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Why soccer is more important than literature in Bolehland

EVER SO OFTEN, MEN (AND WOMEN) OF substance and politics bemoan why Malaysians do not read. One would have to scour the length and breadth of Bolehland to find a decent bookshop. Those who run it soon give up the ghost, as only a handful would not, you could soon get anything but books. The books are of course there, but it has nothing to do with the reading that these illiterate worthies bemoan. You could find books that teach you how to be a management guru, on flower arrangements, how to cook like Escoffier in ten easy lessons, hagiographies hastily put together in anticipation of an award or other similar rubbish.

Silverfish Books and Skoob Books are two that come to mind that struggles to survive in this age of philistines, where a 29-inch television set is more needed than a decent dictionary, Literature to them is a waste of time. There is no money in it. Write a pornographic novel instead. I have lost count of how many leading figures I had tried to persuade to write their memoirs ask me what they could make out of it. But that is what literature and literary works are reduced to.

Newspapers and magazines do not encourage reading. The book pages in them are a traversity. Pop fiction and rubbish like that dominate. The mainstream in Bolehland society do not care and are not interested. So, why should newspapers and magazines. The system does not encourage reading. A UNESCO poll some years ago reported Malaysians read half a page a book a year. How they do that is beyond me, for I read, and have for more than half a century, 60 to 70 pages a day, often when the mood strike me or the subject matter prescient, the whole book at one sitting. I still have more books than I can read, and continue to buy more. And I am never without a book.

What better way to spend one's time while waiting to meet someone whose self-importance denies him the value of time, especially of others. There are thousands, even tens of thousands in Malaysia, like me, who read not because it is fashionable or necessary for nation-building, but because they enjoy it, learn much from it, and enriches them as an idiot box could not. If you enquire at a bookstore, you would find that self-help books are the best sellers.

Reading would not catch on unless it is taught early. And once learnt, it is rarely lost. My father was not a reader, but my mother was. She inculcated that in me, though, curiously, none of my brothers and sisters got into that habit. But I also had a wonderful teacher, in Form Two at the English College, Johore Bahru, Mr Lim Teck Siang, who died a few years ago in his late 80s, who insisted we read voraciously, giving us first copies of magazines like 'Tit Bits' and slowly graduating to more literary magazines and books. And write a half-page summary of what one read every week. By the year-end, at 13, I was reading the plays of Shakespeare. It set me up for life. Many of course fell by the wayside. One who did in my class, but who went on to great heights and greater irrelevance, is the National Front (BN) secretary-general, Tan Sri Mohamed Rahmat. I suppose by the standards by which Bolehland judges its people, he made a success of his life and I did not.

If ours is not a reading society, it could never be one where literature and literary works are honoured. Indeed, there is no body of literature in English here - let us forget about world standards here - as there is, for instance, in the Indian sub-continent. But there is a vibrance unheard of, and ignored, by the mainstream Malaysian society, in the literary writings in Chinese, Malay and Tamil. The Sin Chew Jit Poh awards for Chinese literary works is among the best, if not the best, in the Chinese-speaking world. But who in the mainstream has heard of them? It is political necessity of promoting Malay as an important regional language that gives pride of place to Malay literary works. But it still does not compare, bar a few exceptions, with Tamil writing.

Those who spend a lifetime in non-English literary work do so part-time, often after a full-time job, especially at the lower-end. I once met a Tamil short-story writer who is a Dewan Bandaraya sweeper. He is better known in Chennai, where his works are published regularly, in magazines and books, than in the land of his birth.

When education is prescribed as a tool of nation-building, what does not fit is ruthlessly flushed out. So science and technology are in, literature and the arts subjects out. Reading is a waste of time. Writing is an adjunct to the dominant science and technology. English is learnt to make one understood, so grammar and style is irrelevant and a waste of time. When this is the norm, how could reading and writing be taught with sufficient seriousness to make it worthwhile to promote the reading and writing of literary works? I suspect that even the illiterate denizens of what passes for Malaysian culture understand how wrong they have been. So they rush hither and thither to undo the damage with ever more irrelevant policies.

Suddenly it is good English and nothing less that is the norm. The illiterate politicians have now decided, for political reasons, good English is what we should aspire for. We once had good English taught in Malaysian schools. How words ought to be pronounced, how they should be used, and go into tortuous detail on the etymology of it to an audience unconvinced about the use of English in the first place. But politics decreed, in 1971, it should not. Malay was introduced, not because it was natural but because English gave the non-Malays an advantage. So, it had to be destroyed. It was. Now, for the same political considerations, it must be brought back. But in the intervening 30 years, we also ensured a nation of illiterates, of whom a few break out not for a national compulsion but for a personal satisfaction.

It is from amongst them who would be the future laureates of this nation, for they would write because they want to, not because they are forced to or are paid handsomely for it. State-ordered laureates could not work with the air-conditioning on, nor could they with it off. A Malaysian could not be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature because the government decrees he must, only when he has overcome all odds himself to write to a stand that is internationally recognised as being among the best.

So, I was amused by John Teo's column in the New Straits Times today (28 June 2003) where he writes nostalgically and proudly an attempt to revive the Sarawak literary society. The man behind it, a well-read retired civil servant, Senator Dato' Haji Taha Ariffin, is well known for his role in state soccer. The state government, at his urging, first built a 45,000-seat stadium. And invested in a high-tech State Library, with connexions to libraries around the world. And another in Sibu and Mir. There are mobile units that will take books to remote corners. But "the visually-stunning State Library, set amid extensive landcaped lawns is - despite its manager's best efforts - desperately lacking in just one thing: a critical mass of users". It is not readers the library wants but "a critical mass of users". No wonder it is empty.

Meanwhile, the Sarawak Literary Society is "likewise struggling to stay afloat amid general public apathy and an appalling lack of interest in reading and writing". An attempt is made to keep it afloat. But how do you garner interest in such, in the modern idiom, "wasteful pursuits" as reading and writing? Mr Teo believes that a love of books brings with it an automatic intellectual heft and depth. If that be so, the world would be overrun with intellectuals. But at least he requires one to have a love of books to be an intellectual. To the MIC, a mere general degree qualifies one as an intellectual. Which is why the party is overrun with intellectuals who do not know what the word means.

But I stray. Mr Teo says state intervention is laudable if Sarawakians could become laureates of note. And quickly descends into gobbledygook: "Intervention at the supply end of this particular chain will hopefully bring in its wake its very own dynanic and generate interest and a certain respect for writing and learning." I shall translate: "The state could by its efforts help people to read and write." But you get the drift. Nothing must be left to chance. One must read and write for the national good. And the national good must be encouraged for it allows those involved in it to make a fine line of commissions, with which they could buy all the desirable books - The Encyclopaedia Brittanica, The Classics, Everything that makes us known as a well-read man, and all bound in the finest leather - to show the world one is a literary figure. There is, of course, no requirement that they should be read. How dare you suggest that? Do you know what it cost?

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my