My Bangladeshi friend Raja

During my college days, I worked part-time at a restaurant – working part-time while pursuing higher education was quite popular even before the current minister in charge had suggested it.

As with many restaurants at that time, the one I worked for, a café in Klang, employed an almost completely migrant workforce in the kitchen. It was not hard to understand why – the migrant workers cost significantly less than the local ones. The going rate for a restaurant hand, per month, was about RM700 (and that was in 2001).

The workers also provided security of sorts for the restaurant as they would live upstairs, nearby or in the case of our café, in a room behind (it was a bungalow-turned restaurant).

We also had a Vietnamese staff and three workers from Myanmar. However, I was particularly close to our Bangladeshi cook, Razak (or Raja as he preferred to be called, after a Hindustani film hero),  mainly due to our shared interest in Japanese anime.

Raja was one of the hardest workers I knew. In the mornings, he worked for one of our restaurant bosses, who also ran a small water bottling plant and an IT repair shop.

Every evening he would be at the restaurant, working as a cook until midnight. On weekends, I sometimes followed the same boss to do cabling and IT jobs for extra cash – Raja would be there too.

My friendship with Raja grew stronger after an incident late one night at the cafe, when a group of inebriated customers kicked up a ruckus over their bill. One of them held me by the collar and threatened to punch me.

Before any of my colleagues could intervene, out ran Raja from the kitchen, knife in hand yelling “You sentuh saya punya kawan, saya mati dengan you”, interspersed with what I assume was choice Bengali swear words. Thankfully he did not need to use the knife.

When discussing studies one day, I learnt that Raja actually has a basic degree in Science - incidentally, one of the Myanmar workers had a Masters in Physics.

I also found out that Raja came from what used to be a well-to-do business family, but they were cheated off most of their inheritance by a relative. He said that the money he was sending home to his family was to be used to buy a shop so he could start a convenience store business as well as a family of his own, when he returned to Bangladesh.

Migrant workers generally live very frugal lives here, and Raja was no exception. He planted various herbs in the empty plot of land behind our cafe and would use these ingredients to flavour the pre-work meal we would have before the shift started.

These meals were often simple dishes made with parts of what we would cook in the kitchen that would otherwise be thrown away, including lamb bones or the harder cuts of a steak. Somehow, he would manage to make whatever little he could get to taste good.

So when Hari Raya came, Raja invited us over to his house. Knowing they probably would be pooling resources to celebrate, I brought a couple of chickens and some chocolate.

At the end of the day, they didn’t even use the chickens, as everybody seemed to have brought a chicken or a leg of lamb or a bag of rice.

In fact, there was so much to spare, they gave some of the meat and other goods to a nearby mosque to give to the poor(er) members and kept a portion at a makeshift convenience store run by a fellow Bangladeshi.

The thing is, these were people who really did not have much, yet at the same time, did not seem to mind sharing what little they had with friends or people that needed it more than they did.

The cooking was communal too as they had, much earlier on, pooled resources to buy large pots that they kept behind the same makeshift convenience store for such occasions as this.

What I imagined would be an awkward series of conversations turned out not to be as such.

Raja’s friends seemed to be only interested to know if I had a “nari”, “ladki” (woman, girlfriend) or “stri” (wife) and when did I intend to get one. Apparently, this was a major thing I should be worried about because at 20, time was supposedly running out for me and I would die old and single.

Other than that I was surprised that they shared quite a similar history to us – they too were ruled by the British and then invaded by the Japanese. Their struggle for independence was far more violent than ours, involving murders, assassinations and mass rapes.

I was also surprised to learn they were a younger nation than ours, barely 30 years old at the time. By the time they won their independence, little was left for them.

Over-population and a lack of economic opportunities drove them out of their country. Over here too, they faced discrimination and were constantly stopped by police and members of almost every other uniformed body.

I felt I learnt more about their country in one Hari Raya function than I would have otherwise cared to read up.

There was this one incident where a regular Malay lady customer arrived late one night, this time with a male companion, and the companion asked if the restaurant was halal.

I replied that we didn’t serve pork (the term pork-free had yet to become a national issue at that point) and that our cook was Muslim. The second bit seemed to reassure him, but when he asked if the cook was a Malay or Indian-Muslim, and I replied Bangladeshi, he gave me an incredulous look and said “Sorry, I don’t know if he is really Muslim”.

I was quite surprised and contemplated asking his lady friend, the regular customer, if she would like her usual Tiger beer, but decided against it. As they left, I realised Raja was within earshot and felt quite bad for him.

But he was his usual jovial self, explaining that he was used to the treatment, adding for good measure: “Kadang-kadang masjid pun dia orang tak bagi sembahyang”.

When I left that job, Raja bought me a farewell gift, a slice of cake. He hugged me and told me to study hard and to not end up like him. But you know what? I’d be happy to be half the good person that he is.

Sometimes, it is really easy to dismissively paint everyone from a particular race or religion with one broad stroke especially if you don’t really know anyone from that group.

Thank you Raja, for making it hard for me. – February 23, 2016.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.