i. BEFORE ARRIVAL
Two unionists from
a). My house is situated in a very Malay-condensed area. So far, people that visited our new home seemed to defy the accepted schema of “kawan orang-orang Melayu”. They must be able to be relaxed in a surrounding where my neighbors would pretend to wash their cars REALLY late at night just to have a glimpse at our foreign visitors. Kepochi.[1]
b). My house reflects opposing themes and can we say, tastes acquired by both me and Union Guy. It’s like a person suffering from bipolar having second thoughts about how to decorate the house ALL the time. Far from being a house congested with exotic materials collected from our journeys abroad or pop art wall hangings of Che Guevera; it’s a plain layman house with stacks of Archies, IKEAS catalogues and old receipts and bills. But of course, if we have the time, we could take out our lefty books and spread the stuffs on the floor of our dining hall or carelessly hid one or two behind the sofa‘s throw to project our “lefti-ness”, but that would be like betraying our “comrades”, wouldn’t it? So, there we have it, hardly a house which resonates spirits of proletariat struggle or reflects two people with a penchant for activism staying together to raise future freedom fighters. Err unfortunately…nope. I am afraid that after their shout of “Down with Capitalism!” they will have to retire themselves to a sofa bed bought at IKEA, a multinational capitalist company.
ii. AFTER ARRIVAL
I could see the shock in their eyes. I guess they are not expecting to stay over at a Muslim’s house. The guy didn’t even offer his hand to shake mine. I take it as a show of respect to the fact that I am clad in my scarf. I offered mine and gave his hand a good shake. I pondered; there are many other leftists, socialists or unionists with good homes in Lembah Klang that could offer a nice comfy room for these peoples? Why us?
The Petai-Eyed, our labour activist friend explained earnestly, “Well, they want to stay in the homes of really ordinary people who have normal jobs and have family, not full fledged activists.” Oh sure. Me and Union Guy are damn normal. We named the mice that frequent our trash cans to just be friendly to them. Yeah, I am okay with my singular/plural grammatical rules. Not a mouse but we are talking about a couple of mice, here.
Well, as planned, they stayed over at our house for two nights. We get to chat a lot and learned a great deal about what it meant to live the ways we chose as opposed to preconceived text book notions. I mean everybody could read Trotsky, Marx or own stacks of communist materials in their house, but to breath soul and give meaning to these ideals. That’s a different story, eh?
a). It wasn’t a pair of red pajamas, more like undies. Don’t ask how and why.
b). And I can keep my sofa bed with pride.
[1] Busybody. With capital B.
[2] I was in UM in 2001 and asked a fellow coursemate,” Do you know the name of the person on your T-shirt” while pointing at the typical Che Guevera pose with his infamous beret. He answered, “Yeah. It’s Rage against the Machine’s lead singer”. Humiliating is an understatement.
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