And the pain comes from the depth of my understanding…
bahawa aku hanya mampu menjadi diriku.
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Posted in Hurt | Tagged Love | 2 Comments »
It has nothing to do with my ego, but I don’t say sorry unless I mean it. From as simple as saying sorry when I accidentally hit something or someone, to saying sorry when I hurt somebody’s feelings. I say sorry when I mean it. Only.
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So when she said sorry because she couldn’t speak English in front of an English-speaking audience who was going to potentially make donation to the orphanage she was representing… I felt awfully sorry for myself for not knowing her much sooner. I could have given her a mini course on Public Speaking and Communication, or some translation service… courtesy of Enida Consultancy & Services.
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But then, she could have asked for help if she had done her homework. Afterall there were Bahasa-and-English-speaking committee members who could have translated her speech. She could have done it in both languages. The expat donors could have paid more attention and be more enthusiastic about where their money was going.
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The other thing I was sorry about was when she had to apologize for what the orphanage didn’t have, for the condition of the orphans and for everything else that was no fault of hers!
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“Saya mintak maaf lah atas semua yang serba kekurangan dari pihak Rumah Anak Yatim XYZ ini.”
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Well, logically, if the orphanage had everything it needed, nobody would have organized such charity event, would’ve they? But that’s beside the point! I simply think people apologize and say sorry when they don’t know what else to say.
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Yes, humility is my number one policy. That was why it was almost embarrassing when my name was mentioned as the contributor who rounded the collection that night to the seventh grand of Ringgit.
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Even that is beside the point. Just imagine this:
“Saya minta maaf kepada tuan-tuan, puan-puan, saudara-saudari yang membaca Questa e Enida, kerana saya tidak memiliki kereta BMW di usia saya yang menjangkau 50-an ini. Saya juga tidak berkerjaya hebat dengan syarikat minyak dari Belanda, jadi maafkanlah saya yang berada dalam keadaan yang serba kekurangan ini.”
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I sound almost ungrateful if I am adamant on counting what I am not yet blessed with, don’t I? Uh am I exaggerating it, or do I actually have a point here?
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Well, whatever it is that is beside the point… I am not sorry for not sleeping at all the last 25 hours. I am especially NOT sorry for having two happy and healthy Monchies who are very interested in visiting orphanages to hear about ‘babies being put in a basket and left on the doorstep’ stories.
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Postlude:
Dan saya tidak merasa sedikit pun kekesalan di malam itu apabila berada di dalam dewan yang sama dengan Mrs. X (Mrs. Shower Cap). Malah saya berasa sangat terharu akan diri saya yang sudah tidak merasa apa-apa pun apabila memandang beliau yang nampaknya dikurniakan kesihatan yang agak berlapis-lapis.
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Posted in Grammaticalizationism, Sense | Tagged Bahasa | 4 Comments »
Selasih tuanku lekat di kain,
mawarlah patik pohon berduri;
Kasih tuanku dekat yang lain,
biarlah patik bermohon diri.
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Posted in Poetry | Tagged Writing | 1 Comment »
I must have been made of stone. If not rock. You just have to continue being you, that is made of water. Drip on me.
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Posted in Write On | Leave a Comment »
Even if it wasn’t the Hari Wanita Sedunia, I would still do this. This. Yes, this… has been going on for a little too long. I am beginning to dislike it. So this morning I seriously sat Enida down to have a serious Akal dan Hati discussion. Because when I woke up on the sofa, waiting for the second load of laundry to finish, it was as though I had been hard hit on the head. My heart stopped beating and my head started spinning.
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I have been wasting my time. This morning, like all the 35 mornings I had before, I realized that I have been around the right kind of wrong people. And this is nowhere near the fault of others. I let myself be. Therefore, before I step into my 36th day being back in this beloved country, with my eyes wide open at 0543hrs, hear this…
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It’s over.
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Whatever it is.
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Posted in Write On | 4 Comments »
Kehadapan Anand yang diingati,
Semoga warkahku ini tiba di pangkuanmu dengan selamatnya. Dan semoga kau tahu, bahawa dirimu itu tak pernah lepas dari ingatanku. Susah senang, senyum dan tangisku kau selalu ada… dulu disisiku, kini dihatiku.
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Anand ku sayang,
Setiap kali aku terpandang sepasang saree itu, hatiku pilu. Sejak kau pergi aku berdendam pada Tuhan. Dan hari ini ketika aku melintas di ruang legar bangunan itu, pilu bertukar rindu. Di situ kali terakhir kau mengucup bindi di dahiku.
