A SO-CALLED polygamy club launched in August has been stirring some excitement recently.

Last month I made my way to Rawang, a town some 50 kilometres from KL city, to meet up with the club founder and some of her followers and family members. It was one of the most unusual interviews I have ever done.

When I arrived, I was taken aback to be greeted by dozens of people. It turns out Madam Hatijah Aam, 55, had gathered most of her husband's 38 children to join us!

"To prove to you that we exist," she laughed.

She is married to Ashaari Muhammad, who has had five wives. One wife has died, and one has been divorced.

His huge clan comprises 38 children, 200 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. All of his children who are married, are in polygamous marriages. The club claims a membership of 300.

The close-knit Ashaari family are based in Rawang, where they run a huge empire of grocery stores, restaurants, publishing companies, clinics and other businesses. Mdm Hatijah says they also have businesses elsewhere in the world such as Australia, Syria and Germany, generating millions of ringgit, which funds their activities.

This is not the first time her family has made headlines. Mr Ashaari was previously known for having led a deviant religious sect that was banned in 1994, due to teachings deemed contrary to the Quran. It was believed to have thousands of followers, including civil servants. The government has said it suspects the polygamy club could be a front for the revival of the religious sect, which Hatijah has denied.

Before the cult was banned, followers wore long flowing robes and turbans for the men, and black robes and face-veils for the women.

But when I met them, Hatijah, Noraziah and their children, wore colourful though modest clothes and headscarves. Their faces were not covered. The children laughed and joked with each other during the interview, like any other family.

ST PHOTO BY: HAZLIN HASSAN

Hatijah sounded persuasive enough, saying polygamy could help solve social ills such as prostitution and adultery. But when I pressed her on how a polygamist might be fair and just to all his wives, and how he is able to provide for all of them equally, she was unable to give solid answers. I said that while Ashaari might be able to provide all of them with comfortable lives due to his profitable businesses, other ordinary men earning meagre salaries, might not. Her answer was just that "God will provide." But the club's brochures do highlight a verse from the Quran that says that if a man fears he is unable to be fair and just to his wives, then he must only marry one.

The clan then proceeded to surprise me at the end of the interview by singing two songs extolling the virtues of polygamy, written by Ashaari himself. After that, some of them departed for Indonesia, where they are setting up a chapter. Although I left not altogether convinced that polygamy was for every man (or woman), they did seem earnest enough. And they certainly welcomed me with much warmth and generosity.

Read Hazlin Hassan's report on More wives = less adultery and prostitution? in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times.

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IN BANGKOK

IF YOU were ever left in any doubt from his movies that Jackie Chan is a bundle of energy, that doubt is removed the moment you encounter him in person.

Jackie Chan arrived at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) in Bangkok like a whirlwind on Monday evening.

Sitting at the top table he attacked a bowl of nuts, refused all other food and stuck to water. When it was suggested that the event start, he clapped his hands together and said "Yes, I like to work!"

At the podium he delivered short introductory remarks, and then clearly couldn't stand sitting in one place any longer. He leaped up and stood behind the table, only occasionally sitting for a few seconds after he had delivered a long answer to a question.

Most of the time he was prowling passionately behind the microphones, gesticulating excitedly, talking fast, sometimes groping for the right word, his spirit and humour filling the room and drawing an enthusiastic response from the delighted audience.

An impassioned Jackie Chan at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand during his talk. PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh

He was in Bangkok and at the FCCT, courtesy the International Peace Foundation's "Bridges" dialogues pogramme. Chan is widely known for his philanthropic work for a range of causes, from disaster relief to handicapped children to endangered wildlife. Among other things, his donations have helped build 24 schools in China.

And when he speaks of his causes, he does so with an unmistakable and infectious passion and commitment.

I remembered the public service announcements (PSAs) he had done some years ago for tiger conservation. His message was "When the buying stops, the killing will too." The message was aimed at the Chinese market which has largely been responsible for the decimation of wild tigers for their body parts, believed to have medicinal properties.

