Masa sekolah rendah dulu aku ramai\nmember Cina, sebab parents aku for whatever reason lebih suka bergaul dengan\ncikgu-cikgu Cina colleagues diorang. Ada sorang member aku tu, nama dia Mun. Mun ni badan dia gempal. Muka dia\nbulat, kulit dia putih bersih, bukan kuning-kuning macam setengah orang Cina.\nAku dengan dia start kelab main badminton kat sekolah tu. Tiap kali lepas\npractice pipi dia jadi merah berbintik-bintik, macam bunga raya muda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aku pun tak tau apasal, tapi si Mun ni\nsuka sangat awek Melayu. Masa tu kita umur 11 tahun, jadi tak de lah serius\nmana. Sunat pun belum (untuk yang Melayu, I mean), apa lagi nak pikir pasal\nseks. Masa darjah lima Mun ni start syok sama satu awek ni, Salwa nama dia.\nMinah ni athlete, macam Nik Azura tu dulu ha. Kalau lari, macam kuda, both metaphorically and\nliterally. Dada ke depan gitu. Agaknya tu yang Mun suka sangat tengok awek ni. Sexual awakening, bak kata\norang kampung.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cara dia tunjuk dia suka kat awek ni\nstandardlah, tarik rambut time kelas. Satu hari tu aku tanya dia, “Eh Mun,\napahal kau suka awek Melayu?” Dia cakap, saja. Dia cakap — dan ni aku tak\ntipu — sebab awek Melayu ni bersih dan selalu bau wangi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Time tu pulak aku suka awek Cina. Ada satu awek ni aku suka usha dan\nborak-borak dengan dia. Nama dia Fiona, anak manager ladang Selbourne. Aku\ningat dia kira aku member biasa je, tapi masa bapak dia kena transfer ke Johor\nhujung tahun tu, Fiona kasi aku buah koko sebijik. Buat tanda ingat-ingatan, kata dia. Aku tak\npernah tengok buah koko sebelum tu, so I was suitably fascinated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cikgu BM aku yang nampak dia kasi\nbuah tu kat aku cakap tu maknanya dia suka kat aku. Lepas tu cikgu suruh aku\nmintak address baru si Fiona. Aku tak mintak pun, sebab aku cakap kat cikgu\naku, kalau dia suka kat aku, takkan kasi buah koko je kut? Tapi sekarang, lepas tengok Gubra<\/em>, ada la rasa menyesal jugak,\nsikit-sikit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lepas tengok Gubra<\/em> ni aku teringat balik cerita-cerita lama ni. Memang macam Yasmin kata, bila kau\ndah syok kat orang tu and you get to know them, race ceases to matter. But,\nalas, the age of innocence, I knew thee well. Masa tu pun, dalam era 70-an,\ncross-cultural pollination macam ni bukanlah perkara biasa. In fact, behaviour\nparents aku masa tu dikira macam social aberration dalam bandar kecik tu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have we become worse since then, or\nhave we just maintained the status quo? Sebab, melihat dari reaksi penonton pada filem ni, I would say generally\ntak ada peningkatan dalam perhubungan antara kaum kat negara ni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kalau tak, apasal lepas empat dekad\nmerdeka pun konsep macam yang dalam filem Gubra<\/em>\nni (dan sebelumnya, Sepet<\/em> dan Spinning Gasing<\/em>) masih dilihat sebagai\nsesuatu yang novel, quaint, seolah-olah fantasi pengarah semata-mata? Sampaikan\n“Agak-agak you lah, Puan Yasmin, boleh ke kita capai apa yang you\nfantasisekan dalam filem ni?” jadi salah satu soalan obvious yang kau dah\njangka journalist akan tanya masa media screening?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, on the one hand aku tengok\nsigns of integration everywhere, especially in language. Sekarang ni orang\nMelayu dah tak kisah pinjam terma-terma Cina, misalnya, yang seolah-olah\nindicate yang kita ni memang makin jadi serumpun. But on the other hand, kalau\nmengikut percakapan-percakapan orang-orang bila berborak in the absence of the\nOther, sungai rasis tu masih mengalir dengan rancak merata-rata.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That it is still considered to be so\nweird to go out with someone not of your own “kind” shows that\nsomething is in place that stops us from flowing into one another’s spaces and\ncreating that dastardly concept, Bangsa Malaysia, yang kita laung-laungkan\nsangat tu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kalau kau tanya aku, I would say one\nof the main culprits — apart from a fear of the unknown — is possessiveness:\n“diorang ni semua nak ambik tanah aku, kerja aku, etc.” The well-fed\nbogeyman of Bangsa Pendatang. How do you move towards integration if one side\ncontinues to shut the other out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Untuk menjawab soalan tu, maybe it\nwould be instructional to ask: apasal lepas habis sekolah rendah aku dah tak\nminat awek Cina lagi?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s mainly because aku gi boarding\nschool. 97.8 peratus Melayu. Yang ada token Chinese dua orang dalam tahun aku\ntu, asyik jadi lauk kena sekeh kepala aje.