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Buat pertama kalinya setelah lama kau tiada, tahun ini ku kuatkan hati mencari ganti saree turquoise yang telah lama lusuh itu. Dan aku tahu, yang akan tetap terang di malam Diwali nanti adalah cahaya kasihmu. Memadam dendamku. Tuhan lebih sayang padamu.
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Tak ada lagi sindoor tilak di dahiku tanpamu, Anand ku.
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Dengan hati pilu,
Enidashwary
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Posted in Culture, Nostalgia | 2 Comments »
From the corner of my eyes I knew she was eyeing me. In fact, she scouted around me, walking nervously in loops before disappearing behind the airport exhibition partition board, perhaps trying to gather some courage to do what she had to do to me.
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Just when I was not looking – or honestly trying not to look – she came back with her nervous smile that almost looked like a pain on her face. She said her ‘hello’ but I squeezed my lips tightly together and gave her a sigh, consciously refraining myself from saying, “Yeah yeah… what do you want?”
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And when she said, “On behave of the LCCT airport blah blah blah blah blah…” I was ever so ready to correct her pronunciation of the word behalf. Plus, I was at KLIA, not LCCT. Hello miss, hello miss, yenna solla poringa? Mimpis kah kawu hini?
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However, into the second minute of the survey interview and after knowing that her name was Lee Ngor, which made me think of Lee Young in Singapore… I started to have some painless smiles on my face. Surprisingly, I was kind of enjoying having someone asking me about what I like and what I would like to have at an airport.
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At the end of the interview, Lee Ngor took out a red leaflet from her tote bag and handed it to me, thanking me almost profusely. Hmmm… now that I have a voucher for a room at a nice new hotel, maybe I too should conduct a survey in order to decide whom to take with.
Ehem!
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Oooh Enida, behave!
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Posted in Persona | Tagged Me | 5 Comments »
Setelah banyak berfikir dan berdrama dalam minda antara watak Enida the Angel and Enida the Devil, sudahnya status Facebook saya berbunyi begini:
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“Enida loves rainy nights and is having one tonight.”
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But reality is, I just came down from my bedroom… all hot, steamy and satisfied! And so I came, done! Thanks to my iron(man) Phillips, my latest affair. By the way, he is Phillips. A model. Model G1028.
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Siapa kata kerja gosok-menggosok sampai tegang dan licin itu senang. Berpeluh-peluh nak mencapainya. Itu belum masuk bab panas dan stim bergerakerja dalam pelbagai posisi. Nak duduk rasa macam tak cukup berat menekan. Nak berdiri, bila lama sangat nanti sakit pinggang. Every stroke counts.
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Walaubagaimanapun malam ini terasa puasnya bila acara gosok-menggosok sehingga tegang dan licin itu selesai dan Phillips tersandar menyejukkan diri. Ada senyuman manis terukir di bibir saya yang tak dapat digambarkan dengan kata-kata. Lebih-lebih lagi di malam yang bergerimis sebegini. Ahhhh!
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Posted in Write On | 4 Comments »
Yang akan menjadi duri dalam hati saya nanti ialah ketidakupayaan saya untuk percaya… bahawa cinta itu ada. Bahawa hati saya ini nanti akan ada sandarannya bila letih berlari dari yang mungkir janji.
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Kerana yang telah menjadi duri dalam hati saya kini adalah cinta itu sendiri.
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Lalu biarlah tak ada.
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Posted in Hurt | Tagged Love | Leave a Comment »
I must have been seven then and I remember specifically asking my dad what ‘class’ we belonged to. Whether we were Orang Kaya or Orang Miskin (The Rich or The Poor). You know how it was as a child, we had this funny urge to belong and to fit in, hoping that we were the hierarchical toppers. When I asked dad the question, I remember looking specifically at our bathroom door almost feeling sorry that it didn’t even look like a door.
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But perhaps it was that door that made dad think we were in a class of our own. He said we were neither kaya nor miskin. We were Orang Berada‡. Because we had a house. We had a bathroom. And our bathroom did have a door no matter how unlike a door it looked like. We had money. It was barely enough but we had money when we had it. We had wheels. Riding on dad’s bicycle was definitely faster than walking. We had food on the table. Though we didn’t really have a dining table. We sat on the floor around our food at mealtimes. But we had a floor of the house. And we had a house.
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Most of all, said dad, we had the will to better ourselves so no one would call us The Poor. I learned it from my dad that we didn’t have to have all, to have it all. We had it all figured out and today we are okay. We are our all. Each other.
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Orang Berada‡ loosely translates to ‘people who have (everything)’
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Posted in Sense | Tagged Life, Parenting | 2 Comments »
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