After sending my daughter to the Dato Keramat LRT station in Kuala Lumpur yesterday (like any other weekday), I stopped by a shopping centre, got my The Sun from a 7-Eleven and then proceeded to a table on the five-foot path of a mamak restaurant for my usual breakfast of 'thosai' and lemon tea breakfast.
As we all know, all the 7-Eleven workers are Malay boys and girls (the 3As to 1A SPM holders who are now considered not good enough for higher education), who work a 24-hour shift for very little money.
On the other hand, their Chinese counterparts with similar less brilliant SPM passes, can afford to wake up a little late because they all work at handphone counters and other downstream retail trade but for much more money than the Malays. And yet it is now the perception that the Malays are generally lazy, ironically, by some Malays themselves.
Anyway my main story is that while sitting at my table, two Chinese Toyota car salesmen came and sat at the next table and immediately got into their loud conversation in (as usual) Cantonese.
At the other table there were four young Chinese females from a nearby private hospital waiting for their 'roti telur'. They too were engrossed in their conversation, obviously in Cantonese.
(Similar scenes could have been happening in Penang, Johor or Kuala Lipis where these conversations would have been in Hokkien, Teochew and Kwangssi respectively or in some places in Hakka and Khek or if they are young in Mandarin).
Anyway, a few minutes later another (Malay or Indian looking) Toyota salesman came to join his two Chinese colleagues. And believe it or not, he was completely ignored by the two. Not a word of 'Hey!' or 'Good Morning' let alone 'Selamat pagi' or 'Sudah makan?' They just continued with their conversation (perhaps about cars because I did hear words like Gen-2).
Soon after, another Chinese Toyota man came to join them and (no surprise) the two immediately greeted him and now with three, my concentration for stories in the paper was severely tested.
Around the shop, some Indians came for their breakfast - 'nasi lemak', 'mi hun goreng', 'roti canai' or 'thosai'. They made their orders with the waiters (all Indians) in Tamil.
As a pensioner who uses public transport more than my old Mazda 626, I see such scenes all the time, on LRT trains, in buses or the posh KLCC. The upper middle class or the political class of Malays, Chinese or Indians may be surprised or pretend to be surprised to read my story.
'Gosh, we don't know that. We thought we have made much progress all these years. But we meet at the golf clubs and at Starhill shopping complex and we speak English,' they would probably say.
What I am trying to say is, despite all the efforts and talk, we are far from reaching even Level 1 of our so-called national unity and next year is our 50th Merdeka anniversary. So what went wrong and where should the accusing finger be aimed at? As a cynic I would blame everybody.
To me, Umno should take most of the blame for its weak or lack of political leadership and will to persuade and cajole the non-Malays to accept that we must use Bahasa Malaysia as the first unifying factor. When every Malaysians speak Bahasa as a matter of course, then we will get somewhere.
In Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, an Indonesian Chinese will speak Bahasa Indonesia with another Chinese, so also a Thai Chinese or a Chinese Filipino.
Once this is achieved, the government can then spend time and resources to solve the economic and income divides which account for all the problems in the world, even in a very homogenous society like Japan and Korea.
After 50 years of Merdeka what do we see? Other languages becoming the de facto official languages of Malaysia. Does this augur well for the country? I have got a 5 sen prize for the right answer!
