Raya

Going home for raya this time feels different, knowing I would not, oftenly return to the same houses. The good side would be I have a concrete answer as to when I am to marry, but as each year folds into another, you notice the minor differences everytime you visit your Opah and Atuk. He no longer makes roti canai for you, while Opah needs help to stand up, her son arrives with a daughter and a wife to stay in together.

Suddenly I am reminded of the story Sula, by Tony Morrison, one of the required readings at university. The way the mother burnt her own son inside his bedroom, after he returned, not doing much, while the son accepted this fate of his, as if waiting for death to come his way. 

Or maybe it was one of Marquez? 

In books, do one find paralells in life. Or is it the other way around? One is then reminded of the other thing, and forget the things at present. To make smaller the real by testimony of the book. 

I guess, in small villages, far away from the city, the role of a woman becomes more fundamental. To cook, to care for your children, and to maintain the household and those occupying it. For one cannot simply move, have no means to do so, and so must content herself within the confines of her own space. But if she refuses to do even those tasks, what is then left of her? A lazy menantu, kata Atuk. 

I reflect on this and think of myself, naturally, to not be labelled as such. 

The one most fundamental question I think is how does one occupy time. It’s terrible enough that most conversations these days centre around which highway do you use to get to X, and how long did it take you, such is how we all seem to value time just enough to go home and check our mobile phones for the latest updates. 

I am tired and I am bored, really. Or plainly uninspired. Maybe it is easier to be more excited about everything where the idea of impermanence is embedded within you, not just some idea of distant death, but one that continually makes you feel restless and must, move. 

-end of raya rant