dusunAugust/September 2011

Ridiculously Free

Malaysian e-Journal of the Arts

yusof gajahchan kok hooi

deyanna binti deramanAli Mabuha/Rahamad

1000 tentacles

uthaya sankar sb

antares

surrealism issue

dusun

andre breton 1896 - 1966

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cont

ents

August/September 2011

page 6 editorial

page 8 andre breton founder Surrealistpage 9 ali mabuha surreal artistpage 17 Malaysian Surrealism articlepage 23 deyanna binti deraman fantasy painterpage 30 antares poetrypage 36 yusof gajah naive elephantspage 44 chan kok hooi provacating postcardspage 53 uthaya sankar sb the painted catpage 57 1000 tentacles illustrationspage 66 next issue

cover 1000 tentacles

editor yusuf martin

email yusufmartin51@googlemail.com

Dusun TM

editorialWelcome back

This issue of Dusun fairly explodes with Malaysian Surrealism.

From fine arts to comic book graphics, Surrealism is begin-ning to make its mark on Malaysian art, and the line-up of artists and writers in this issue are in the vanguard of this particular revolution.

Too long has Malaysian Surrealism hidden its light under the proverbial bushel, so here it is - all bright and shining, just for you.

Ali Rahamad aka Ali Mabuha, originally from Malaysia and now living in the US of A, kicks off this issue and reveals his surreal fantasies in a series of fascinating works influenced by his travels and his concerns for ecology.

Next up is Deyanna binti Deraman weaving dream-like fanta-sies which recall fairytales and a certain romantically inclined wistfulness.

Popular Malaysian writer/poet/musician Antares lends some of his thought provoking poems, inspired, no doubt by his ‘Magic River’, and Yusof Gajah, Malaysia’s premier ‘naive’ art-ist, presents those elephants that he has become renowned for.

Chan Kok Hooi side-steps reality by merging cultures in his darkly comic paintings, some of which may be described as post-cards from beyond the edge – in all true Surrealist spirit, whereas writer Uthaya Sankar SB spellbinds us with his short story ‘The Painted Cat’ and 1000 Tentacles display their darkly surreal comic book imagery.

Now read on...........................................

Ed.

contactemail: pspa2011fest@gmail.com

http://pspablog.blogspot.com

al

andre bretonAndré Breton, 1896-1966 was a French poet and leader of thesurrealist movement. He studied medicine and worked in mental ill-health wards during World War I. Later Breton was a front runner in both Dada and Surrealism.

Breton was fascinated with the works of Sigmund Freud. He became influenced by Freud and his ideas of mind, using these concepts in his experiments with automatic writing. Breton wrote for Literature - a surrealist periodical, which he helped found and edit.

Breton also wrote three surrealist manifestos - 1924, 1930, 1942 in which he outlined his socialist leanings towards art and literature. Breton’s major work was the novel Nadja (1928), besides which he wrote articles and poetry influenced by Paul Valery and Arthur Rimbaud.

andre breton

al

ALI MABUHA (ALI RAHAMAD))

Ali Mabuha/Ali Rahamad

Born in Malaysia, 1952

He is a self taught artist. His artistic work is influenced by personal journeys throughout the world: Malaysia, Singapore, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, England, Yugo-slavia, France, Italy, Austria, Egypt, United States, Hong Kong, Luxem-burg, Thailand, Philippines, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia, and

his artistic experimentation.

ALI MABUHA (ALI RAHAMAD))

Suling Bambu (Bambo Flute),2010

Ocean Pollution, 2010

Aztec Journey 3, 2007

Self Portrait, 2011

Rainbow Before The Fall of Night, 2007

Falling Bone, 2010

MALAYSIANSURREALISM

Frenchman Andre Breton’s darling – Surrealism, emerged bright, shining, phoenix-like out of the dying embers of avant garde Dada (approximately 1910 – 1922).

Andre Breton, poet, writer, collage artist and doctor studied neurology and psychology. Formerly in the Dada movement, later he merged his interests into left-wing political Surrealism.

