Two Romantic Hindi Movies

There were two signals coming from two disparate people that caught Sakmongkol’s attention.

First the melancholic and romantic pleadings of Dato Najib. He says now its his turn to remain loyal to Pak Lah. Najib says Pak Lah has served Tun Razak well during Tun’s time. Pak Lah was loyal to Tun. Not many people know that his relationship with Pak Lah, says Najib went back a long time.

How long Dato? In the 1970’s? In 1976, Najib was around 22 years old. He has not completed his degree at Nottingham University then. In 1976, Sakmongkol was in the first year at UM. He, like the rest of country, watched the sad and solemn burial of Tun Razak at masjid Negara. Dato Najib was a young man sporting shoulder-long hair in keeping with the zeitgeist then.

How then would any one, with some reasonableness in him or her, reconcile Dato Najib’s statement that he has had a long relationship with Pak Lah? It would be correct ( not correct, correct, correct ok ) to suggest that at that time, young Najib viewed most of the politicians then, with bemused curiosity. They were all serving under Tun Razak and perhaps by way of Najib’s twisted logic, served him too. He did not even know how Pekan looked like in the early 70s.

So Sakmomngkol is not buying this romanticised story of the good times, bad times between Najib and Pak Lah.

So Najib went on, piously and in showy filial ways, designed of course, to mollycoddle Malay emotions, that there’s nothing wrong for him now to serve Pak lah loyally as did Pak Lah to Tun Razak once.

Don’t you feel disgusted when someone sounds so preachy and so squeaky romantic as though sending overt signals to Pak Lah- please, please believe me? Najib is stopping short of saying, I love you Pak Lah with unPlatonic feelings. If Pak Lah were a man and Dato Najib a woman, Dato Najib is saying, I want to have your baby.

The next signal came from Wak Zahid Hamidi of Perak. He has pledged eternal loyalty to Pak Lah because that was the will of his father. Zahid’s father was a student to Pak Lah’s ulama grandfather. As a true Malay of Javanese stock, Zahid says he will abide buy his father’s dying wishes. He will be twice the Gurkha to Pak Lah than he is to Najib.

If Zahid reads Shakespeare, he will do a Brutus by saying, his love for Najib is exceeded only by his love to Pak Lah.

What do these two signals tell Sakmongkol and to other readers? When people start referring to some ‘indisputable’ past privy only to them, and most certainly crafted to fit in with the times, it means, its all more form than substance. In the immortal words of a blogger friend( Zaharan Razak) its more hustle than bustle and more shadow than substance.

It means, both people have nothing to show but must pitifully resort to manipulation of a romanticised and artfully crafted past. And Sakmongkol says, if you ever have the misfortune to be entrapped in such emotional quicksand, you will like Captain Kirk say, Beam me up Scotty, there are no signs of intelligent life here!. Get out before you drown in tears.