That's all "baloney" said Chan, when I asked him what thoughts he had on the subject.

And he launched into an impassioned diatribe, best related in his own inimitable style:

"After that I not only protect tigers, I protect rhinos, sharks, everything... through the tiger thing I learned so many things. So many nonsense going on, old traditional things, tiger bone helping people do this, bear gall helping people do that. All baloney.
"Really, it's all bad business people speaking nonsense, saying you take this you take that... New technology ten times better than the tiger bone. I always tell the Chinese people, don't trust the old things. It's not like the pig..." (he breaks into Cantonese and looks around for a helpful translation)
"You use the pig leg and you run faster. That's baloney. Because the Chinese still follow this old traditions. We have to speak out these kind of things... this nonsense."

Jackie Chan is an ambassador for United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef). The audience listened in silence to his tale of a six year old girl from a poor family who could barely see, but hadn't the courage to tell her parents, living in fear and enduring beatings for two years at home for not being able to perform at school and at her homework.

All she needed was a pair of corrective glasses, he said, outlining how he got celebrities together and donated funds and organized a drive to get the spectacles for thousands of visually challenged children. Jackie Chan himself donated US$ 2 million.

"I travel around the world, I see so many unfair things," he said, talking repeatedly of how he wants to be a superman and help all the people who need help.

"Peace, in this moment right now, is very important. We have a natural disaster every single day. We try to protect trees, we try to protect the sea, the fish, but people still do the underwater dynamite. Boom! Do you know how many fish die? Boom! One boom, I don't know how many... trillions. I want to be a superman, I want to suck all the weapons out, no weapons at all."

He sat at the end of that, with a heavy sigh: "Just sometimes I see these kinds of things, really really sad."

"When I was young I always asked why, why, why. So at the end I not ask why any more, I just do it," he continued.

"I know that everybody has a good heart, but sometimes you just don't have time to do something. Ok now you have ten dollars, you want to do something. I am willing to become a bridge, I have my foundation, come on, donate to me. I will do it. I am willing to do it."

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BANGKOK

FORMER Singapore Ambassador to the United Nations Kishore Mahbubani – whose writings on Asia have placed him on the world’s geopolitical lecture circuit — recently spoke at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT).

The timing was good; the APEC summit in Singapore is around the corner, and US President Barack Obama will be attending — and also meeting with ASEAN leaders in Singapore.

The APEC forum started its meetings over the weekend, with the summit to be held this week.  

Always engaging and provocative, Mr Mahbubani began writing about the rise of Asia well before it was fashionable.

Five years ago he quit Singapore's foreign service, and is now Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, which draws students from across over 50 countries.

His latest book is titled The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. The title of Mr Mahbubani’s talk was 'Why the West fails to understand the rise of the East'.

What the world is witnessing, is not so much the rise of Asia but the return of Asia, he said. It is an important distinction.

'From the year one to the year 1820 the two largest economies in the world were consistently China and India, so if by 2050 or probably earlier as Goldman Sachs predicts the four largest economies in the world will be China, India, the USA and Japan, that is not a deviation from the norm," he said.

"That is a return to a 2000 year norm that vastly overrides the last 200 year norm."

Mr Mahbubani also criticized the western media, which he said even in its most upbeat assessments of Asia, always managed to slip in a caveat or two. This reflected a wider intellectual resistance to the power shift, he said.

"The return of Asia is by far the biggest story in the world. But I've been amazed at the amount of resistance to accepting this reality.

"And I've come to the conclusion that there's a very deep psychological resistance in many leading western minds to even conceiving of the possibility of a world that is so different to the 19th and 20th centuries."

He qualified that remark though, by observing that the response varied, from the US to Europe and also within Europe.

He was optimistic about the difference the election of President Barack Obama has made to the US's global image – and what it will do for ties with Asia.