The newly nascent 20th century brought changes. European Dada grew. Meanwhile, across the waters - in America; fantastical newspaper comic strips began to appear. Windsor Mc Cay’s Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend (1904) Little Nemo (1905) and George Herriman’s adventures of Krazy Kat (1913) looked at the world askance, picturing dreams and phantoms, perhaps influenced by Freud and his dream investigations.

Dada aficionados Aragon and Soupault discovered Herriman’s works through American - Matthew Josephson (1921) and considered Herriman’s works - ‘pure Dada humour’.

In 1945/46 Surrealist Salvador Dali, already intrigued with comic art, realised that collaborations between popular culture (cartoons) and ‘Fine’ artists would be inevitable. He teamed up with Mickey Mouse creator - Walt Disney to produce the short animation Destino (running length 7 minutes). The film, based upon images from Dali’s own paintings, remained unfinished until 2004.

Despite tangled roots in communism and Freudian psychology, over time Surrealism grew to be both popularist and materialist/consumerist. Over a forty-four year span - from the first coining of the word Surrealist by Guillaume Apollinaire (1922) to Andre Breton’s death (1966) Surrealism grew, metamorphosed into an entirely different being from when it had first emerged.

Surrealism has become one of the least defined and one of the most easily recognised trends in modernist art. That enigma which is Surrealism is least defined because it is not just one style, or genre of creative work but encompasses a wide variety of arts from the primitive, to the fantastic and the bizarre.

In its heyday, Surrealism championed art from the Haitian ‘primitive’ artists – who often painted with household materials including chicken’s feathers and household paint (naïf art). Surrealism encompassed art produced by people suffering mental health problems (outsider art) and the fantastic arts of Dorothea Tanning and Leonora

MALAYSIANSURREALISM

MALAYSIANSURREALISM

Little Nemo in Slumberland Windsor Mc Cay

Carrington (recently deceased). Surrealism dismissed boundaries and re-defined conceptualisations of art, as did Dada before it.

Over time, artists on the fringes of Surrealism - Rene Magritte, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali (eventually expelled from the movement by Breton), have become the popular face of Surrealism - painting bowler hated men, coloured crawling amoebas, melting time pieces.

Images of Surrealism have become popular and popularist - depicted on canvases, posters, postal cards, T-shirts, mugs, jigsaws for an adoring public to purchase.

Surrealism and Dada stretch far in their influence. Together they are responsible for Pop Art, conceptual art as well as the art of installation. Surrealism had a brief renaissance after Breton’s death in the 1960s and, later, Dada – Surrealism’s ancestor, influenced Fluxus (Neo-Dada) and Punk culture.

Visual Surrealism had grown in popularity by the 1960s. Commercial and comic book artists such as Jim Steranko adapted Surrealist imagery into popular comic books. Steranko’s most striking comic book covers were for Nick Fury Agent of Shield (issues 1 to 7, 1968), which borrow heavily from Salvador Dali’s imagery, fused with colouration from the then current psychedelic era.

Surrealism had spread when Breton, along with many other Surrealists, fled Nazi atrocities and settled in America (New York). Surrealism spread to Mexico, then around the world. Somewhat enamoured with the idea of the ‘Orient’, Andre Breton, in his Introduction to the Discourse on the Paucity of Reality commands:-

“Orient! Victorious Orient! You who have only a symbolical value, dispose of me, Orient of wrath and pearls! In the flow of a phrase as well as the mysterious wind of jazz, reveal to me your plans for the coming revolutions. You are the resplendent image of my dispossession, Orient, beautiful bird of prey and of innocence, I implore you from the depths of the kingdom of shadows! Inspire me, so that I may be he in whom there are no more shadows” (1924)

In fact, that inspiration became reversed.

Surrealism has inspired a number of artists in the ‘Orient’, both in the

so-called ‘Fine’ arts and in the popular graphic arts. Surrealism, in its current form in Malaysia, and among those artists who hail from Malaysia, is not the political, revolutionary Surrealism of the 1920s and 30s, but rather a fantastical offshoot of that artistic trend of portraying other realities, myth, dream-work and the phantasmagorical to reflect upon our consensus reality.

