Saturday, September 3, 2011

Selamat Hari Raya; Do You Celebrate?

Its the 5th Day of Raya. The Raya mood is still there for me, at least. Many of us will be visiting our friend, Fayadh the 'skyscrapper' and Miss Zara later in a while.

Here I am, writing a blog post at 7:50am on a Saturday. Why, you ask?

Was just another day yesterday, when me, another chinese guy and a malay guy were having a drink, talking about football, and politics. When out of no where, the guy on the table beside looked at us, and said, " Wow, 1Malaysia group eh?". It took us a while to realize, "erm, oh. Yeah, we are." While people realize this often around us, we never do. *on a less serious note, Yadh and dixon, you guys need me. Harder to find Indians lately :P*

Now what am i getting at here? That we should hang out with other races more? Well, no, i went through that too many times. What I do want to bring up, is that, do we celebrate Raya?

To the malays, its a chance to buy new clothes, get more duit raya, balik kampung, visit our relatives, etc etc etc.

To the Chinese, a chance to wish our malay friends, 2 extra days of holiday in that year.

To the Indians, 2 extra days of holiday. (They don't do the wishing stuff. Heck they don't even hang out with malays!)

So, based on the activities mentioned above, who celebrate Raya? Obviously the Malays. It is their celebration, nothing got to do with the rest of us, right?

Well, the mindset of "Raya is for Malays" have made most of us, totally ignorant. We don't even know how many days do they need to fast before Raya. We don't even know what food they serve during Raya. Heck, the most basic, we don't even even know what we should do first when we go to a Raya Open House, assuming we actually go for one.


Now why does this happen? I got to blame this partially on the education system. When we were young, our parents sent us to chinese school. Why? Because it is our heritage. You learn better from our own kind. Better education than public schools.

The malays get sent to the Sekolah Berasrama Penuh. A school for the elite smart bumiputra students. A pure 100% malay school.

The Indians get sent to the Tamil school. Why? Because who else is going to go to an Indian place, if not the indians themselves (same old excuse). Or better, some Indians are enrolled into Chinese schools. You can just imagine the father with an indian accent telling his son "Go and studyyyy, then you can be smartttt like the chineseee, and make LOTTSSS of Mah-Ney!"

In the end, this only creates a wall between our races. We interact mostly with people of our own race. We don't even have much opportunity to interact with other races. Since the age of 7, we only know how to communicate with those of the same skin colour, with those of the same language. Even if some of us later on, in secondary school, joined a public school, they still stick to their own people. Those who speak Mandarin will always flock up together, and those who don't, will be not be part of the "group". The Japanese have did a study on this problem, it is known as JHAD. (Jutsu Hozen Autonomous Discrimination)

So, if today, you can't speak Malay too well, or don't know what kuih lapis and roti jala is, It is not too late. Its Raya :) Take this opportunity to understand each other.

Starting this year, Go Raya with the Malays.
Starting next year, we can all celebrate Chinese New Year together.
Starting today.

Date the Indians.