"Give
me that whoosh, please."
Pang read a monologue at Making Babies in a double-breasted coat and
make-up. It is to my disgrace that the pic I took of him emerged distant
and blurry (he frequently waved his hand in front of his face). It is
to his disgrace that he doesn't pander to the camera as well as Jerome
does. Tit for tat, he refused to allow his monologue to be broken up
into different parts on consecutive pages. So you get the whole lump
here:
Long
Way Up
A
Monologue by Pang
This
used to be a great view. This balcony. Jutting out from the 16th floor
somewhere in Brickfields.
We moved here in 1992. I was in the last year of art college and my
brother was just starting his twinning programme. My college was in
KL and his was in PJ, so Brickfields was a cheap compromise. Who would
have thought that a decade later, it would become the centre of the
world? That was the year my mother came up from Malacca to stay with
us for good. She hated the previous apartment in Cheras, because for
some reason the floor just refused to be cleaned. My father hated it
too, because he said it was too near a high-tension power station. We
will all die of cancer, leukemia, brain tumour, piles, heart attack.
Yes, and high-tension too. But now, everyone is happy.
From the balcony, you could see up ahead, outside Brickfields, just
across Jalan Bangsar, a massive patch of green, an inner city forest.
It's Kenny Hills, haven of the filthy rich. The prime minister is somewhere
in there, probably rehearsing his next sandiwara. It's amazing how the
rich run to the metropolis to stay in jungles. I remember driving there
with a friend some time, getting purposely lost in the winding lanes
and admiring those big big houses with motion-sensitive porch light
and exotic palm trees that sway in the night breeze like they are holding
hosannas at our approach. Some day, we said to ourselves, some day.
To the left of Kenny Hills, you could see Bangsar, the little hill behind
which the sun sets. There are times the sight is glorious, the whole
sky in fits of blue and white and gold, and Bangsar is its navel. The
land of the bold and the beautiful. I was neither, and like everyone
else who is neither, I ran there. I only started going there more when
I graduated the following year, because one of my clients was an architect
who lived there. Though I had started the course wanting to be a painter,
I now wanted to be a photographer. And when people the world over think
of Malaysia, I hope they will think of my landscapes, my portraits,
evidences of humanity I have captured in all its glory and shadows and
shades of grey. I will honour the adversities of this hard land and
the heroes born of them. From this view, this whole earth seems carved
for my framing.
My first project was the totally radical architecture of the new Bank
Negara building in Shah Alam - their Disaster Recovery Centre. The architect,
also recently graduated and as delusioned as I was, assured me that
these pictures would be plastered in architecture magazines all over
the world. I spent three months on that job. But due to the high-security
nature of the building, we were told that none of the pictures could
be published.
Meanwhile, to the far right, the construction for the KLCC is starting
to take some breathtaking shape. They said these will be the tallest
towers in the world. I dreamt about photographing it when it is completed,
maybe even do a book about it. Even now, it looks awesome as two stone
towers with columns of holes in it. At night, these holes shine with
halogen brightness. It looks like an anthill, like an alien civilisation,
like colonies of gigantic alien ants have landed in our midst. When
I pass near enough, of course, I realise that's what they are: Bangladeshi
ants, Burmese ants, Indonesian ants. And we have white ants too. And
you know what people say about termites, if you don't get rid of them
completely the first round, you will never get rid of them ever. Seeing
all these ants below me, sometimes I think I must be the only human
in Kuala Lumpur.
And that's what I do. Stand here and watch the land. My father comes
out here a lot too. He brings out his plastic chair, and sits back with
his legs on the railing, staring at the night sky, puffing on his cigarettes.
My father has set up his own little business which deals with construction
equipment, and I thought this view of the buildings must be quite inspiring
to him. But no, he just seems keen on staring at the sky. For me, it's
the land. Late in the middle of the night, after the family has gone
to sleep, I get out here and listen to the breeze. The silent whoosh
whoosh. It calms me, when I concentrate hard enough and isolate every
single sound in the night. It feels like divine order at work. Sometimes
I sing in response, "Oh lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider
all the worlds they hands have made...". It is my conversation with
the wind, with the music blasting from the apartment across the field,
the dogs barking in the distance, the cars screeching at invisible intersections,
the people disappearing into the night, and the laughter of the security
guards downstairs. Oh, I want to wave at them. And I do, every time
I drive through the condo gates and the security guards raise the barricade,
I give them a little wave. Thank you, I am saying. Of course, after
I pass, they probably say to themselves, drive a kancil and act like
big shot.