In Malaysia, Surrealism blends the fantastic, fantasy and pop-mythical imagery recalling imaginings from dreams, reflections, inner worlds and reveries. There is little of the left-wing, revolutionary zeal of Surrealism’s founders evident in Malaysian conceptualisations of Surrealism, only the visually enticing.

Penang born Chan Kok Hooi paints images straddling a line between Jung’s enigmatic ‘shadow’ and the purely fantastic. He weaves darkly humorous tales of a land reminiscent of a modern day Hieronymus Bosch. It is a darkly sexual place - where people are cars, cars are people and weird narratives reveal themselves on chessboards of the imagination.

In blackly comedic corners of Chan Kok Hooi’s imaginings, naked cherubs – car doors for wings, balance on pedestals, car-fathers park, pose, bedecked with wedding rosettes. A theatre (of the absurd?) - fire curtain drawn, chandelier hanging elegantly down belying questionable reality, shifting the viewer towards surreal imaginings.

Chan Kok Hooi presents MSN Messenger icons, one black and one white, ‘kissing’ in a ground level Asian toilet. It is a postcard. The corners to the picture are rounded, aged, faded. We are distant from the images. It is a postcard from another reality. A reality where MSN Messenger icons live out their ‘real’ lives when not called upon to feature on the internet. They are almost black and white, hints of sepia, nostalgia for a bizarre land - the artist beckons for us, we are to be embroiled in this land of the other.

More postcards - from the land of breasts. Legged mammary glands tend children, have birthdays, and celebrate life of the breast. Baby breasts stand transfixed, ‘comforters’ in their mouths. Teats replace nipples – literally and figuratively in Chan Kok Hooi’s paintings.

Chan Kok Hooi’s later paintings reflect a degree of stillness, calm, absent in his earlier works. The epic works of Raksasa (monster), The Last Lullaby and Boleh teem with action, visual excitement. These are paintings of action, modernity, contemporary icons clashing in jumbled Krazy Kat

George Herriman

narratives of heroes and loss and yet, if you look very, very, closely you will see that we are still in the world of car-fathers. They appear (Raksasa) farting like Bosch’s lesser demons in ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’. Mother-car appears (‘Musim Bunga Boleh’ - Flower Season, Can) laying strewn like some milk sow feeding piglets, only she is not a sow but - a car, they are not piglets but -car-lets.

Elephant painter Yusof Gajah, born Mohd Yusof bin Ismail, paints his own brand of Surrealistic fantasy - of elephants. Acclaimed as Malaysia’s premier ‘naive’ artist, Yusof calls upon naïf styles to conjure his own kind of elephantine magic, painting pachyderms.

Surrealists adopted the work of the ‘primitive’ French artist Henri Rousseau (1844 – 1910) as their own. Rousseau’s works melded with the Surrealists imaginings of authentic works of art - works uncensored by the cultured conscious mind. Yusof Gajah continues with Rousseau’s simplistic imagery, his child-like innocence - painting not into the jungle as Rousseau had, but out from the jungle.

From ‘naively’ painted scenes of jungle and waterscapes, replete with stylised birds, trees and yellow suns, Yusof Gajah has matured into making complex images featuring elephants. Black and white elephants present a modern day visual Guernica, without the violence inherent in Picasso’s original. Men, faces, cars, buildings and elephants all combine to recall the juxtaposition of man and nature, reminding the viewer that we are not divorced from our surroundings, for we are eternally part of it but not, now, at one with it.

At times cute, endearingly made for children and at times menacing, thought provokingly mature, Yusof Gajah’s elephant imagery appears synonymous with modern Malaysia with its incipient struggles for identity and recognition.

Ali Rahamad, aka Ali Mubuha, is a self-taught artist born in Malaysia but now living in North America. Ali’s art works are reminiscent of Latin American fantasy artists - especially mythic figures of Peruvian artist Tilsa Tsuchiya. Closer inspection reveals new mythologies, narratives of a world traveller, gleaning global inspiration, stories from the country in which he lives, tales from his birth country.

