Bye Bye, Bayo (revisited)

Bayo in 2005 (photo by Antares)

I awoke on the morning of June 4th to terribly sad news. Bayo, the cutest kid in Pertak Village, was dead. He couldn't have been much older than six. On May 27th I had driven nine kids from the village to witness a surrealistic children's play by the Jumping JellyBeans called Terra Arata. Bayo was supposed to have been part of the group but he couldn't come because he wasn't feeling well. I was told he was suffering from a bad case of boils on his backside. As the other kids squeezed on board my trusty Toyota van, I waved at Bayo and he forlornly waved back. The next time I saw Bayo, about a week later, he was lying on his living room floor, wrapped mummy-like in a sarong, not entirely cold yet, but no longer breathing.

Bayo's father Empi burst into convulsive tears when it came time to wash the tiny body prior to burial. I can imagine the complex feelings that must have coursed through him, seeing his kid's body already turning blue, and the sinister seaweed-shaped bruise creeping over his left shoulder and moving toward his heart. A Temuan woman near me whispered: "Tengok! Dia kena barang hutan!" ("Look! Something from the jungle got him!") Later, after the funeral, Empi told me Bayo had been playing in the belukar (secondary forest) behind his Granny's house and he must have been attacked by the barang - a vague enough term for something inexplicable to modern minds, more in the nature of a curse.

Bayo's Granny, Awa, is a practising dukun or medicine woman. She may have been careless in the disposal of some magical effluent following a ritual healing. A few weeks earlier, one of my friends had taken Bayo to the hospital to treat his multiple sores - and the doctor had discovered a high level of staph in his blood. Bayo was admitted to the ward, but was hastily brought home later the same day when Empi created a scene, admonishing my friend for sticking his nose into other people's affairs. It was a no-win situation, for sure... but nobody had expected that the robust little boy would die from a few sores on his butt.


Empi and his wife Pita have had 13 children - and now, with Bayo gone, they only have 9 left. Little wonder Bayo and some of his siblings made a habit of hanging around my house, watching Disney videos and enjoying a regular bounty of chocolates, cookies, sweets, and sometimes even a full meal. A few years ago Empi was a very rich man, when he received close to RM100,000 compensation for ancestral orchards destroyed by the Selangor Dam project. Alas, he apparently squandered it all within the space of a year by throwing parties everywhere he went - and by changing motorbikes every couple of months. Empi's residual paternal pride was obviously affronted when my friend took it upon himself to admit Bayo to the Kuala Kubu Baru hospital.

If Bayo had been allowed to stay in the hospital for a week and administered some antibiotics, would he be among us still? Most probably, yes. But what's the use of further exacerbating his father's guilt? Bayo won't be coming around in the afternoon to lounge on our divan and watch Beauty and the Beast with my boy Ahau anymore. I'll miss high-fiving the little tyke as I drive by - and his impish grin and sassy salute whenever he receives a special treat.

Lata Suir was one of Bayo's favorite spots (photo by Colin Nicholas)

I have a plethora of many other thoughts and feelings to add to this blogpost - but not tonight, not tonight...

[First posted 6 June 2007, reposted 15 June 2020]

Meltdown at Madame Tussaud’s (reprise)

For generations we have pissed on people with impunity.

Our power was brokered with brute force – it was literally “Off with his head!” whenever anyone dared to openly disagree with or criticize the order of things.

Our authority - more correctly spelt “awe-thority” - issued from our ability to shock and awe the illiterate masses with displays of superior physical and psychic firepower. As Barry Long postulates in his seminal work, The Origins of Man and the Universe (The Myth That Came To Life): the earliest gods consisted of an elite cabal of magicians and sorcerers who activated their third eyes ahead of the pack, learned the use of psychic force by utilizing their brains as holographic projectors, and thus were able to control the collective unconscious of their subjects through mediumistic shamanism and the inculcation of tribal totems and taboos.

We established the first monarchic dynasties and schooled our heirs in the divine right of kings. Our people were implanted with genetically hardwired control mechanisms that took the form of ignorant superstition masquerading as religious faith.

To question the moral behavior of the gods was labeled blasphemy; any word spoken against a king or queen was labeled sedition. Complaints against high-ranking priests, courtiers and ministers were considered defamation.

We outlawed mystical experience and replaced it with solemn ceremony and pompous ritual. Inspired insights and revelations were systematically reduced to dogma and doctrine; turned into an academic priesthood to jealously police the orthodoxy of the status quo.


Over the millennia, we created what young people today recognize as The Matrix – an ingenious machine to harvest the vitality of all living things, generation after generation, to support in grand style the privileges and insatiable appetites of a well-connected white-collar criminal upper class.

But it’s all breaking down now from the sheer weight of its own accumulation of misdeeds and miscreations. The long-enslaved masses have begun to awaken from their cultural trance. They realize that the punitive deity installed in their operating systems to rule them through fear is no more than a scarecrow, a being of straw, literally a stuffed shirt.

All the gods have feet of clay and will never dismount from their pedestals. The institutions created to uphold the edifice of business-as-usual are mostly infested with maggots in human guise – time-serving functionaries of the state, who can see no further than the next paycheck and who dream only of the retirement benefits they have been promised in exchange for loyal, unthinking service.