"Anything that shakes the American intellectual belief that the world will continue to revolve around America as the centre of the universe is an idea that is very difficult for Americans to accept," he said.

But he stressed in the context of the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit in Singapore: "I think Obama understands the importance of the Pacific."

"I suspect given his background... he has a different sense of where the centre of geography of the world is.

"I think Obama gets the Asia story right, and I am confident that his participation in these meetings plus his visits to several Asian countries will result in improvement in US relations with Asia."

On the US's engagement with Asean he said part of the reason for Washington's closer involvement could be to match China’s influence.

"If China is improving its ties in leaps and bounds with the Asean countries, it is not in America’s interest to be left behind," he said.

Read more about the current Apec meeting in Singapore:
Apec is as good as FTA
Hu to visit Singapore

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WASHINGTON DC

IN THE few hours it took the tenacious US media to dig up the identity of the gunman who went on a shooting spree at the US army base at Fort Hood, Texas on Thursday, I found myself running through different kinds of scenarios in my head.

Could it have been an outside attack, similar to the recent one staged against the Pakistani army camp by militants? Maybe a disgruntled former employee or soldier. Perhaps, a protester upset about US war mongering, or even a training exercise gone awry.

Rightly or wrongly, I stopped wondering when I heard the alleged perpetrator's name read out on television: Nidal Malik Hasan.

I found myself making certain assumptions based on what I have read in the media about the devastating activities of the few radical individuals that shared his religion.

My next thought was worry about a possible backlash on moderate Muslims in the US and around the world.

I also felt a wave of disappointment that another isolated act of violence had once again unraveled efforts by Muslims and non-Muslims to dispel misunderstandings about the teachings of Islam and reduce inter-ethnic distrust and suspicion.

Moving to curtail an explosive situation, President Barrack Obama and investigators called immediately for caution, warning the public not to speculate on Hasan's motive.

The Army said it was looking into whether Hasan, an army psychiatrist, had snapped under the pressure of his job counselling thousands of war-weary troops, or because of mistreatment, or was motivated by deeper convictions.

It was against this backdrop that I was disturbed to see a top cable news network, a day after the shooting, air a television story about a radical Muslim group, made up of American citizens, preaching hate on the streets of New York.

The reporter behind the story had been working on the report for some time but editors obviously saw the connection to the shooting at Fort Hood and chose to run it, linking it to the murderous rampage.

The story opened with a screen capture of the group’s homepage where members described Hasan as "an officer and a gentleman" and proclaimed "we love you".

It went on to show one-on-one interviews with two members of the group, both American citizens.

One said the Quran, Islam's holy book, commanded him to "terrorise" non believers, to strike fear in them so that they would not commit crime.

The other proclaimed that he "loved Osama bin Laden" more than he loves himself. He called President Obama a "scumbag'' and added he would not shed a tear if Mr Obama was killed.

The group had been actively recruiting outside New York city's biggest mosque, where moderate Muslims go to worship, shouting their incendiary messages and passing out pamphlets, according to the TV footage.

In other countries, such as Britain, they would be breaking the law for inciting racial hatred. But in the US, they are shielded by the first amendment to the US constitution which protects the freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition.

While I admire the principles behind the first amendment and what they stand for, I questioned the appropriateness of showing that story, especially so soon after the shooting.

Would it not have further anguished the families of the fallen soldiers to see, albeit a small group of, fellow Americans celebrating the man who just murdered their loved ones?

Also, with public emotions running high, would it not have been better to wait to show that story, instead of risking the possibility that it could incite and inflame viewers?

Already, the Internet here is buzzing with renewed Islamaphobia. Right-wing websites are calling the shooting a "Jihad at Fort Hood?" and a "Terrorist Incident in Texas".

In Singapore, we have strong laws and policies to guard against anything that would rock the inter-racial and ethnic harmony the country has worked so hard to achieve.