Ali is a visionary artist in the true sense of the term – he paints visions and prospers visions in others. Ali’s work represents the direction new Surrealism took – into fantasy and the fantastic, preceded by the likes of Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington. Early works – from the

1980s - such as Sprite of the Eagle seem influenced more by the ‘traditional’ Surrealists – like Salvador Dali, or his predecessor Giorgio de Chirico, whereas Ali’s later works - like the Aztec Series - sparkle with Latin American mythic/fantasy elements. Ali is also a concerned environmentalist, and something of a social commenter. Ali, as well as mythic fantasies, paints concerning man’s place in this world, social upheavals.

Deyanna binti Deraman paints enchanting fragments of dream, reminiscent of the wondrous works of Leonora Carrington.

Deyanna binti Deraman’s strange dreams reveal our innermost fears, fantasies and the world of children’s storytelling. The viewer cannot but help recall the darker fairytales, Red Riding Hood, woods, witches, houses made of sweets. Yet there is something else present in her works. It is as if that writer of fairytales for adults – Angela Carter, were take up the brush, giving we viewers the benefit of her adult view on stories of imagination and myth. Perhaps there is soupcon of Neil Gaiman too, lurking.

A hint of the ‘primitive’, naive art, informs some of the foliage in the work May It Be, that and the wistful gaze of the young woman leaning against a tree (watched by a treed white cat). Playing with Dreaming once again sees woman with cat, but this time we know that we are in the realm of Morpheus, because of the title. There are red-capped houses, mushrooming, in Deyanna’s fantasies. There are Moorish spires, doors and windows from which the imagination may drift, but always she sits, a little sad – maybe she is the younger Bob Dylan’s Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands sans cat, long blue clothing hanging, and single white tree growing inside the house, inside dreams, recollections, in the work entitled The Tree House.

Robert Hughes brought us The Shock of the New, while those enterprising chaps from 1000 Tentacles (Leong Wan Kok and PH Khor) present us with the shock of the old. It’s not old in the sense of being ancient, but old as in that darker side of ourselves, the Id, the Shadow, old as in old evil, but not evil – comic.

1000 Tentacles present a comic Surrealism that Dali and Max Ernst could only dream of (pun intended). Looking at strange rabbits, fantastic octopus tentacle wielding creatures, weird fish, spurting droplets of who knows what gunk, we are in a world, or worlds, where Science Fiction meets HP Lovecraft, mates and has sons who can tell tall tales with or without Photoshop.

1000 Tentacles

There is darkness, but black comedy too. Moist menaces roam, fetid creatures lunge, but it is all somehow very comic, made for comic books, illustration – and lest I forget, there are oddly vicious penguins too, encouraging me to play BeeBop Deluxe’s Surreal Estate as I write this.

Surrealism is new to Malaysia, taken up by fresh generations raised on the strangeness of Japanese Anime, Sponge Bob and countless American comic books. It is a different Surrealism from that prospered by Andre Breton. Many political and philosophic messages have altered with a new Surrealism that retains visual functionality above all others. It is a very visual, consumerist, materialistic society in which we live, but Surrealism thrives, altered - but still challenging, this small selection of Malaysian artists tell us that.

Chan Kok Hooi’

deyannabinti deraman

Deyanna binti Deraman was born in Machang, Malaysia, August 1982. She continued studies in fine arts at university, began in 2001 with diplomas, and completed her degrees in 2006. She became a full time artist in 2009.

deyannabinti deraman

The Joy Of Life At Journey’s End, 2009

May It Be, acrylic on canvas, 2008

The Tree House, 2010.

A trail is laid which leaves a tell-tale guide behind, 2010

In the dark, the lambent lights gleam and glimmer, no date

Playing With Dreaming, 2008

antaresantaresantaresThe quick brown fox of intuition

jumps over the lazy dog of intellect.In the cavern, shadows gather round the stewor huddle in crannies (but only on weekends)

to hear Platonic oratorios rendered inoffensivelyby descendants of Aristotle and his Orchestra of

Broken Winds.

The flatulent frog of financial successhops over the fraudulent toad of commercial excess,

Leaving a definite whiff of death and decay.The dead red bleeds through a yellow flag

into the deep blue of oceanic woe.It's only a nightmare of carnival ponyridesdriven by the slave power of wild horses

captured in their sleep.

I wake up to the green tones of birds and squirrelstrying to hold back the afternoon.

