In The Ring > Our country – through their eyes...

In a few weeks, my grandfather will cross the 90 year mark. I marvel at the potential magnitude of nostalgia that could run through Atoks mind as he blows the many candles on his cake. Atoks birthday is a yearly reminder of the fact that he, my father and I are born exactly 30 years apart.

Of different generations and of different times, I often reflect on how each of us views this birth country of ours. Simply put, what holds true for Atok might not be the case with my father, and be completely alien to me. In the context of our 51-year-old nation, the fragmented manner in which we fathom our Malaya-Malaysia results in different concepts of national identity.

Atok was born in 1918, the year the First World War ended and post-Pangkor Treaty making him familiar with the realities of colonialism. At the beginning of World War II, he had just become an adult and was beginning to learn more about the Japanese invasion. By the time the foreign soldiers landed in Kota Baru, Atok was a husband with obligations, which makes me wonder how he found the courage and strength to brave a Malaya defined by a grave sense of uncertainty.

He must have asked himself in his quiet moment if his country would ever escape from the clutches of foreign control and exist as a sovereign nation. Questions like this, I am sure, plagued him.

On the other hand, my father was born in the pre-Independence era shadowed by instability owing to guerrilla operations that defined the Malayan Emergency. My father was 10 years old when the Merdeka Mission returned with success. Naturally, he wouldn't be able to relate to the struggle for Independence as much as Atok.

I hasten to speculate that through my fathers adult eyes, his real Malaysian experience was the tragedy of May 13 and the ensuing hope in the shape of the New Economic Policy. Overcoming the rubble and the hurt, he saw real opportunities opened up with the governments efforts to eradicate poverty, and more avenues for Bumiputeras to move up the economic value chain. The seeds of the Bumiputra middle class were sown, where solutions were laid out to correct the failures of colonialism.

For me, adulthood was seen in the context of the Asian Financial Crisis. I recall vividly the uncertainty of a final year law student about the prospect of Malaysias future. When the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchanges composite index plummeted, I questioned Malaysia's ability to overcome this shock. Would we ever be the same again? Could we regain our competitiveness in this increasingly globalised world?

A year later, I witnessed the height of the Reformasi movement where people, for the first time in the country's history since I was born, voiced out their collective grievances against the administration of the day. Coupled with the financial crisis, it was a period mired with confusion, uncertainty and a general feeling of discontent.

However, these worrying undertones offered a different exterior. Recovering from the crippling crisis, we saw a period of vast infrastructure development. The spanking new KLIA, majestic skyscrapers and highways signified the coming of the information age we are proud to be beneficiaries of today.

The conclusion though, remains the same: every single time we are faced with a challenge, the country survives, coming out stronger. But are we stronger as a nation? Divorcing ourselves from the cosmetics that define citizenship, are we truly one? Why is race still a divisive issue? These are the hard questions that even the greatest Malaysian minds today cant address.

The greatest fear I have is that when my son welcomes adulthood, looking out on the horizon of the country from the tinted window of his auto-pilot flying car, he finds we are nowhere closer to finding the answers to living together as Malaysians of various races and culture.

I know that Atok secretly wonders in amazement at the technological advances that now defines Kuala Lumpur but through the same eyes, he must wonder why certain things cannot change or have, in fact, become worse with time.