I HAD never met or spoken with Yasmin Ahmad.
But her positive messages about life were present in my living room at least three times a year - always in the days leading to Hari Raya, Lunar New Year or Deepavali.
Working with national oil company Petronas, she produced these TV commercials that always tugged at my heart with its celebration of family life and multiracial living in Malaysia. These were aired before the major festivals to bring families and people together.
So when news spread on Thursday that she had a stroke, I was shocked. She died on Saturday evening at 51 without gaining consciousness.
Some of her best works are here on YouTube, and these commercials and movie trailers made me cry buckets. You see, Yasmin had these simple messages for viewers.
Like the commercial reminding a Malay engineer to chuck aside his laptop for a day to be with her mother at a remote village with no Internet connection for Hari Raya. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az_dnk_ix8E&feature=related)
Or one showing a group of old Chinese folks with a staid life in a small town, to remind their children in the big cities to visit their parents for Lunar New Year. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SiDaPoFT6U)
And then there was the commercial about four Indian boys dressed up like Backstreet Boys cheering "party, party" downtown, near Deepavali. One of them suddenly went "pati, pati" (Tamil for grandma) as his grandmother walked up to remind them to be proud of their heritage. He gave the sheepish boys muruku to take home to their moms. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whiLwDoRk_o&feature=related)
And then there were the unforgettable clips on multiracial living.
One of these showed Atan, Lim and Param who lived in the same village and once jumped into a river together to escape angry bees. Param and Lim were with Atan when he was circumscised, a big event for Malay kampung boys. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7PotdHCUVQ&feature=related)
Many years later, an old Atan in crutches met by chance his old buddy Lim, now in a wheelchair, to talk about the old times. Atan said Param passed away just last month. Lim pointed at his teenager son who was listening to his Walkman nearby and at Atan's son who was playing with his handphone.
"Kids these days, only their hair look the same, but they are in their own world. They don't even know how to make friends," Lim lamented.
The message at the end: 'The bitter and the sweet together we taste. One direction, one country'.
That is the message that Malaysia sorely needs these days. And now, the magical Storyteller behind these messages is sadly gone.
SOURCE: BH
P.Ramlee, the actor and genius movie director of the 1960s, made Malay movies that reflected the easy-going way of life of the Malays then. Yasmin, the genius movie director of her time, was very good at highlighting the angsts of the Malays in the 2000s.
In several P.Ramlee movies, the Malays drank wine with other Malays in night clubs and cavorted with "perempuan cabaret" (cabaret women). They sometime got very drunk - like the famous, award-winning confrontation between a drunk son and his father in Anakku Sazali (My son Sazali).
There was a very diluted role for Islam and on being Muslims in the reel life portrayed by P.Ramlee, just like it was in real life then. And these Malays of the villages and towns of 30 to 40 years ago had easy-going Chinese and Indians as neighbours.
Fast forward today and Yasmin in her movies explored the Malays who seemed at times ill-at-ease with their Chinese and Indian neighbours, and vice versa.
And one can see the strong influence that Islam now play in the daily lives of the Malays, and the reaction from the non-Muslim friends. Strong identification with ethnicity has also entered the fray. These can be seen in Yasmin's movies such as Sepet (Chinese Eyes) and Talentime.
And just like in real life, some of her movies attracted the wrong attention from conservative Muslim authorities. Still, no one could take away the fact that she had managed to lift the veil over race and religion in Malaysia, and put them squarely in the centre of discussions in her commercials and movies.
While others saw doubts about the future because of these issues, she saw hope. Sadly she is not around anymore to show us more glimpses of what could be.
When a Muslim is told that someone has passed away, this is what we are taught to reply (in Arabic): From God we came, and unto Him shall we return. This is to say we accept what has happened, even as we mourn for the loss.
Rest in peace, sis.