Morning is too short and the nights are too long.With rings under their eyes and through their flaming

nostrils, froth on their lips and electrode scarson their skulls, the foreign legionnaires of the insane

shriek through the streets:"UNPLUG THE JUGGERNAUT!"

But their thin voices are drowned by the traffic.

I watch from the tower safe behind glassand the sight of a crawling humanity turns my reality

into a desperately dull movie with only one redeeming

An Epilogue of Sorts

poetry

feature: there are no creditsand all the blame goes to no one

except us.

Yes, US. Because we are too busy with our handsto bother thinking what kind of world we are making

with our minds.

So we leave it all to the Experts.Whose minds are not their own anyway,

since nobody gets to be an expert who won't surrenderhis soul to Mammon & Moloch. And an entire pantheon of

pathetically false gods, worshiped neither by animalnor vegetable nor mineral -

only by a benighted humanity half-awake to itself,half-asleep in pyjamas of scientific concupiscence,

abusing itself in fear and guilt,never knowing ecstasy.

she's an Oistshe doesn't believe

in GOD

she believes inGOOD

she doesn’t believein only one

GOOD

she believes in manyGOODS

she’s polytheisticbut realistic

GOODS ARE GOODshe saysproving

that Oismgoeswell with

Consumerism

TheOlogy

Next week I will invent a world that works.A world that works will be a place for us to play in.

It will be a home sweet home with a heart and a hearthto warm our feet on.

There will be room for infantsand outfants and elefants too;

enough headroom to grow minds up.Enough legroom for every dance of life and the kitchen will always be

clean, and the toilet too.

A world that works will provide useach with a home in the sun or in

the snow and it will always becomfortable.

There will be privacy and publicry built into every

room in every home on thevast range of world designed

to work while we play.

Play will consist of fun andgames and drama and action and

interaction, no more will reaction move us wrongwards.A world that works will alwaysbe right because no one will

ever be left out of it.

It will be a rubbery stretchable bouncing ball of a world and nobody can ever get

seriously hurt in it unless they insist.

And if the world that worksdoesn't last forever

we'll invent a foreverthat works.

A World That Works

I always remember Saadi

visiting his rose garden

traversing the songs of the universe

Vote for meThe Macho Man said.Please cast your ballot

in my favour.

If there's one thingA Macho ManCan't stand,

It's being toldHe's lost the poll.

Empty your boxes,We'll tally the votes

And pray god the resultsDon't add up to aLow Sperm Count,For that would beTantamount to...

Er, listen, Doctor,Dear kindly Doctor...

Kindly doctor the Books(We are not crooks)

And send that Fat Man the bill!

With your hand in the tillYou may do as you will:Rattle your vinyl seeds

And your styrofoam beads.You can fool most of the people

Most of the timeBut you won't get away with

Trying to cheat Nature.Isn't that why you're hellbent on

Destroying her?

V-Reality!

I always remember Saadi

visiting his rose garden

traversing the songs of the universe

I sat on a dead treewatching the mighty rollers

break upon the shore

And I said to myself,I shall write a poem about the sea!

Whereupon wave after waveof appropriate phrasesflooded into my brain

and drowned me.

A Poem about the Sea

Antares (named Kit Fong Lee at birth) was born 7 January 1950 in a small Malaysian town. As a 17-year-old exchange student in Essex Fells, New Jersey, he discovered Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, E.E. Cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Bob Dylan. In 1992 he relocated to the jungly heartland of the Malayan Peninsula, where he met and married an aboriginal girl, with whom he now shares a cozy home between two magnificent rivers. Two years later he assembled all the scraps of his

early poetic excesses and published them as Moth Balls.

He reviewed theatre and arts events for various national newspapers from 1984-1992 and has since written dance, music and book reviews

and features for websites and magazines.

