The Haunted Generation

Posted by Faroze

The laughter has stilled. The smiles have stopped. The heart is aching.
The fists are clenching. And the whispers begun….

4 years ago, we gifted a rousing welcome, so unprecedented, so euphoric,
so easily. We celebrated. Morale was sky high, the future beckons, we
wont be oysters anymore, we will be pearls! If we only knew. Fast
forward 4 years, the dashing shades of hope have faded so deep into the
background. The taste of progress wound down to bitter shards. The sound
of life strummed from a dying heartbeat. What have we done?

How many of us now holds our head up high? How many walk with a brisk
step? How many sing a merry tune? How many cry?

The air around us seems drowned in morale. Of morale being drained day
after day after day and tried to be resurrected with half baked measures
that would make many a court jester envious at its humour. We live like
zombies, stretching meager earnings to last the nightfall and at dawn to
worry again if there will be enough for our spouse, our parents, our
children, ourselves too see another dawn. Yet we are showered with
scenarios of how much worse it could be, that we are in denial, that we
need to move with the times, that we need to take two jobs, that we need
to sacrifice the moral fibres of society we cling on so proudly to in
order for us to ensure our pocket jingle with change. We are the
Haunted Generation.

The ghosts of ineffectiveness, of bad judgment, of greed, of
carelessness, of lack of will, of sub ordinance, of lies infiltrate our
dreams, wailing, forcing us to believe a painted picture. A picture with
a thriving economy, with increasing GDP, with soaring investments, with
mega corridors, with open media and increased transparency. But a
picture remains a picture. A pretty box, with pretty colors, texture and
fake make-up. And the real world continues to spin. The real world with
burdens of ever increasing prices of goods, with stagnating wages, with
expanding crime rates, of Mat Rempits, of unwinding social values, of
mind poisoning media, of eyes wide open corruption, of unlimited tales
of the super rich and the rest of us, of ever deepening despair on the
faces of more and more Haunted Malaysians.

Prideful words of advice are thrown at us, always so much easier said
and mind boggling to be actually done. The ghosts of public
transportation laughs out loud as they send more and more undeserving
souls to the pits of its hell, the ghouls of corruption become fatter
and fatter as they feast upon the ever worsening and ever bold wastage
of public funds, the vampire of the quality of life does a merry jig as
she feeds with almost unlimited litres of sorrow and despair of the
millions of parents who will see their heart break from not being able
to provide even the second best to their children. And those of us who
dare stand up to exorcise these madness and hauntings, are pressurized
from those that are fed from the right hand of ridiculousness. They
twist your words, they cry malice, they refuse to see. They shift the
blame on the oil corporation and on our future generation. They compare
apples to cabbages and expect us to swallow the foul concoction without
question. They fall back on racial lines, using what they know best,
divide the Malaysians so that we can take advantage of them.

But as dark as a day manifests, as evil as a plight may seem, as
ineffective as a sleep-on-the-job PM may be, shafts of light shall
always filter thru. But we must believe in hope. We must act for just.
We must not forget! We must remember to be Malaysians again! Of people
who are proud of our diversity, of our heritage and our envious records.
Into the annals of history we must delve and learn, never has a nation
achieved empire hood in a span of a hundred years, never has a nation
come where we have without annihilating cultures of others into another,
never has a nation count on another who looks, believes and speaks
different as their brothers. We should do what we can to change the rot
that has set. We should voice out our dissatisfaction. We should reach
out for what could be. We should never forget and accept bleakness as
fate. We must believe again in the power of one….

If we drift away in the haze of contentment and the lull of
forgetfulness, we will forever be haunted. Over these 50 years, we have
grown much as a people and there has been no better time for us to awake
from our slumber. Let us arise as people of a great nation that is being
pillaged and raped by unworthy leadership. Let us – her faithful
citizens deliver her from this horrid fate that is plaguing her. Let us
do our part, no matter how small to make a difference to our beloved
Malaysia. If we sit and wait for another 4 years, who knows what more
evils and hauntings shall befall us. Let us not whisper anymore. Let us
tell of our hearts content – that we want better leaders for a better
Malaysia.