The Gloomy Reality

What constitute to a successful Hari Raya? Is it the food? Baju raya? Duit Raya? or have Hari Raya robbed us and failed us big time?

Aidilfitri in the last few years is becoming much  lesser expected. In contrast, it was the best thing in life to anticipate. At time when i was a little boy, tirelessly running around the house and crash-sitting near my mother, panting, as she irons out and hung the new cloths in the wardrobe. I was doing projected accounting, anticipating how much I would accumulate duit raya from pak long, pak ngah, pak ciks and whole other uncles from both mother and father sides. A high probability of additional duit rayas through visiting clients or businessman as they come by my house ( through the time when my father act as branch manager at now defunct Bank Bumiputra ), uh oh, hampers, loads of hampers that we had to dedicate a whole room for hamper back in those days.  

What causes anticipation to dampen heat of Hari Raya this time? Its a dreaded situation to witness as you realized that everything comes with a (overinflated ) price tag. In the wake of gloomy job prospect, house price that aggregately takes 10 years clean salaries and mostly ever-shrinking goal post for striking a wedding date; aidilfitri celebration would have downscaled for my generation and the next generation to come. 

To participate and to outsize the previous hari raya is hurting the wallet and just a matter of ego polishing of the Malay idiosyncrasies  of 'bigger is better' that persisted since the age of Tok Kadok.  And like everyone, which had not being born into this world as badan kebajikan, opportunist suck us bone dry in name of Hari Raya; baju kurung tailor, kuih raya baker and meat butcher,with a similar tone successfully persuaded us that prices has gone up, and buying them is a necessity to show some celebratory respect marking the end of ramadhan. Come Syawal, a call for victory against mortal desire, we may just fall back into the hands of enemy we were trying to stave off  

Piece of monies

I cannot fathom the idea that Aidilfitri is vastly becoming a exposition of material prestige. A ceremony targeted for rapid commercialization that far eclipse its once collectively understood occasion for family reunion joy and long nights of ketupat preparation. On a side note, commercialization is a disease which had long necrotized Chrismas celebration in the West. The half month bonus (correct me if im wrong ) for government servant that CUEPACS succeeded to teat-squeeze from the nation coffers is just timely ahead of election. You know, the power-that-be cannot afford to say no, when nation accounting department justified it’s a definitive no. 

Having their ears hearing the rumbles of the ground, the business people had long sets their eyes on these bonus monies - they concluded that its natural for them to have a fair share, jack up the price to make it trickle down to their pockets. Private sector where my father work? they had not gained much, private companies are all about cut costs and efficiency, to find that holy grail of efficiency, they might sponsor a scientific study of maximum work load a person can do before passing out - out of their liability . Thus, Hari Raya actually drains the financial resources that never gained a notch throughout the month of Ramadhan. Primary concern regarding my father approaching retirement in coming months had bugged me to think what kind of Hari Raya would in years to come?  

Ziarah (visiting)  is one routinely done during aidilfitri but imagine those with low salaries counting their coins and calculate the mileage every liter of petrol could bring - plagued by worrying the car might have stalled mid-way through the journey. The toll discount offers wouldn’t be much of a blessing, when more tolls are popping up next to one existing. Malaysian gambled a lot in terms of penny pinching, large families would be fitted inside a sedan, almost asphalt kissing overloaded sedans scattered the highways. Thus, its a ticking time bomb when for a country that does not have a scraping programs and reliable car costs four years of untouched graduates salary. 

Meat, kerisik and santan - all essentials for rendang, is either downsized or replaced with other economically viable food like laksa. Perhaps, Aidilfitri these days gravitate towards facebook and twitter exposition, to see whose got the shiniest 2K colour baju raya or whose got the cutest siblings. Technology can intervene in many ways; almost everybody saw it coming, if anybody recalls the days of Nokia 3310, the then youngster tentatively remain buried in the sofa sharing the ringtone composition code of the blaring monophonic speaker; today, a child would smirk at the smell of kerosene from a pelita, and remained euthanized by the effects of swiping their fingers on tablet computers.

Trimming Down   

Its well understood, as we crept into the realm of competitiveness, Hari Raya celebration shall brace for downscaling. Just get what we can afford or if you don't love it, do not celebrate at all, just enough with little well wishing and ampun maaf, like we always do in other aspect of life: ala kadar. We should begin to plant the seed of subculture which adaptively shed the need for nostalgias and tone down celebrations like Hari Raya to a day or two and then its back to work. Accept it, its getting costlier. This shall be known on to our children and down the history books where the Malays are those who used to slug out seven days and seven nights to party like a rockstar for occasions like kenduri kahwin and hari raya.    

On a last note, I hope the seniors would be much more understanding in dire situations and the screwed-up generation that we belonged. We are the generation that might popped up in the wrong place; Malaysia as a country trapped in middle income crisis and its national capital being run by Myanmar and Bangladeshis - worst, wrong time, when population had perched over 7 billion level. We are the generation which bosses/employer are laughing out loud at job seekers that kept asking for more ( alas , its prostitutes trademark to basically 'asks for more' ), so please, seniors, do avoid asking what work we are doing ( as most graduates too hop so many jobs and remain unemployed ) and laugh a little lesser when you lectured us that rezeki would flow like piped water as soon as we got married - we do listen, we got nothing but time to listen, but these days, actions, cannot be more earth shattering when you are broke, jobless and limping our way out of the mess. 

The mess who created? It would be another topic to begin with, but for now, we shall begin enthuastically try to wrap our head around the idea 'to earn more, we need to work hard', lets see if working hard really rewards us in Malaysia.