THE CICAK.com

Has anyone seen my BABI?

By SHANNON TEOH

Whenever we use the term “far-reaching consequences,” we usually think in the most tangible sense with emphasis on the “far-reaching” bit. For example, climate change.

What comes to mind are people who are not you, drenched and muddy yet tragically suitably dressed for the temple, clutching their babies to their breasts. Or cars, which are not yours, swept into a tree and houses (correct, not yours either) looking like they’ve been fed through God’s paper-shredder.

That’s all fair enough. Nobody ever thinks something so pitiful could happen to them because it’s just easier to live that way - after all, most of us have managed to avoid any major catastrophe so far except whatever we wore to the prom.

But ladies and gentlemen, people who have never lined up in a soup kitchen, never “waded” about your homes, your lives are already irreparably changed. Because the most viral, the most instantaneous of these far-reaching consequences, are those that happen to our collective cultural thinking.

And so it is that this year, not a single ang pau (hong bao, lai see, whatever you call those red envelopes with money smoother than a baby’s bottom in it) I’ve seen churned out by those big corporations as part of Project Infest The Fests, has featured a big, fat, oinking pig on it.

Or a boar. Hog, even.

Except the one from the rather clever folks at World of Cartoons, who are in the Malaysia Book of Records for being our largest children’s apparel chain. They, of course, have rights to Disney’s Winnie the Pooh and so conveniently put Piglet on their ang paus. Now, no one would really want to make a fuss about this, since it’d bring to question the entire validity of screening Winnie the Pooh on local channels.

This is the stuff that could cause May 13 levels of rioting. Only twice have I actually seen a non-celebrity piggy on a packet. One was actually part of an illustration that compromised by depicting all the twelve Chinese zodiac animals having a party (dresscode: auspicious red). The other, was this bunch of ang paus that came from Singapore. No surprises there.

Mark my words, pop culture will suffer because of this. It’s not just mere tradition that we hold to when we identify with the Chinese zodiac. It’s not just a relic of the past. Come on, come clean, would you pass on the chance of picking on your Pig chum when he wolves down 13 sticks of satay in 42.7 seconds? When did you not put down your best friend’s drunken antics to being born in the Year of the Monkey?

We love this sort of pseudo-Eastern-fatalism shit. It’s the sort of thing that makes Malaysia what it is.

But let the pig emulate Houdini and history will take its eraser and rub out even more of our everyday lives. Can you imagine, a year from now, you walk into a 7-Eleven because you need a refreshing chew. But you can’t. They’ve stopped selling mentos. Porcine ingredients, apparently.

And maybe in about five years, you’ll finally get a girl to go out with you. And you’re walking in a nice park with her, hand in hand. And it’s a gorgeous sunset, and you’re both so taken by it that your hearts feel like bursting and you turn to each other and your arms entwine in an intimate embrace. Except, you can’t. They’ll “saman” your ass for that.

Oh, wait, that’s already happened.

Really, what would happen if some pigs were printed on paper and money exchanged hands between what is largely a non-Muslim community? The last time I checked, Chinese New Year really had nothing to do with Islam. Would the sight of their Chinese neighbours handing out these icons of un”halal”edness suddenly cause previously pious Muslims to run, hands waving in the air like they just don’t care, to the nearest “char siew fan” shop?

Yes, I know, I’m being a bit alarmist. And I really should be thinking about the really important stuff. Like, why, for the sake of the animals who went to have tea with Buddha, isn’t there a pig on the ang pau packets?

But that would be a waste of time, wouldn’t it? We all know why. This comes from the same place as when certain circles were told not to bestow well wishes on Deepavali or Christmas. The same place which bans Amir Muhammad’s double exposure on Malaysian Communism.

But you know, not really. That’s not the only place it draws its energy from. It also finds its power from the places that say that Harry Potter encourages witchcraft. The places that says you must marry a Chinese. And perhaps most crucially, the many places that think, “Aiyah, better play it safe. Cause trouble for what?”

The places that has turned political correctness into some sort of religion. This is the place that demanded blood when a certain comic strip took the mickey out of the furore surrounding another “insulting” batch of caricatures. The same place that thinks that silhouettes of feminine figures on mudflaps encourages pornography and sexual predators. And on and on I could go.

When did we, as a country and as a global community, become so intolerant? So quick to judge? In fact, ironically, so quick to prejudice?

Has all this sensitivity taken us forward? Does “bertolak ansur” run only one way? That we keep giving in to sensitivities? To demands to be sensitive even? When will we stand up for our own way of life, our own culture? Our own politically incorrect behaviour? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but as sure as I’d like some “bak kut teh” for dinner, I’d like to know the answer to this one.

Where is the place for the pigs to march again?

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SHANNON TEOH is a contributing writer for theCICAK.

Shannon is in fact a flighty little lifestyle journalist for NST who’s more concerned about how to own his first BMW than freedom of speech. He’s just upset that everyone’s getting all excited while he’s still waiting to flip Paul Tan the bird in an Evo IX.