* Adoi! (a collection of satirical essays and cartoons published by Times Books International, 1989)

* Moth Balls (scatological and eschatological poems published by

Magick River, 1994)

* Two Catfish in the Same Hole (annotated and illustrated Malay sayings published by Times Books International, 2001)

* Tanah Tujuh - Close Encounters with the Temuan Mythos (published in 2007 by Silverfish Books, Kuala Lumpur).

yuso

f gaj

ahyu

sof g

ajah

black and white series

elephantoidea

teapot elephant series

gajah series

Yusof Gajah is Malaysia’s foremost naïve artist . He was born in 1954 in Negeri Sembilan as Mohd Yusof Bin Ismail. He was educated in Singapore, and received his art training at the Sekolah Seni Rupa Indonesia and the Akademi Seni Rupa Indonesia in Yogjakarta.

Yusof has won several awards for his work, both nationally and internationally. He was awarded the Grand Prix ( The Real Elephant) Noma Concours for Children’s picture Book Illustration by ACCU in Tokyo, Japan in 1997. He has held a number of solo exhibitions in Malaysia, Indonesia , Japan and Norway .

He now paints in his studio in Batu Caves Selangor.

chan kok hooichan kok hooi

the performer, 2008

the smile, 2008

the bath, 2007

orchard hotel 2010

boleh, 2003

Chan Kok Hooi is a full time artist.

He was born 1974, in Penang, Malaysia, and currently lives and works in Penang.

He graduated from the Malaysian Institute of Art, majoring in painting, in 1996, and has had a number of very successful solo

and group exhibitions since.

His work has featured in a number of magazines and foreign exhibitions.

musim bunga boleh, 2006-2007

Uthaya Sankar SBUthaya Sankar SBUthaya Sankar SB

short story

DAD came home one night and woke us from our sleep. We rushed out of the house. Then, we took out a match and burnt down the house. The whole family stood staring as the flames brought down the house to ashes.

Since then, we have been moving from place to place without a house to stay. This is a better situation, said Dad. We don’t have to crack our heads to think about what colour to paint the walls, what brand of paint to use, hire someone to paint or paint it ourselves, how many cans of paint would be needed and so forth.

That is only about the paint. Dad listed tens – hundreds and thousands, indeed – of problems that we would be able to avoid all together since we do not own a house.

“But, Dad,” said one of us while we were seated inside a peanut shell. “Which address shall we use for official purposes? What about school registration; which address to use? What if someone wants to send us a letter; a fan perhaps.”

“Just give the Parliament address or our Prime Minister’s,” Dad answered spontaneously. “At least we won’t be receiving all those junk mail.”

“And we do not have fans. We are nobody,” someone among us added; but of course not the one who raised the initial question.

The others among us agreed while shaking our heads in unison. By then, we had already left the peanut shell where we took shelter while waiting for the rain to stop.

“What about school registration; which address to use?” Someone asked; could have been the same person or someone else.“Why worry? Have you forgotten that all of you have never been to school,” Dad assured while walking.m

iew

-mie

w-m

iew

the painted cat

“Oh, yeah!” We responded in unison.

We don’t know why we named him Cat. Perhaps since – to the best of our knowledge – there has never been a cat called “Kucing”, we spontaneously named him Cat.

Cat is bright. Not very long ago, a government department advertised an opening for its Head of Department. The word was that all the previous heads were too old and had to retire merely a week after being promoted to the post. So, the Government decided to hire a younger Head of Department who would last longer.

Cat applied for the job. He was called for an interview. The interviewer had no reason to deny Cat’s right to apply for the advertised position. Cat seems to fulfil each and every requirement and qualification to be the head of a government department.

Indeed that was the reason why, said Cat, the Public Services Commission called him for an interview.

“We are looking for a candidate who is fluent in more than two foreign languages,” said the interviewer while using a pen to circle the requirement which was indeed clearly stated in the newspaper advertisement.

Hence, Cat began to deliver a speech in Italian, German, French, Japanese and Hindi.

Strangely enough, the interview result – which was received three months later – said Cat was unsuccessful. It seems that when Cat spoke Italian, German, French, Japanese and Hindi, it sounded the same: miew-miew-miew.

What a stupid interviewer! Doesn’t he know that cats in Italy say miew-miew-miew, cats in Germany say miew-miew-miew, cats in France say miew-miew-miew, cats in Japan say miew-miew-miew and cats in India say miew-miew-miew?