I am more convinced than ever that they are there for a good reason and should be upheld and protected whatever the criticisms.

Meanwhile, in America, an old wound has been ripped opened once again, and it remains to be seen how well or quickly it will heal this time.

Read more about the Fort Hood incident:
Counsellor 'needed help'
Motive of shooter probed
Obama to attend memorial

Editor's note: The spelling of amendment has been fixed.

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IN BERLIN

THERE are no security service goons posted at every street corner, the shops are full of consumer goods, foreign tourists mill about and ordinary people go about their business as elsewhere on the European continent.

That is the Berlin of today.

Things were very much different when I was there in October and November 1989, at the height of the protests that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Many people were out on the streets because they were fed up with the regime and wanted a better life. But many – as in all revolutions – were just curious on-lookers, individuals who had no political agenda but still marvelled at the sight of the throngs.

Fear was in the air: the military and security services were out in force and, although they did nothing, they looked menacing.

Rumours spread about worse to come: some said that columns of tanks were sighted on neighbouring streets, and that the East German government was about to implement a “Tiananmen Square” solution, by crushing the rebellion, Chinese-style.

There was also fear about what the Soviets may do. For, although we now know that the Soviet leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev decided to do nothing to save the Soviet empire, the people of Eastern Europe were not aware of this at that time.

Everyone, however, remembered what happened in Hungary in 1956, when an anti-communist rebellion was crushed by Soviet forces, or in Czechoslovakia in 1967, when a similar Soviet invasion took place.

The leaders of all European countries also assumed that the Soviet Union would never give up on East Germany, the most strategic colony in its empire.

So, the belief was that, sooner or later, blood would be spilt. The only question was where this may happen.

In the event, of course, nothing happened: the communist regimes melted away, although in Romania this took a week of heavy fighting.

Either way, the people of Eastern Europe were courageous: they knew that they were writing history, they were ready to take risks and – at least some – were also prepared to suffer the consequences.

Nevertheless, the pictures of crowds storming the barricades, the images which have survived in our mind today, were not so evident to those who were present at that time.

All I remember are the swelling crowds, badly-dressed and suffering from a pungent body odour, crammed into pot-marked roads, marching aimlessly, and often for no particular purpose.

There were women pushing prams, bemoaning the fact that their absent husbands are now "involved in politics".

There were the old men who were busy telling everyone what it was like when Berlin – the German capital – was a united city, and people could travel from East to West unhindered. And there were the occasional pickpockets, who smelt an opportunity for some rich pickings.

All of them are now forgotten: the camera lenses have only recorded the joyous faces of people dancing on the Berlin Wall during the night of Nov 9 1989, and the vast, faceless crowds which surged forward to erase Europe’s divisions.

When the first Trabant car — the spluttering East German vehicle made of fibreglass — drove through an opening in the Wall into West Germany, a roar was heard from the crowd: the revolution had succeeded.

"We are free!" shouted a young, bespectacled man next to me. "OK, but now what do we do?" responded an elderly lady.

Nobody bothered to answer her query; people were too busy rushing to put their first foot on Western territory.

Read the complete story in The Straits Times' Saturday Special section.

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IN KUALA LUMPUR
 
 MORE than one and half years after the general elections in March 2008, the seemingly endless string of by-elections in Malaysia does not look like it will end any time soon.

By-elections are truly becoming a dime a dozen in Malaysia, amid widespread voter fatigue and apathy.

The ruling Barisan Nasional has won only two out of nine by-elections held so far, but with the opposition in a state of disarray, the BN could still end up with the upper hand.

Now up to eight Pakatan Rakyat lawmakers and two state representatives are likely to lose their seats if they are charged over their participation in illegal assemblies in the past.

Parti Keadilan Rakyat MP Tian Chua was found guilty this month of biting a police officer during an illegal assembly two years ago.

He was fined RM3,000 and jailed for six months. It is unclear if he will be disqualified as a parliamentarian pending an appeal which he has filed.

