On the bravery of imagination, the freedom to be wrong, and the weight of shattered ambitions
Baru-baru ni surau kami anjurkan ceramah Maulidur Rasul. Macam biasalah, ustaz akan bagi tazkirah istimewa mengenai Rasulullah SAW. Aku sebagai AJK akan kumpulkan anak-anak untuk di barisan hadapan. Aku duduk sekali nak kawal budak-budak yang merakas tak tahu diam.
Towards the end of the ceramah, ada seorang budak lelaki, dalam 5 tahun umurnya, toleh ke belakang tanya kawan dia:
“Allah lahir bulan berapa?”
Aku dengan nak buat muka garang, terus nak tergelak, tahan ketawa.
The Snow on the Padi Field
“Hari ni tema lukisan bebas,” kata cikgu seni Mr Harim.
One of my favourite subjects growing up, more often than not because the teacher would simply tell us to draw freely. Maybe he had no lesson plan that day. Or maybe he genuinely wanted to see how far our creative freedom could stretch.
Because creativity, after all, is supposed to be a symbol of freedom.
So I drew a scene beside a padi field. The irony is, I actually lived in a FELDA settlement surrounded by oil palm, not padi. In my drawing, the field sat at the foot of a mountain. And on top of that mountain, I drew snow. Like Mount Fuji.
Before anyone jumps to conclusions — the inspiration for Mount Fuji came from a 12-month calendar my father bought at the FELDA shop. I can say with confidence that almost every house in FELDA Bukit Waha had that same calendar hanging on the wall, because every peneroka bought from the same shop.
It went beyond calendars, too. House decor could be nearly identical — walk into one living hall, and you’d basically already been to every living hall in the kampung. Everyone seemed to be influencing each other, apparently, without anyone quite noticing it happening.
December, I think, was Japan. The other eleven months, I don’t remember — but probably somewhere just as far from a padi field surrounded by oil palm.
I was right in the middle of colouring the mountain peak white for snow, deep in it, when I felt something knock against my head, hard enough that I genuinely thought a rock had hit me. It was my Mr Harim’s hand, landing on my head, as I heard her say:
“Mana kau belajar salji ada kat sawah padi?” — (Where did you learn that snow exists next to a padi field?)
I shrank into my seat, embarrassed, trying to cover the moment as the whole class laughed.
Well, Mr Harim – Japan has paddy fields too. I only found that out once I was already an adult.
I can’t remember exactly when I first watched Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk — the famous one, “How Schools Kill Creativity.” One line from it has stayed with me since:
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’re not able to come up with anything original.”
Watching it, something in me lit up with purpose. I didn’t want my daughter to become another product of a school system that kills creativity in children.
When Maryam Arrived
“Maryam tak suka dengan sekolah Pasti. Maryam tak enjoy.” That line came up often enough, usually whenever we passed her old PASTI school, even though Maryam was already in Year 5 by then.
Because she brought it up so often, I decided to actually make it a real conversation.
“Kenapa Maryam tak suka? Sekolah PASTI kan best, ada main-main,” I said, fishing gently for more.
“Maryam tak sukalah, Abi — kan Maryam masa tu umur 5 tahun, baru belajar menulis. Cikgu kata tulisan Maryam macam belacan. Lepas tu dia kata, dah la, awak jangan tulis lagi.”
“Lepas tu kan Abi, cikgu tu ambik buku Maryam, tunjuk kat depan kelas.”
“Maryam tak suka — kan Maryam kan budak kecik lagi, memang la tulisan tu tak cantik,” she said, the words spilling out of her.
“Ehh, tak sepatutnya cikgu buat macam tu,” I said, genuinely upset at what her teacher had done, even though it had happened a long time before.
“Lepas tu kan Abi, masa nak warnakan matahari tu — Maryam buatlah warna oren. Lepas tu cikgu marah, dia kata, ni bukan warna matahari.”
“Kan dia cikgu, kalau Maryam salah bagitahu je lah warna apa yang betul, kan Abi?” she asked, still eager to keep telling the story.
I sat frozen, listening to her pour it all out. As a father who’s always encouraged Maryam to express her feelings and her creativity, a memory that seemed small to anyone else had clearly left something much bigger behind in my daughter.
There’s a part of Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture I keep coming back to, about a little girl drawing a picture of God.
Her teacher told her, “Nobody knows what God looks like.”
The girl answered, without missing a beat:
“They will in a minute.”
The innocent kid, asking “Allah lahir bulan berapa?”
The boy who drew Mount Fuji on a tropical paddy field.
The little girl who drew the face of God.
Maryam, whose writing looked like belacan, whose sun was painted the wrong color.
They were creative, free and brave.
Until institutions stepped in, alongside teachers who fell short of giving their absolute best to their students, or self-absorbed parents intent on forcing their children to fulfill their own shattered ambitions, ultimately crushing the children’s imagination.
Well — her father’s creativity had already been killed 40 years before she was even born.