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mula tu aku rasa uncomfortable\njugak, sebab member aku masa sekolah rendah boleh kata about half berbangsa\nCina. Jadi aku tak de lah\nprejudis apa-apa dengan diorang ni. In fact, dari darjah empat sampai darjah enam aku join diorang punya\nkelas bahasa Mandarin, walaupun we ended up main kung fu je lebih.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tapi lama-lama, because that’s what\neveryone else was doing, so aku pun ikut sama, jadi rasis. Aku agak, yang\ndiorang tu pulak dapat naluri tu dari siapa lagi kalau bukan mak bapak\nmasing-masing? Kan hadis Nabi kata, anak-anak lahir macam kain yang putih\nbersih, ibubapa yang mencorakkannya?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tapi tu lah, bumi kita ni kan bumi yang penuh kontradiksi. On the one hand we are becoming more Islamist, but on the other kita terlupa pulak, agaknya, ayat-ayat Quran tentang strength in differences dan explanation Tuhan tentang kenapa Dia sengaja jadikan manusia ni berkaum-kaum. Racial integration is a Quranic principle, tapi kita lebih suka play up the verses that seemingly exhort us to rid the earth of people who are different from us, mungkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jadi baguslah ada orang macam Yasmin yang\nbikin kerja macam filem Gubra<\/em> ni. Bila ada filem macam ni, and people\nof the same mind congregate towards it, barulah kau tak lagi terasa terasing.\nThere’s a lot to be said about that kind of positive reinforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a film, I found that I enjoyed Gubra<\/em> much better than its\npseudo-prequel, Sepet<\/em>. Sepet<\/em> was too saccharine, cerita\npari-pari yang mak kau dodoikan pada kau sebelum tidur. Gubra<\/em>, by comparison, was a bit more saltish and pragmatic. Yes,\nmasih ada jugak a few incidences where too much of a glossy sheen is applied to\nthe inter\u00adracial relationship between Orked dan abang Jason, Alan. But at least\nit was nowhere as teeth-rotting as some of those found in Sepet<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, walaupun aku\napplaud Yasmin Ahmad sebab jadi champion of sorts untuk racial integrity, aku\njugak kurang enak with the thought that this is beginning to turn into\nsomething like a crusade. Crusades are never good, in my book; it alienates\npeople. It gets people talking and that leads us to more enlightened times, maybe,\nbut it can also create a backlash that could make things worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, of course, Yasmin was protesting\nthat she wasn’t trying to create a film with a message (she says she doesn’t\nknow how to); that she was just a storyteller and this was one of the stories\nthat she had collected from life. Tapi kalau kau tengokkan pada turutannya,\nsukar sekali untuk kau lari dari tersondol mesej yang tersurat di dalam Gubra<\/em>, yang tersembul macam akar pokok\nhujan-hujan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not that I have anything against\nmovies with messages — I thought Syriana<\/em>\nand The Constant Gardener<\/em> were\nbrilliant. But it would just be easier if Yasmin were to simply admit that,\nyes, there is indeed a message that she wants to send out, but so what? Nak\nbuat apa sorok-sorok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Malaysia yang Ruhayat X fantasisekan ialah sebuah negara di mana dia selalu diusha oleh awek Kantonis cun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 14.04.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Masa sekolah rendah dulu aku ramai member Cina, sebab parents aku for whatever reason lebih suka bergaul dengan cikgu-cikgu Cina colleagues diorang. Ada sorang member aku tu, nama dia Mun. Mun ni badan dia gempal. Muka dia bulat, kulit dia putih bersih, bukan kuning-kuning macam setengah orang Cina. Aku dengan dia start kelab main badminton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3544,3540,3583,3569],"tags":[530,501,223,628,621,3926,502,49,521],"language":[7531],"writer":[7731],"class_list":["post-27893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-culture","category-film","category-religion","category-review","tag-chinese","tag-culture","tag-film","tag-islam","tag-malay","tag-malaysia","tag-religion","tag-review","tag-yasmin-ahmad","language-bahasa-melayu","writer-ruhayat-x"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27893"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39227,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27893\/revisions\/39227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27893"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27893"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}