Any elected representatives jailed for more than a year or fined more than RM2,000 has to vacate their seats and cannot contest in elections for five years after serving the sentence.

Seven of Tian Chua's colleagues could also face similar charges, warned Bersih, a coalition of political parties and NGOs which campaigns for free and fair elections.

They include Azmin Ali (PKR), Sivarasa Rasiah (PKR), N Gobalakrishnan (PKR), Tony Pua (Democratic Action Party), Dzulkefly Ahmad (Parti Islam SeMalaysia), Hatta Ramli (PAS) and Lo' Lo' Ghazali (PAS).

If they all get stiff fines or big jail sentences from the courts, although these perhaps are just a remote possibility, it would mean a big disaster for the opposition.

On paper at least, this means PR could be left with only 74 seats in Parliament, enabling the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) to regain its traditional two-thirds majority. PR currently has 82 seats in the 222-seat Parliament.

Getting back the two-thirds majority - or at least 148 seats - would be a big morale-booster for BN, which is still struggling to win back voter support lost to the opposition in last year's general election.

BN has, in the half century of Malaysia's independence, always won two-thirds majority in Parliament, until the 2008 general elections, which threw up shocking results.

Additionally, an ongoing crackdown by Malaysian graft-busters, which began this week, may also lead to more charges against politicians, and eventually lead to even more by-elections if those involved are found guilty and forced to give up their seats.

On Tuesday, an Umno MP and five others already witnessed corruption charges filed against them by the Malaysia Anti Corruption Commission.

While by-elections have already fatigued Malaysians, the thought of more to come would make them numb.

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'Happy Deepavali.'

At 06:30 a.m. as I waited in the lobby of the Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo recently, that was the call from the man striding by.

At first it didn't quite register. Then I awoke from my reverie:

Happy Deepavali, to you, Minister!

Perhaps it was fitting that the first person to wish me that day was George Yeo, Singapore's foreign minister. For Mr Yeo is an uncommon personality. Among all the global personalities I have encountered in a three decades-long career, I have met no one with such an interest in other cultures. I have watched him on an early winter morning, finishing up his breakfast, changing into chinos and a leather jacket to visit the historic Mughal built Sunday Mosque in Delhi's old quarter, only his bodyguards in tow. I have watched him in the dusty outback of India's Bihar state, standing amidst the ruins of the ancient university of Nalanda, fittingly in the company of some of the world's best known intellectual luminaries. He was there to participate in a Singapore-backed dream to revive that ancient Buddhist seat of learning for a new generation of Asians. Last month in Hua Hin, Thailand, the East Asia Summit endorsed that effort.

I am not a big fan of blogsites, but one I unfailingly check every few weeks is Mr Yeo's blog, if nothing else to catch up on some speech of his I may have missed.

On this Deepavali day, we would travel in a quiet land where there was little celebration despite the area being home to large numbers of Hindus. We would move by helicopter to Mannar in the northwest of Sri Lanka, then to Jaffna in the north and on to Trincomallee in the northeast. We would be briefed by military commanders and civilian administrators. We would visit irrigation projects and the Prima factory in Trincomallee, that iconic Singapore investment in Sri Lanka whose products have been consumed by every citizen of that nation. We would visit the historic Jaffna library and the famous Nallur Kandasamy temple in that town.

"Did you see the look on his face when he broke that coconut as an offering at the temple?" a Tamil Singaporean who was part of Mr Yeo's delegation told me later. "The reverence was real."

At the end of the day, having dined with a local industrialist and before embarking for Singapore, Mr Yeo sat down for a media wrapup. There, he unerringly pronounced correctly the names of every town we had visited and every person he met. I was taken aback.

I must have been to Sri Lanka more than a dozen times, sometimes for more than two weeks at a time, but I will not lay claim to have the same facility. Yet, this was only Mr Yeo's second visit to the island and the first was many years ago, when he holidayed there with his wife.

