For whom is Malaysia?

RECENTLY, I took Grab to visit my parents’ house in Petaling Jaya. The grey Volkswagen Vento that was my drive pulled up with a smart-looking driver in his late 40s at the wheel.

I was prepared to catch up with some emails during the ride but the driver kept making conversation. As a communication educator, I’ve learned to identify different characteristics of people based on how they speak, the topic of their conversation and the intonation they use.

By the fifth minute, I knew I wouldn’t be going through my emails, so I leaned back and looked outside the window while he talked.

He told me about the five houses he owned, the cars he’d bought and that he was never in Malaysia during the holidays. He said he has an aunt in Portugal, friends in the United Kingdom and that Boracay (in the Philippines) was overrated.

I thought it best not to offer my opinions, and he would not have listened anyway.

He said he had worked at Petronas for a number of years and was always masyuk (loaded with money). He complained about the government, the pandemic and the fact that he has an upcoming trip to Vietnam that might have to be cancelled. He said he does Grab to pass the time and it wasn’t his main source of income.

I was glad when he finally pulled up in front of my parents’ gate. As I got out of the car, he said he was waiting for a chance to go to Ireland where a close friend had just opened a restaurant. He was hoping to work there, he said. “This country is only good for the Banglas and the B40, not for people like us. I can’t wait to leave, ” he sneered.

For whom is Malaysia? My Volkswagen Vento Grab driver, former Petronas employee and owner of five houses with an aunt in Portugal knew his answer to this question with a conviction.

He did not know anything about me except that I hired his supposedly premium service to fetch me from the apartment I’m renting with my husband and drive me to the house where he dropped me off, but he assumed I was like him.

When he said that this country was not for me and him, he thought I was in the same social class as him. He is probably right on the latter but extremely wrong on the former.

Malaysia is certainly not for the Grab driver because of the way he views the situation. Indeed, this country isn’t for everyone. But there isn’t any country in the world that is for everyone.

The Bangladeshi workers are here because Malaysia can offer them something they can send back home. Otherwise, why would they stay and tolerate the abuse and discrimination we so often throw at them?

The B40 just want to be safe and stop being hungry in their current land. They barely have a chance to think of moving to another one.

I’ve heard enough stories to understand that there is nothing greener about the grass on the other side when you’re forced to go there.

I am not blind to the issues of this land. I am not romanticising patriotism in a submerging ship. All I’m saying is that I am grounded with what needs fixing in this country, what it offers and what I can offer it.

Perhaps, many years from now, that Grab driver will be a successful restaurant owner in Ireland. Good for him.

I hope he does not get put down the way he put down those he thought below him. I hope he never feels, as Shqipe Prence in his 2013 poem Immigrant describes: “Lost in a world of trouble and distrust,

Surrounded by indifference and crushed,

Floundering around and getting nowhere,

Not here, not there,

Hopeless,

Soul does burst all bitterness!”

SYAHIDA JOHAN

Glenmarie, Shah Alam