January 13, 2013
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Watched last night's edition of Majalah 3 with Mama,
curled up in my old batch jacket and college throw.
I still sleep in them sometimes, whenever I feel
like I need to have some sense of familiar comfort.
For the most part, the coverage didn't reduce
me to a sobbing heap. The only time it really
hit Mama and I was when we watched Bonda
take down our College badge from Dewan
Budiman's front steps, remove the College
flag that always flew mast high, and shut
our College gates for the last time.
It was a kind of sadness that left a lump
in my throat. The magnitude of that
ceremony, the meaning it entails for
all of us that called Bukit Merbah home
during our young lives, is indescribable.
As for the new campus, I guess watching its
coverage on tv solidified my sense of detachment
to this new generation of TKC girls. It somehow
felt like they now belong to a different College,
void of traditions and landscapes that the rest
of us could always relate to.
Will they know the significance of the rock
that bore our College crest at the front gate?
Will they ever be indebted to Kak Julia and the
stern way with which she ran the dining hall?
Will they love the basketball courts as much
as we did and understand why it transcended
houses and uniformed units? Will they know
the little nooks and crannies of Bukit Merbah,
like how the Form 3 blocks had a back balcony
if one was MacGuyver enough to dislodge all
the glass panes of the classroom windows?
Will they ever experience the crazy thrill of
climbing up to the rooftops of Mahsuri to
watch the stars, or play hopscotch on the
flat roofs of the corridors surrounding the
Square outside the old dining hall?
They won't.
Necessity precedes nostalgia.
That doesn't mean I love TKC any less now
than I always have. The feeling of detachment
is prevalent, but our alma mater sits in a special
place in my heart, alongside the people and places
that I treasure the most. I owe a lot to this institution,
and it deserves my unabashed support in perpetuity.
I think this is a process that we all go through.
Leaving behind places and people that were
so significant and made such a difference to
our lives at various points. They come and go.
We will have our own ways of letting go.
For some of us, it was by sitting through an
hour-long tv coverage of the closing of Bukit
Merbah. For some others, maybe it entails
a different kind of closure. Like making one
final trip back to the old College, to stand
outside those wrought-iron gates and look
in on this place that welcomed us so lovingly
into its bosom and held on as we grew up.
xx
I look at that picture now and I realise that
the best way to keep my memory of the
old College, and what it stood for, is to try
and embody this to the best of my abilities.
Be that person I wanted to be when I first
stood outside Dewan Budiman and tried to
understand what such words of legacy meant.
In the ten years that have passed since I
left Bukit Merbah, I have a modicum of
achievements to show for the upbringing
TKC instilled in me. But as a person; a
daughter, sister, partner and friend, I am
still far from what I had the potential to be.
I don't like this person I am turning into.
If there's one thing College has taught me,
it is to keep trying to be a better person.
To keep on, keep on.
And so I will.
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