Does all that make him less Chinese, or less interested in the culture of his own forefathers?

Not at all.

In Trincommalee I watched a retired Sri Lankan admiral, now governor of the Eastern Province, brief Mr Yeo. The admiral mentioned an area called China Bay. Immediately, Mr Yeo's ears pricked up. He asked how the area got that name, then went on to answer his own question by discussing various possibilities, including a port call by the Chinese seafarer Zheng He.

Foreign ministers come in all sizes of intellect. Around the world there must be a few who can match Mr Yeo's intellect. But what probably sets him apart is his genuine interest in alien cultures and this surely must be of use in what probably is the world's most globalised island state.

Mr Yeo gives the impression of a man overawed by the splendour of the universe even as he marks his own place in it.

That thought struck me after seeing the transcript of a door-stop interview he gave Colombo journalists after bilateral talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart, Rohitha Bogollogama.

Dwelling on the talented Sri Lankan diaspora and how it could be harnessed for the country's post-war development, he had this to say: 'All my four children were delivered by Sri Lankan doctors.'

As a lifelong journalist my only regret about Mr Yeo is that he didn't choose to join my profession. Certainly, he had the opportunity.

My former editor in chief, Mr Cheong Yip Seng, once told me he had talent-spotted a young George Yeo just as he had entered government service as a bureaucrat. They were in Indonesia together, accompanying some heavyweight on an official trip.

Sadly, Mr Yeo declined Mr Cheong's offer of employment, choosing to stay on in government.

Too bad. The Straits Times newsroom could have used his skills to teach how to convey the most complex and beautiful thoughts in the simplest language.

And on that subject here is my favourite George Yeo line.

Turning up at an inter-religious meeting a couple of years ago in Singapore, Mr Yeo had this to say about the Parsis. This is the tiny community of Zoroastrians who migrated to India from Persia a thousand years ago and have been successful in business while being great philanthropists.

"The Parsis," said Mr Yeo at that meeting, "have always sweetened the milk that is their host."

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IN INDIA

REMEMBER Mrs. Lotika Sarkar, the elderly widow who was divested of her two-storey house in an upmarket neighbourhood in New Delhi by a scheming police officer and his family? (Reduced to a spectator, Jan 22, 2009).

The old lady, 87, is finally getting her house back thanks largely to a concerted media campaign.

Mrs. Sarkar is not some illiterate rural woman who could be conned by a trickster. She is a former head of Delhi University's Law Faculty and a social worker. Her husband Chanchal Sarkar was a leading journalist and a former chairman of the Press Institute of India.

That such a person could be deprived of her "old-age insurance" by foul means is a reflection of the problems elderly people  face in India. Social activists say that that with India's population set to touch 137 million by 2021, such problems will multiply.

To recap Mrs. Sarkar's story, a few years after her husband's death, Mr. Nirmal Dhaundial, a police officer who was a family friend of the Sarkars, moved into her house along with his wife Priti and occupied the ground floor "to look after her." Their employed son Nitish had already been living with Mrs. Sarkar.

Though few of Mrs. Sarkar's relatives remembered seeing them when her husband was alive, Mr. Dhaundial claimed "I am like a son to Latika Sarkar. She has no one to look after her. My son has been living here for six years, and after my elder brother's death, my wife also shifted here to take care of aunty."

The Dhaundials were not the only ones who had their eyes on Mrs. Sarkar's property.

Her maid, Rangita Bharati, who had been thrown out of the house, bag and baggage earlier by the Dhaundials, also forcibly re-entered the house and occupied a room upstairs, saying it had been rented out to her by the old lady.

Mr. Dhoundial, who had used his police powers to throw her out of the house, could not do anything this time because a tenant cannot be evicted without a court order.

A statutory tribunal, set up under the Maintenance and Welfare of the Parents and Senior Citizens Act and which heard Mrs. Sarkar's story, was hard on the police officer in its order last week.

