the work of Farish Noor- from his books, to the Other Malaysia (which is great, make sure you go have a look www.othermalaysia.org), to Off the Edge to his Facebook notes. At a time when I was so confused and disappointed with a whole range of things from Islam to Malaysian politics, his writing lifted my spirits and helped me understand. Now, all of a sudden, I feel I have idolised him, and by doing so, I stop thinking about what he says and just blindly believe. That’s ridiculous, I mean the man is intelligent, witty, knowledgeable and lets face it, seriously smoking hot. But if I suddenly decide he is the shit and think that everything he says is gold, I will just be repeating history. Worse still, I will be rejecting the advice of advocates of free thinking like Farish himself. Its weirdly ironic.

Im not saying I should not admire him and another like-minded activists, I should, and I really, really do. Without them, I truly believe the world would be significantly poorer. I just, for myself, at least, believe that I have the intelligence to constantly think carefully of every idea, every protest, every complaint put forward. To always think about both sides, sit in the middle and look at both the left and right wing.

To come back to the quote from Dead Poets Society, I think sometimes it is not so much the difficulty in maintaining your own beliefs that is the problem, but the ease in assent to others beliefs and ideas. The ease of not fighting, not opposing. The comfort of it. It takes a toll on the mind, to constantly question, to constantly oppose and challenge, people you dislike, like, admire. But it is essential because as Malik Imtiaz says in his blog 'It is only in the clash of ideas and opinions that we see the synthesis of true democratic value.'

About Me....and this blog

You know, Ive been wanting to write in my blog for MONTHS now. And I have so many things to say, hence creating a blog in the first place. Finally, I decided, hey its one week before elections. My emotions are riding as high as they are ever going to be in terms of Malaysia. Its now or never.

So here I am. How does this work- Ive learnt the beauty of the Blog is that its like a piece of art. I made it, and I can call it good if I damn well please. Now that’s fun.

I am 26, Malaysian, a doctor (extremely junior) have just returned from 9 years in Australia. I struggle with my identity, only because people constantly argue it. When Im in Australia- “what?! you’re Malaysian, but you don’t look Chinese, you look Indian” Which is the oddest thing ive heard, but Ive heard it time and time again. When Im in Malaysia- its more, “Why you think you so action, ah” because I have a god awful aust/uk/odd accent that makes people sound like im putting it on. And then people imply that I am westernized because of it, so go back where I belong lah.

These things used to bother me, but Ive recently realized I am Malaysian, whether I like it or not, and whether you like it or not

A caesura is a pause in a work of art. Whether it is a poem, song, movie. I feel like am in the midst of a piece of art- that is that I am surrounded by inspiring people like my family, friends, activists like Farish Noor and Arundhati Roy, heroes and legends like Aung San Suu Kyii, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi. Its exciting, thrilling, exhilarating. Its overwhelming. To fully absorb it all, I need to stop and think. This is what this is – this is me, pausing.