Ali are you okay? (Nov 2010)

Friends with money
Ali Imran K. discovers why he’ll never completely fit in into anywhere

My dad’s side of the family in Kedah has a knack of breeding rapidly. I told my mom that I think they self multiply but she said that I shouldn’t be rude. It’s a norm for us to be introduced to a new cousin every time we pay a visit and with their names sounding almost close to each other, it can get quite confusing- Fakhri, Fikhri, Fakhrul. My dad, the first to have ever made it out of Kedah successfully amongst his siblings, has always been the one they look up to, garnering an almost idol-like status, though not without some resentment. At my uncle’s place in Sungai Petani, as my sister was helping with the women in the kitchen, I heard my aunt exclaimed loudly, almost on purpose, “Eh, pi la dok depan. Orang kaya tak biasa buat kerja dapuq”- Go sit in front. Rich people shouldn’t be here. I can always count on my sister to be apathetic to such situations, preferring to agree, if others insist. But I told her that I thought she should have stayed in the kitchen and lift a log on her shoulders, need it be, just to prove a point.

Truth is, no. I was not born into money and no, I most certainly cannot have anything I want, whenever I wanted it. Not even if I wished hard for it. It’ll only give me a headache from too much frowning. It’s weird, I know, but I do frown when I wish for the unthinkable and when I sit on the toilet. My dad’s a doctor who earned a full scholarship to do his specialist degree in Scotland and my mother was a nurse, who progressed to a tutor before eventually taking optional retirement at 44. My parents came back from Scotland not having much money, so we were forced to live at my grandparents in Negeri Sembilan whilst they ventured out into KL for work. The separation proved very trying for my mother especially, because she cried every morning before she left us for work. Bearing in mind that this was before the highway was constructed, so it took double time for them to ever get back to us at a decent hour. Not long after that, my dad got a lecturing job at the very university he took his degree in and moved us all to live on campus. I wasn’t at all deprived as a child, in fact, my childhood was quite colourful. But it wasn’t always easy. Our first holiday abroad was to Medan. I had a tiny Transformer which only folded in half instead of the massive, multi-functioning Optimus Prime. My sisters had matching maxi dresses from fabric bought in Globe Silk Store, machine sewn by my aunt. God bless them for having the courage to be seen in public like members of a ladies’ choir (or had that been my mother’s intention all along?) The opportunities my sisters and I were given grew in relation to my dad’s increasing disposable income, somewhere in the mid 90s. But my mother, ever the frugal accountant, made sure we knew the value of a dollar and insisted that I only be given a 50 Ringgit a week allowance in college. So lest you think of me as an ungrateful turd, yes, we are comfortable. But not in a Scrooge McDuck, bank vault kind of way.

Around about the same time last year, I had met up with a group of friends over dinner. We talked, we laughed, exchanged points of information which subsequently led to me asking my friend Aaron on what he was up to soon? “We’re going to Val d’isere!” he said as his face lit up like a child’s on Christmas eve. “Valdi-who?” I asked. “Val d’isere silly. It’s a ski resort in France. Hey, you should come with! It’ll be fun!” he suggested. By this point, I was making the math in my head and it took me less than 3 seconds to decide that, unless God gave me the ability to lay gold eggs soon, there was no chance in hell I was ever going to “Val d’i-oh-I’m-going-to-have-so-much-fun-skiing”. I politely declined saying that I couldn’t take off work at such short notice and that I don’t ski anyway. Eons after that episode, a girlfriend of mine had grouped some of us together for coffee so that she could pass us her wedding invites. Halfway through my kopi-o, my friend Razlan asked if he thought it was worth it to buy a loft at Damansara Perdana. “It’s this new development coming up right next to Milan and I just bought it. Just wanted to know what you guys think of it” he said, in passing. “Didn’t you just buy an apartment in Subang?” I asked as a genuine enquiry. “Yeah, but this looked like a good investment opportunity, so I bought it as well lah” he answered, matter-of-factly. I obviously had no opinion on the matter, or none that would warrant elongated virtues of real estate, so I just said, “Of course it’s good! Property value only increases you know” and winked at him. After that, he entailed minute details of his plans to rendezvous in Holland and Morocco over the Raya holidays, as I listened intently, sipping my by now, very tepid coffee.

People often say that you are defined by the company you keep, but if that was true, then I must be either a fluke or a freakish chance of nature. Sometimes I wonder how in the world I managed to have the friends that I do and to what extent do we really have that much in common? What even drew us to each other in the first place?  I love my friends to pieces, but rarely will you ever find one person, let alone a whole group of people who share the exact same ideals as you. And as you grow older, you start to realize your own personal capabilities and limitations, ones that are truly unique to you. So instead of being jealous or envious of other people’s hard earned money, the exotic holidays they take and the vast amounts of properties in their possession, the only major relationship you should be concerned about is with yourself, because at the end of the day, we are born into this world alone and we will leave it the same way too.