"She has been divested, at the age of 87, of her right to life with dignity through fraud by the Dhoundials who took advantage of her age and poor health," it observed.

It also declared as "void" a gift deed that Mr. Dhoundial, had produced as evidence that Mrs. Sarkar had "gifted" the house to his wife, a claim the old lady resolutely denied in a signed affidavit.

Mrs. Sarkar, who had shifted to a relative's house, said she could never have knowingly given the property away because it was her "old-age insurance."

Mr. Dhoundial's response was that he would return the house to her provided she spent 10 days with his family. Apparently, he thought that would give them sufficient time to work on the the frail, old woman to change her mind.

The tribunal, in its order, said the three Dhoundials (father, mother and son) "may not think of themselves as part of the criminal elements of society but their systematic actions over a period of time have put to shame even skilled professional thieves who make their living by burglary, loot, larceny and robbery etc.

"In this case, the Dhoundials used not gas cutters or house breakers to take over the house of Mrs. Sarkar but used 'nice paper work' as a tool in the property crime."

The news brought cheers to her friends and well-wishers, who have been following the case. It will be their fervent hope that the old lady would be allowed to spend the rest of her life peacefully.

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IN JAKARTA

CONSIDER this. You just bought a brand new red Honda Civic, but on your first ride through the city, you brush it ever so lightly against a wall while negotiating a tricky turn in a bylane. The result — a small dent to the car's posterior which is difficult to spot but manages to spoil the beauty of this gorgeous machine anyway.
 
Having spent a small fortune to buy the car, you are in no mood to spend a bomb getting the dent fixed. What then would you do?

If you are in Jakarta, you immediately drive to the outskirts of the city and park your car in a small, badly lit, hole-in-the-wall workshop and wait for the magic to begin!

As the workshop's doors close behind you, there is not a soul in sight. All you can hear from the adjacent waiting room is a faint knocking sound for the next hour or so, betraying the presence of people hard at work.

When the sounds stop and the door to the workshop opens again, you find your car all fixed, as though by magic, with no trace of the dent and not a scratch on its expensive paint job.

Welcome to the world of "ketok magic", a dingy, inconvenient garage of sorts, where a quick-fix car job takes half the time and one-third the cost — much to the joy of car owners in Indonesia, most of whom do not have insurance.

One of the mysterious "ketok magic" workshops in Indonesia.
PHOTO: Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja

"Ketok" means knocking in Bahasa Indonesia. It is believed that the first person to hone these skills was a certain Mbah Turut in East Java, who first started working his magic on bicycles in 1960s.

He passed on the secret skill to his heirs, but it was eventually leaked to the benefit of neighbours and close acquaintances.

Over time, these secret-keepers expanded their horizons and set up shop in other parts of the country. Now, the third generation of these skilled workers have graduated to fixing larger vehicles like cars.

These workshops have been an alternative to the conventional car body repair shops for decades, thanks to their very competitive pricing.

Their "ketok magic" title comes from the fact that they deliver a quick and effective service in a skilled and clandestine fashion. All you see in these workshops is a dingy room wide enough to park the vehicle.

The customer never gets to see these workers — as skilled as the mythical "shoemaker's elves" — who fix car problems, nor do they ever get to see the tools that are used to mend the vehicles.

But, it is believed that the tools are a wide range of hand-made objects, including hammers of different shapes and sizes, metal rods and sticks and other wooden apparatus, which cannot be easily found in the nearby Carrefour supermarket.

What these tools essentially do is knock the vehicle into shape, ever so gently and with finesse.

Different sets of manually-assembled tools are used to fix different types of problems. They are usually accompanied by patches used to protect the car's paint job while the ketok works its magic.

It is no exaggeration then that some compare ketok repairmen to wood carving artisans.

They remain popular with car owners in Java, especially among youngsters who need quick repair jobs to hide their reckless driving from their parents, all without having to drill a big hole in their pockets.

