The Crash and Burn of Farish Noor
August 22nd, 2008 gier Posted in Mentera Moden | 2 Comments »
I’ve decided to put my thoughts here, instead of on the OtherMalaysia site, because it’s more a personal thing, rather than anything else. I put TOM on hiatus because Farish has decided to “shut down the Othermalaysia research group project.” It was a unilateral, dictatorial decision made on his own, by himself, whilst alone, without first checking with the research group. Of course, the research group was a group of two, i.e. him and me, but that’s by the by. No hard feelings, really. But if he ever decides to stand for any sort of election (like class monitor or captain of the softball team), there’s no way I’d vote for him, that’s for sure. Hah!
But seriously, at the end of the day, Farish was, and is the heart and soul of The Other Malaysia and I am, at best, a blood vessel. If we were a rock band, he’d be the vocalist and lead guitarist and I’d be the dude playing percussions or that little triangle thing that goes “ting-ting-ting” when you smack a little rod on it.
And Farish has crashed and burned.
What often sustains a left-leaning civil activist (is there any other kind?) is a passion for justice, fairness and equality. What drives the activist is anger and hope. And if you’re a political scientist and historian, you get to lean from much further back, and see much further forward than most others. Add to that the ability to write in such engaging style and you get Farish A. Noor.
But sometimes, anger gets spent and hopes dim. It happens, even to the best amongst us.
Farish has never been one for partisanship, never been one to take sides for the sake of being on a side. What this has meant is that he would get brickbats from every side, whenever an attempt is made to expose hipocrisy, inconsistencies and, far too often for our liking, sheer idiocy of politicians and leaders of this fair country.
For far too often, rational discourse and engagement have been suppressed for the sake of preserving the status quo, or to forward even more draconian and ridiculous measures to “protect” the fragile state of this artificially constructed nation. And yet, artificial or not, it remains our nation and one that is loved dearly by Farish.
So, there you go. He seems to have run out of gas for the moment.
When The Other Malaysia site was started, is was a labour of love for the both of us. We had not much of a budget. Not even a shoestring one. It was more like a lint budget, really. I asked Farish what he wanted the site to look like, and he drew some lines on a piece of paper. He sent me a bunch of pictures, and said that he wanted the Chelapa Minang sketch to be the logo. Except that it should be split in half, and arranged at either end. Oh, and he wanted it to be white on black. I just whacked.
He sent a bunch of old articles, wrote a couple of new ones, rehashed a few others and we were off. We grew slowly and eventually averaged about 1,000 readers a day which was not bad considering we weren’t exactly the sort to pander to any prevailing sentiments and basically did no promotion whatsoever. The spike we received during the election period was intriguing, but I thought it was just a case of people hitting whichever website they could to see if there was any information. I recall at the time Farish was busy getting himself molested in front of a mosque, deep in the north-east heartland.
But anyway, for what it’s worth, for an undetermined period of time, the Other Malaysia website will be on a hiatus. All the stuff that’s on there can still be accessed and maybe one of these days I’ll actually have everyting categorised properly. It’s not the only resource for Farish’s writings anyway, since he’s always taken the attitude that it’s more important to spread the articles to as many sources as possible, as opposed to getting eyeballs to the site. An arrangement which suited me just fine.
Will Farish write again? I hope so, and maybe I can piss him off enough to get him to do so. But don’t hold your breath.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:12
I’ve been following Dr Farish for some time now and like many have enjoyed all his works. No doubt he is a genius ….. Way ahead of his time. I like to share my thoughts for a moment…I hope you don’t mind. I have stop commenting in Mantera for awhile as I feel I’ve been talking too much and nonsense sometimes. So time for silence and concentrate on my own work at hand… but when I saw the message in Other Malaysian, I just smile and say… “Aha! Eventually, I’ve been wondering when he will come to this…” I see all this not in a negative way but positive. If you see the good that will come up from this, then the good it will be. I’ve communicated with Dr Farish once via email to tell him of how much I’ve enjoyed reading his books and to thank him. I think I got his response but unfortunately it goes to the junk mail and got deleted by mistake. So I never know what his responses are… but atlas… I can only be a silence follower. A small fly like me… why bothers!
Have you seen a painter or an artist at work, when they are so passionate in what they do, they give all that they have till there is none. Once they are done, they just put aside their work and not wanting to look at it again, before they could continue with another. This is what I consider as detachment. One must remain detach to one’s self only then you can be true and free.
… and they give their all till there is none, like a vessel emptying itself, because before you would fill the vessels with new fresh milk, the old ones must be discarded so that the new milk will remain fresh and pure. And like candle, they burn themselves so that others will enjoy the light that bring forth. This is what I consider an Art… and like all art the main purpose is to bring forth joy and happiness.
As I see it too, artist like himself is like trees. For a tree it must create new leaves, new directions in order to grow, where others too will come and seek shelter under the trees from the rain and the sun. As such the trees must remain strong, viable and free. But again the direction of the trees and the leaves depend on the branches…. how far can the branches stretch itself. The branches are like us too, how far we can stretch ourselves…and then in the evening against the solitude of the night sky you could see the outline of the branches, you began to appreciate the beauty… how beautiful the sight it is, and it gives you an idea of a once beautiful tree that have provided shelter for the many.
…be true and free; like birds you must allow the bird to fly because it’s their nature to be. Never try to control Nature…… because Nature has its own agenda. We are only to ponder and learn. It’s so wonderful when nature itself opens up and embraces us with teachings so complete and powerful. Why need to look elsewhere when its there before you. All you need to do is to be aware of them”
Thank you…… time for me to hibernate.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:44
Madam Nora,
Thank you for those kind words. I’ll try and make sure the Farish reads them.
yusseri