Your grandfather's world issit?

This brat from school comes to mind of late. We were in Primary 4 – St Joseph’s, Kuching in the '70s – kids whose voices have yet to crack. He was the doted only son of wealthy folks who pretty much gave in to the boy's whims and fancies.

There was something in the manner he spoke that came across more as declaration rather than dialogue. “Argh, you don’t know! We will do it like this.” He had his groupies. They seemed to find his antics entertaining, while most of us just went on with life. I guess when you’re used to having it your way at home, you believe you can have it your way everywhere.

SL, the brat, called for a meeting during recess one day – it was for the inter-class football tournament organized by the school for upper primary levels. For many of us, it was going to be our first-ever tournament.

SL had said earlier in class he wanted to talk about tactics. Tactics, so it turned out, was SL insisting we looked “pro”, that we wore new jerseys, soccer shorts and knee-high socks with shoes. He declared animatedly about how confident we’d be on the field and how, in looking like “pros”, we’d play like pros. And he went on and on. I remember watching his groupies bobbing their heads in unison like cheap Taiwanese toys of that era.

Jonah cut in: “Don’t want.”

The table went silent, and the din around the canteen gushed to fill its space. The heads stopped bobbing. “My family no money. I don’t care got jersey or not. Just can play football good oreddy. Don’t want.”

Jonah, the quiet Dayak, spoke for the rest of us that late morning. Jonah – whose father carried sacks of grain at the wharf every day, who struggled at the bottom of class, who couldn’t handle math, who struggled with reading – stood on the reality of his world and rejected the cocky near-sightedness of SL, whose father owned pepper plantations from Serian to Sarikei, who had vacationed in New Zealand, who had white shirts and whiter teeth, and whose shoes were better than Bata.

Jonah’s message was simple: Look beyond your nose – the universe doesn’t revolve around you.

We played our first game the following week. We wore singlets, the other side played shirtless. Most of us played barefoot. We won that game and the games after and became top team for Primary 4. We didn’t look like “pros” nor played like “pros”, but we didn’t lack confidence definitely. We played honest and we played the best we could.

I don’t know what became of SL or Jonah. My family moved after the following year and I’d forgotten that episode until today. Today I read something that triggered those memories of 30 years ago, a solid reaction to a dim myopic proposal.

To the government-endorsed plan of scaling the Great Pyramid at Giza and draping it with a giant Malaysian flag the size of four football fields (!) and token 57 flags of Muslim states, Zahi Hawass, chairman of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities which oversees the site has this – in short – to say: F-U.

"Why should I allow them to drape it?" Hawass said. "If they want to make propaganda, let them do it somewhere else. They can do it in any other place in Cairo."

Bravo, Egypt.

Boo, Malaysia. In your eager rush to be cool, you’re now seen by the world as some egotistical bumbling, insecure bumpkin. Congrats. You just made it in time for this year’s Top 10 World’s Idiotic Ideas.

To whoever came up with that plan estimated to cost around RM200,000 courtesy of the “set-an-example” developed state of Selangor (only in Khir Toyo’s mind), Youth and Sports Ministry, Perhebat and some other corporate goons, let me say this: It was a cheap shot. It was insensitive. It was plain stupid.

I’m concerned on two counts:

1) Are the people appointed to steer Malaysia so dim that this is what they mean by towering Malaysians? It truly, deeply, irritatingly baffles me when I see, read, hear of so many intelligent people in this country and yet we have clowns as our stewards. It’s in fact frightening.

2) This one hints at something graver. To have even considered such an idea shows that you are so used to having things your way – forced down the people’s throats, bloated and blurred with only your perspective, rammed through our courts and Parliament with your cronies’ heavyweight machinery. You may deny it, you may coat it with all kinds of cotton-candy spin, but your actions betray you yet again.

And you go on bolder and bolder thinking you're just so good. Until you hit that brick wall. Egypt, today, is that brick wall. Until you wisen up to your folly, many more walls lie ahead. What's your call, clown? Shiok sendiri and padan muka?

Just over 30 years ago amidst the drowning din at recess time, a quiet Dayak named Jonah stood his ground and spoke out against insensitivity, myopia and arrogance. He lit a torch for me: Look beyond your nose – the universe doesn’t revolve around you. Learn to see the ever-complex relationships constantly unfolding in a dance. Act true. Act right.

Our steward-clowns could do well to learn from Jonah. Forget about the jersey, just play football. Play honest football. And when you finally get the cup, it's because you are indeed good. Not self-advertised.