But, if other customers choose to overlook the inconvenience of location and the discomfort of the waiting room, "ketok magic" remains their most favourable option at an affordable price. Sometimes the patchwork does go wrong, but that is rare.

It is no wonder then that the workshops remain a popular option to its expensive alternative — automobile repair shops.

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IN INDIA

THIS is something we Indians don't like to be told, don't want to hear, that India is a 'soft' state when it comes to dealing with terrorism.

But a senior state official in West Bengal did exactly that — threw it on our face, so to say, to our utter embarrassment last week.

Of course, the official, Home Secretary Ardhendu Sen, said it to justify the state government's action and probably to save his own skin.

It was Sen's unpleasant task to carry out the communist government's decision to release over 20 Maoists in exchange for a police officer abducted by the rebels.

"Release or ..." was the threat by the Maoists, who hold sway in a large swathe of the country – over 200 administrative districts out of over 600.

The threat had to be taken seriously because only days before they had beheaded an abducted police officer in the neighbouring Jharkhand state after the central government refused to give into their demand for the release of three top rebel leaders in police custody.

The West Bengal government lumped its own decision not to talk to the Maoists "unless they eschewed violence" and released the Maoist suspects, many of them tribal women from one of the most impoverished regions of the state, in exchange for Atindranath Dutta, officer in-charge of a police station, who had been abducted by the rebels in an attack on his police station on Oct 20.

Armed rebels had raided the police station, shot dead two other police officers and looted the armoury and a nearby bank before taking Dutta away.

While the government quietly released the Maoists in custody by not opposing their bail applications when it came up before the court, the rebels made it a point to gain maximum publicity to show how they successfully arm-twisted the government to concede their demand.

The Maoists took a large group of media personnel, TV cameras et all, to a hideout in their jungle stronghold ringed by heavily armed rebels to witness the release of the police officer.

After keeping the journalists waiting for about three hours, a group of gun-totting Maoists brought the police officer with a large prisoner-of-war tag hung round his neck before them.

After warning the state and central government of dire consequences if they continued their clamp down against the rebels, a Maoist leader removed the tag from the officer's neck with a flourish and declared him free.

"The decision of not talking to the Maoists unless they eschewed violence is a long-term process but when you are placed in such a situation you have to make a compromise," Home Secretary Sen told reporters later.

Did it not amount to meekly giving into the rebels' demand and demonstrate the weakness of the government, he was asked.

"We had to make a choice between getting the officer alive and freeing some Maoists."

Then, he went on to say that India had behaved liked this always in such situations.

He referred to the release of three Pakistan-based terrorists in a exchange for 176 passengers of an Indian airliner after it was hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan in December 1999 and that of five Kashmiri militants in exchange for the release of the daughter of then federal home minister in 1989, an incident that observers say marked the escalation of separatist violence in the Himalayan state.

"India is a soft state. We have seen these instances earlier in the 60 years since independence," Mr. Sen said.

And, he drove home the point, saying India is not Israel.

"There is a difference between the Indian government and the Government of Israel. We cannot do what they can do."

Is that good or bad, to be not able to do what the Israelis would do in similar circumstances?

Bomb the hell out of the rebels, no matter whether innocent civilians get annihilated and their properties destroyed or not?

These are difficult questions to answer.

Like the state Chief Minister, Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, under fire for the swap not only from the media and the central government but even from his own party colleagues, said: "This was an exceptional decision taken on humanitarian grounds."

He also said that the government would not repeat the mistake.

Until next time, he should have added, perhaps, going by his home secretary's pronouncements.

While the debate about the right or wrong of the swap will continue, the picture of the released police officer's reunion with his smiling wife, relief writ large on her face, their infant child in her hands made one realise the importance of human lives and that the Maoists cannot be the role model.

Maybe for all the bluster, we Indians think with our hearts even at the risk of being dubbed "darpok", Hindi for "cowards."

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