Mum would lose her temper if she finds the males among us pretending to cook. Or if the males among us wanted to ‘play house’ with the females among us.

“The traits of a real man are as follows,” Mum would quote two Western feminists who have done studies about the expected behaviour of boys among the American parents: “Aggressive, strict, brave, active, rational, not influenced by sentiment, and not showing emotion.”

And if the males among us are disheartened – and confused – with what Mum says, thus give Dad a hug and start crying, he would say: “Boys are not supposed to and are not allowed to show emotion, not

miew

-miew

-miew

supposed to and are not allowed to hug, not supposed to and are not allowed to have fear; not supposed to and are not allowed to cry.”

Unable to bear such long lectures, the males among us would start making guns and knives out of wood. The males among us would play war. The males among us would combat each other and hit each other and hurt each other.

The males among us would tear down the “homes” built by the females among us. The males among us would bully the females among us until the females among us start crying. Upon seeing that, the males among us would laugh arrogantly.

Mum and Dad would smile proudly upon witnessing the males among us bullying the females among us. They would say: “We are very proud because all the males among you will become real men.”

One day, we caught Cat and dumped him inside a glass container. Then, we bought a can of paint. We are not sure of the colour. We don’t even recall the brand.

But the word was that the paint which we bought had a five-year warranty. If used just after a general election, the paint is assured to last until the next general election, five years later.

Thus, we poured the paint into the glass container containing Cat. We let Cat soak in the paint for a few hours. Later we took him out. Of course Cat had changed colour according to the colour of the paint.Cat told us that he was actually dead. But he was still alive, he said, because cats have nine lives.

“Miew-miew-miew,” said Cat. Meaning: Take me to the government department which rejected my application to become the Head of Department.

“What for?” asked someone among us.

“Miew-miew-miew,” said Cat. Meaning: Do not ask!

Cat demanded a second interview. Throughout the interview, Cat said absolutely nothing. Not even miew-miew-miew. Ten questions asked, zero answered. A hundred questions, none answered.

“Great! This is the sort of Head of Department we want. Mister Cat, you still have eight lives, right? So, the Government hereby appoints you, Mister Cat, as the Head of Department until you, Mister Cat, die for the eighth time,” the interviewer decided.

Cat is bright. He seem to have paid close attention to what Mum and Dad have always been saying about the traits of a real male. Cat has also mastered the art of reading. Cat has become known as a m

iew

-mie

w-m

iew

respected leader in the society.

Cat, whom was once soaked in paint – the colour which we don’t seem to remember – now has in himself all the criteria of a real male as mentioned by Mum and Dad: strong, not soft and feminine, chooses aggressive games, able to command the women to follow all his orders, unemotional, does not like to hug and be hugged, and has a stronger desire than ever to become the nation’s leader.

Cat has also made it possible for us to buy a residence by means of his salary as the head of a government department. What’s more, Cat is often refered to as the most potential candidate to become the nation’s prominent leader.

But the fact still remains that Cat is a cat which was once dumped into a glass container and soaked in paint – God knows what colour – that is assured to last for five years only.

Dad came home one night and “wake up from your sleep” he said. We rushed out of the house. Then, we took out a match and burnt down the house. The whole family stood, staring as the flames brought down Cat to ashes.

miew

-miew

-miew

Uthaya Sankar SB was born in Taiping, Perak and is a Malaysian writer of Malayalam origin who writes in Bahasa Malaysia, his first language. He lectured Ba-hasa Malaysia, Moral Education and Malaysian Studies in various colleges from 1999 to 2007 and between 1996 and 2010, was also attached to Radio Televisyen Ma-laysia (RTM). He has written eight short story collections, numerous pieces of children’s fiction and two novels.

1000 tentaclesunamed illustrations

1000Tentacles ™Is award winning artist, Leong WanKok and writer Khor PheikHoy. They have

been involved in art industry for over 20 years, with numerous art projects ranging

from commercial illustration,art print, comic, character design, toy

sculpture and 3d arts.

1000tentacles's art has appeared in art shows and exhibitions both local and

oversea. Besides art creations, 1000ten-tacles also write articles about Graphic

software and tutorials forinternational Art Magaziness

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