Last night, a couple of friends, my wife and I had a movie night at our place and we re-watched one of the best Malaysian films ever made - Sikit Punya Gila.
The comedy film, directed by Raja Ismail and starring Dharma Harun, Hamid Gurkha, Yusni Jaafar and Ibrahim Pendek, was experimental and rife with social commentary.
Produced in the early 1980s, it told the common story of the rural Malay folk migrating to the city in order to better their lives, just like it was during the production of the movie.
Dharma and Hamid try to make it big in Kuala Lumpur doing any kind of job they can, from selling corn to gambling on horse races (kuda longkang!) and buying 4D.
Of course, they had to have their romantic interests as well in the form of Norlia Ghani and Nora Shamsuddin (who eventually were snapped up by Yusof Haslam and Kuswadinata!).
True to the malaise of that time, they were a pair of lazy, care-free young men who wanted to get rich but didn’t have the commitment nor the discipline to do anything about it.
All they wanted to do was to hang out, chat up girls, have fun and not work. Then, they just hoped and dreamed really hard that they could make a fast buck.
More than 30 years on, I’m not sure if there are many people still like Dharma and Hamid. I’m sure many now realise that to succeed, hard work and a little bit of intelligence play a big role.
Or maybe there are, seeing that many still clamour for all kinds of hand-outs, subsidies and kick-backs in order to make that fast buck.
And that is why I don’t believe in any form of affirmative action benefits because it will continue to breed the malaise that has existed from decades ago into the present.
When a society continues to rely on handouts, they lose the ability to work and the reason for effort and commitment, because they know that something will always fall in their lap.
It becomes a crutch that they know they can always lean on when they feel they need to. At the end of the day, such a society has to be propped up to survive.
When they say "Takkan Melayu hilang di dunia", what it meant was for them to fight for their survival, and not to live a mediocre and subsidised live.
But then again, thinking back about the film, although Dharma and Hamid were lazy and were just expecting things to fall into their own lap, they didn’t expect much to be handed to them.
They did simple jobs (Hamid was the more entrepreneurial one so he sold corn by the side of the road while Dharma manage to hold on to his job as a lift attendant) to make a living.
They just tried to get rich quick by betting on the "kuda longkang" and also trying to come up with lucky numbers they could buy at the 4D counter.
They were ordinary men who had no big connections in life and were just hoping to make it big in the city, just like so many of us. – November 14, 2014.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
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