To Yasmin Ahmad the Storyteller

It was at about 3am in Melbourne when I saw someone’s status update on Facebook that Yasmin Ahmad had passed away. My earlier euphoria with Matt took a big hit and it was gradually replaced with sadness and grief – all of her movies had touched me in a way unimaginable and thoroughly taught me how people can love beyond race, culture, religion; how certain extremely ultra-conservative quarters had lambasted her movies not because of their qualities, but on the basis of religion; and how as I sent international texts to Jess and Chris to express – not adequately – the sorrow I felt, I was left in a state of disbelief, shock, wanting to believe that this was just a malicious rumour and she’s lying there safe in the Damansara Specialist Hospital, recovering, smiling, all set to finalise her work on Wasurenagusa.

I asked Chris, why do all the good people in the world seem to die so early, way beyond their time?

Mukhsin has touched me so much that even as I think about it, it sent tingles reverberating throughout me – that longing, romantic, innocent first love. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting her, and looks like never in my lifetime will I get the opportunity. My signed poster of Talentime by Yasmin still remains somewhere in my room, and probably is something that will never escape my possession in a long time.

By all accounts of my struggling to remain positive with her death, I suppose her movies will live on and continue to touch generations of the future. But that we’ll never see her simple, pleasing ads that manage to stir so many emotions in the span of a few minutes, that we can no longer view the stories that Yasmin the Storyteller has to tell, impacted me greatly. It’s odd – this sensation of warm tears, something I’ve very rarely felt especially to someone I’ve not personally known.

She will be buried at the Muslim graveyard in USJ 22, not too far away from where I live – when I do come back end of this year, I’ll be making a visit to pay my respects. I’ve had a vast irreplaceable respect for her – one of the greatest Malaysians to have ever lived who, unlike the majority of Malaysians with their cynical racism and intolerance of people who are different than themselves, managed to salvage the hidden good embedded within us all and project them through her own unique ways.

I don’t have an adequate epitaph for her or a suitable requiem to remember her by, but as I listen to Angel sung by Atilia for Yasmin’s movie Talentime, it seems – in an incomprehensible odd way – appropriate:

Angel, I have a dream of you I can’t define
You’ve been on my mind
Don’t go
I’ll be lost without you by my side
Lost and on my own

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Angel, may the one above us keep you safe
For the rest of days