Long disconnected from their own internal moral compasses, the minions who continue to uphold the hierarchy of conformity and mediocrity may – on rare occasions – experience momentary confusion and doubt.

Does the monotheistic, judgmental, punitive, vengeful god to whom some of us pray actually exist? Or is He just a virulent meme implanted in our tribal memories?

And does He (of course it must be a Heavenly Father, for no order-obeying, rank-saluting stormtrooper would deign to take orders from a mere woman) take offense whenever we think an unwholesome thought, or utter an unsavory word? And will our offspring, if left uncircumcised or unbaptized, be forever barred from paradise?

And if we spend the better part of our time in church or at the mosque gossiping about other people’s sex lives – instead of paying heed to the wisdom of our own inner voices – would that ruin our prospects for a happy afterlife?

We have become compulsive liars and hypocrites to avoid punishment. At some level we know the knack of twisting truth is a survival mechanism that has long outlived its purpose. But do we still remember what it means to be honest and candid - regardless of the consequences, real or imagined?

Can we deny the feeling, buried deep within our subconscious memories and long suppressed, that our entire life has been but a meaningless charade, a colorful and noisy parade that camouflages the endless procession of sorrow and subterfuge our existence has been reduced to?



Behind the glossy façade of our public personas are we proud of and at peace with our true selves? How long can we fool ourselves with our own hype – even if it’s the most expensive grade of hype, paid for by hapless citizens?

Like everybody else with a broadband connection (that actually works) I have been monitoring - with fascination, disgust, horror and far-too-frequent outbursts of outrage - the social and political metamorphosis we are undergoing as a young nation with an ethnically heterogeneous population of 27 million.

The aftershocks of the electoral earthquake and psychological tsunami that occurred on 8 March 2008 continue to be felt on all levels.

Fear grips the cold hearts and poisoned psyches of the power elite - while hope flaps its fragile wings as it attempts its first tentative flight within the souls of all who truly love this land.

We have seen all the evidence we need that the pouting, pink-lipped overaged brat who (in April 2009) seized the post of prime minister is, in fact, more accurately described as a crime minister. The catalog of his misdeeds is legend, as only to be expected of somebody born into a political dynasty with blood on its hands and groomed from young for power.

His second wife, who could well be niece to the murderous witch Mona Fandey, has attracted massive scorn and ridicule - but carefully shields herself from the anger and resentment of the masses by engaging a retinue of professional fawners and sycophants to administer to her overweening vanity.

Constantly plotting intrigue behind their opulent backs is a gigantic can of writhing worms that represents a political party (now parties) created expressly by a megalomaniacal former leader to enrich his family and supporters through colossal infrastructure expenditure and secret contracts. A political party with no tangible philosophy, no remaining ideals, no sense of evolutionary inevitability.

All it can boast is a reptilian kill-or-be-killed survival program that manifests through diverse forms of thuggery, uniformed or plainclothes, disguised as various law enforcement agencies and fake NGOs.

And yet there are courageous individuals in our midst who battle valiantly on for the restoration of justice, freedom and accountability in government. They do so at the costly sacrifice of their own personal careers and at great risk to their own lives. Some are forced to endure neverending litigation; others risk incarceration, exile, and even assassination (though we are fortunately a nation that has never as yet resorted to “termination with extreme prejudice”... or have we?).

Those of us who admire and applaud these magnificent individuals for fighting the good fight on our behalf must bear in mind that we cannot achieve salvation and redemption by proxy (forget what religious orthodoxy says about Jesus dying for your sins, that’s utter crap!) Each of us has to gain entry to the promised land through our own hard-won integrity and impeccability as spiritual warriors and agents of illumination. If you can’t learn to ride a horse vicariously, what makes you think you can qualify for heaven on earth through other people’s virtue?

In effect, we really have no option but to consciously embody all the ideals and values we desire to see prevail in the world around us.

If you object to secrecy in government, then divest your own life of dark and dire secrets and do whatever you do openly, without fear and without apology. If your behavior impinges negatively on others, you will immediately be alerted to their distress. In which case, the mature response is to adjust your behavior so that it no longer poses problems for others. If you feel a stinky fart coming, just walk a few steps downwind of the crowd.

If you cherish freedom of expression and the free flow of information, then allow others to express their own thoughts and feelings without getting offended and retaliating violently. Even if they insult your pet beliefs and laugh at your fashion sense, learn to shrug, grin and walk away without making a major issue of it.

If you wish to be recognized and appreciated for your contributions, begin to freely give those around you generous amounts of positive feedback (when they deserve it, of course, for we do not condone hypocrisy in the New Dawn).

And if you truly value your glorious evolutionary destiny as conscious, volitional, sensing-thinking-and-feeling beings, then take time out from your daily routine to reassess what you’re doing with your life and what are your authentic goals.

When enough of us acquire the necessary self-discipline to regulate our own public behavior, there will no longer be any requirement for an external police force. Perhaps we will only need to maintain a token force – simply because some folks look so sexy in uniform.

[First posted 19 August 2010, reposted 8 September 2020 & 19 July 2021]