ABOUT 20 years ago, I was casting lures at a pond deep in the ex-mining land of central Perak when I heard a shotgun blast.
Seconds later, shotgun pellets rained down from the sky. I abandoned my fishing and ran.
Several years later, I found myself chatting with a few farmers, when the topic of firearms came up.
They told me that in the old days, even fish farmers could legally own a double-barrel shotgun because they had to control the flocks of egrets and herons feasting on their fish fingerlings.
Today however, it is tightly regulated, with training, stricter rules and more monitoring of how many rounds of ammunition they are allowed to buy.
That rather rare experience of being rained on by shotgun pellets surfaced following a mural predicament in Penang that came with waves of social media comments.
On Nov 13, Penang Island City Council (MBPP) issued a notice to a houseowner in Chew Jetty and instructed the removal of a mural painted on the outside of the owner’s building wall, after a Chinese tourist added the drawing of a panda to it.
MBPP cited the rule that “all public art in heritage areas must be approved first”.
The owner later agreed to submit an application for the retention of the mural, with local assemblymen and city councillors offering help.
Social media comments on the case split into two camps.
One group said the owner and artist should have known better and obeyed the mural rules that have been in place since 2017.
They argued that ignorance of the rules or lack of awareness was not a defence.
The other group stood on the side of creative expression. They felt MBPP was an overzealous overseer of creativity, and that the owner and artist should have full licence to express what mattered to them in that mural.
Perhaps people have forgotten what happened in 2014, after the state government commissioned artist Ernest Zacharevic to paint murals for George Town Festival 2012.
His creations gave Penang a hot new tourism wave as mural hunters flooded the heritage enclave.
After that, some people must have thought: “Oh, tourists want murals! Let’s give them more!”.
So when the Pokemon game craze hit, Pokemon figures appeared on walls. When Minions cartoon characters were hot, they appeared too.
The heritage enclave ended up with a mishmash of street drawings and so in 2017, MBPP laid down the rule: get approval before producing public art.
In a place like Penang that is so rich in culture and history, the urge to leave a footprint in a public space as a form of personal identity is always strong.
And yet, regulations exist because we share the public space.
You cannot unilaterally decorate your walls when they face public space, just as you cannot renovate and extend your house all the way to the edge of your lot.
You cannot plant a sacred fig tree (and several other species) in your garden because the roots will tear up the neighbour’s wall, the drain and public road.
You cannot suddenly turn your house into a boutique cafe without regard for traffic and neighbours.
You cannot keep five dogs in a terraced house, or build a chicken coop in your garden to get the very best eggs without causing smell, noise and hygiene issues.
There are many rules and they exist for good reason.
My take on the matter is that Penang’s mural rules are about the freedom of expression versus the shared interests of the heritage zone, neighbours, tourists, cityscape and history.
The rules are not there to suppress creativity. They are there to channel it so the results do not become unintended intrusions.
It is the same for farmers with guns.
A mural in Penang needs the prior approval of an application form.
A shotgun needs a licence, logbook and police monitoring.
Remember the licence, the logbook, the officer and the paperwork, whether you are pulling the trigger or painting a wall.
