When I was small, at the tender age of 7 till 12, I was in Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan Bandar Baru Bangi (SRKBBB tercinta!). In school, there was this girl named Firuz Akhtar. She was the smartest kid in our class. Everytime we took an exam she would always be at the top of the list. Teachers would praise her, friends liked her, plenty of the guys liked her in a non-sexual way (come on man we were only kids) and then there was me - feeling envy towards her success. But my enviousness was quelled by the fact that she was poor.
Say what?
I was a messed up child. Somehow all the kids telling me that I was Chinese, and at times would tease me with the phrase
Cina makan babi* got to my head. They created a pathway for my ancestral lines to forge this credulous belief inside of me called karma, the ying and yang of life if you may, that if you were up in one thing you had to be down in another.
Firuz's up was that she was smart. She was a top scorer in school. There had to be somewhere else in life that she was messed up in right? I was young, and don't tell me how I got to the conclusion that she was poor, but simply put it, I thought she
was poor. Man she was so smart I thought she had to live in some kind of shed. With the tin roof above her head with all these holes in em. And that she would have to put empty buckets beneath the holes in the roof just to make sure that the water wouldn't wet the floor or hit her black and white TV.
Karma baby.
I think I remember telling you guys that kids are dumb right? I was a dumb kid. That fact doesn't make it a universal proof, but it didn't change the fact that I was one silly dumb kid. Anyways, my instinctive beliefs of karma were shattered to bits when I found out that she lived in a giant house on top of a hill (right beside Ikram's house <----- he's single ladies, go get 'im).
The years of self-induced lies were basically... lies. I was lying to myself cause I couldn't believe that this world wasn't fair. She was smart, she HAD to be poor. She just had to. If she didn't that means she was up in almost everything. Mind you at that small age she wasn't fat nor unattractive, I have no idea what she looks like now.
But that's the lesson in life that we all have to go through. Life is never fair. Most of your so called destiny was already written the day you were born to your parents, in your neighborhood, added with the chain of friends you so happened to meet. Some people are up in most things. And some people are down on others. And once you accept that fact, you will be happier.
*Chinese like to eat pork