I love Brickfields. Even its name has a Bruce Springsteen ring to it
- Badlands, Thunder Road, Brickfields. But it used to be known just
as the Fifteenth mile - that is, the fifteenth mile by the river from
Port Klang. I met a man who grew up here. He told me, "Before KL was,
Brickfields was. You see, at that time, KL was merely the place where
two rivers meet. And the British had this fantastic idea, they wanted
to build a few buildings here. Just like that. And so they used this
spot up river here lah to manufacture the bricks. And you would see
nothing but fields and fields of tiny red clay blocks. When we were
kids, we would play hide and seek here. Now, you can still see some
of the houses made of Brickfields bricks at Jalan Tun Perak. But I think
they tore most of them down already. But I am too old to play hide and
seek now. Haha. Or maybe just hide and no seek. Haha." He was the descendant
of one of the many Indian and Ceylonese expats brought over by the Brits
to help out with our new educational, law and rail system. But now Brickfields
is also home to many other races of people, like blind people and poor
people. There are five squatter villages here, folks huddled here for
their share of this meagre brutal paradise. And so to let people know
that I am in touch with my environment, I had an exhibition in 1997
of photos that I took of the cute smiling squatter children. I even
sold 12 pictures. They were mostly bought by friends. As gifts for their
friends.
By then KLCC had been completed. And guess what? I was asked to design
a book about it. A dream come true. I even gave the book its title,
Sculpting the Sky, I called it, gladly sharing the gist of my personal
lofty ambitions with it. But then, another photographer had been hired
to shoot the building and my job was merely to do the layout. I felt
uninspired pasting someone else's images and the book came out looking
boring, which made the clients very happy. Remarkably, it is still selling
and has been keeping the publisher happy eversince. I was, however,
too embarrassed to admit it is mine.
Then it was late 1997, and we were at the beginning of an economic crisis.
Right in front, the foundation of KL Sentral, which had been starting
to rise like a tumour from the land, had stopped work. My father's construction
business also fell apart.
When the whole country stopped constructing, my brother came back from
USA with a degree in Civil Engineering. My father had decided the course
for him. He thought, why not, at least I have a son I can leave my business
to, since the other one is busy being possessed by grand aimlessness.
But now of course, there wasn't much of the business to leave behind.
As for me, I tried to get employed twice, when my finances became desperate
enough. The first was with a small graphic design studio cum advertising
house cum shit pot. The second was an entertainment web portal that
nobody knew existed, or at least I hope nobody did. I didn't last long
in these places. It's been a year since I was retrenched from my last
job and being a freelancer is getting tough as good magazines are getting
flushed down the Klang river one by one.
I am at a loss now. I owe my brother one thousand two hundred. I owe
a friend one thousand. I got three calls last week. One from my credit
card company, I owe them four thousand. Another call from Maxis, I owe
them three months worth of bills. The last call was from Maybank, from
whom I took a loan for my new Kelisa. Not that I needed a new car. But
my father desperately needed the money we would get from trading in
the Kancil. These days, he goes to the balcony less. I saw him there
the other day with his handphone, talking to his Singapore agent, "You
want to sue me? You want to sue me? For not paying you back? You wouldn't
give me a discount in 98, when I told you there is no way anyone in
Malaysia could afford those prices. And now you want to sue me?" The
mortgage on this apartment, which is being paid for by my father, is
due in 12 days. Who knows if I will still have this balcony next month?
Meanwhile, the country seems to have recovered from 1997. Everybody
is rich again. KL Sentral, the one stop transportation wonderland, is
complete and now blocks my view of Kenny Hills. They are constructing
a highway from KL Sentral to Federal Highway that cuts through the heart
of Brickfields. They had to mow down two of the squatter villages.
But nobody will miss them. People from all over the world will descend
on us here. And they are coming to see our towers, our corridors, like
so many ant-hills, in this land with no recession and no adversities.
I want to shout to them, these army of tourists emerging from the tumour,
I am here, I am here, but I am only a beep amidst the rolling wheels
of this city moving up up up. It makes me want to scream. The scream
of hundreds flying into a tower, the scream of millions buried under
concrete. In time, they will build bigger monoliths over us. They will
build their palaces and stations and international airports. They will
build their intergalactic space terminals for aliens to come and take
over our land. And then there will be no more songs and laughter in
the night, just this constant monstrous earth-shaking whoosh whoosh,
of spaceships flying low over our heads. Give me that whoosh, please.
That sound of my first orgasm, all that blood rushing in my ears; that
sound the first time I heard God calling my name, and like Elijah, I
answered, yes, my lord; but when I waited for him to say, Pang, my child,
who sees the world with my eyes, there was just this silence, and I
had spent my whole damn life trying to find that sound again, hoping
it might be recovered some quiet night under the fold of a breeze standing
on this balcony. And so I wait for that whoosh. Me, tearing through
space, through time, on a plane, on a spaceship, on a chariot of fire
- come take us to paradise, me and all these people gathered at my feet
at Brickfields, my huddled masses. One of these days, I will show them,
I will show you all, I am going to take off from this balcony and.
Whoosh.
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