Eidh 1429 Hijrah

As I am writing this posting, it's the third day of Eidh of 1429 H and here in a hotel room looking out at the Straits of Malacca, near the estuary of Sungai Melaka. How surprised I am when I tried to manoeuvre the way towards Mahkota Parade, thinking that it was the same as before and found that I could not enter it from the Melaka Raya row of shop houses near the Equatorial Hotel where I used to stay whenever I had an interview here. How things have changed near the surroundings of Padang Merdeka where the Tunku announced the date of Independence for the new nation called Persekutuan Tanah Melayu. Now it's only a shadow of what used to be an expansive Padang facing the Straits of Malacca and the strong breeze which came with the changing monsoons coming from across it. It's not often that we can recall these past events which took place more than fifty years ago. But now it all went down past memory lane, just like my childhood days spent at the government quarters in Labu Road where the Terminal One now stands. I suppose that's the way progress is charted in our beautiful land that it was at one time in the past. I saw the wide open spaces before, now only cluttered with ugly structures in the name of progress. In reality, progress is nothing more than a term which spells destruction of the past. People think that progress is inevitable and the past has to make way for the future. But from what I saw today, many of the historic past almost in every State within the Peninsula have been destroyed in the name of progress. What is defined as progress is nothing more than profits. As long as people are laughing as they go to the banks all the way, that's the only benchmark of progress which they understand. The authorities proudly announced that Malacca received the recognition by the world's body as a world's heritage city. But what was the evidence received by the UN in order to qualify such an honour then? Most probably all the landmarks and sites which were submitted for that consideration, now have almost disappeared if not all, but the majority of it. Alas, who the heck cares anyway, as long as we can trumpet it to the universe that this is a world heritage city. As I drove last night to a small village about an hour's drive from the city centre of Malacca, I was astounded to see grand visions of structures mushrooming along the country roads to replace the quaint, placid and slow moving pace of village life of the district of Jasin. Jasin used to be the backwater of the state, but no more. I saw the prominent signboards announcing the nearing to Al-Ghaffarrudin mosque, an imposing building but I wonder who forms the congregation for it's daily call to prayer. Perhaps the numbers could not even fill half of the first row, just like it is in the mosque near my house. I recounted how visitors to Istanbul lamenting that the grand Blue Mosque hardly had anybody to pray there on a daily basis. I could never imagine such a thing would be repeated here, but how wrong I was. It's the reality now for me in my beloved country which provides Islam as the religion of the Federation!