so here it is finally–

i was sitting in my 9am class the other day, and my mind wandered to a place where people talk about christianity, islam, and the word allah. glibly, i made a mental note to myself to finish writing that piece on the Allah problem that has been sitting on my desktop for almost two months now. then i felt tired. perhaps i won’t bother. it is, after all, an issue that has been debated to such a pulp that i’m not sure what fresh insight i can add that won’t sound naive. and then, and then — before i could catch it, the careless thought burst forth from my head like some disorganized rebellion: i wonder what kind of advertisement yasmin ahmad would make out of the allah problem.

in that instance, and who knows for how long now, i had forgotten that she’d passed on. there is a panic to this sort of realization when you catch yourself. there is a viscous anxiety that fills your mouth as you realize the gravity of the situation, months later, unknowingly free from the emotions of the sensational and the assault of public mourning. then, you come to mourn privately, and finally see the real question- what do we do now?

i think i took yasmin ahmad for granted when she was alive. i was 16 when i happened to walk past that awkwardly placed pillar in front of the box office at GSC Mid Valley. i was with waimin, and together we stared at the sepia soaked poster of a malay girl (no tudung) and a chinese boy squatting on a wooden bridge. eh, Malay movie. why is it screened under International Screens? what does sepet mean? who is Yasmin Ahmad? is this going to be a typical Romeo & Juliet story? har, but it’s a Malaysian movie you know…

despite all the uncertainty, we finally went to watch Sepet one day, in our school uniforms, not expecting much or anything at all. and in that little Mid Valley cinema, we were introduced to Yasmin Ahmad and her small world with big feelings. Sepet was a story about so many things– ipoh, chungking express, malay cinema, an ah beng who reads poetry, gang life, JPA scholarships, adidas shoes, race, family, responsibility, love. everything was so Malaysian and yet different; but above all, the movie was so optimistic. i left the cinema feeling like i had grown 20 years older, and there was this ruffling in my sensibilities that i couldn’t quite place. who is Yasmin Ahmad? she must be young. she must be this young, up-and-coming director who has just returned to Malaysia after studying film abroad.

when Aira’s mom told me who Yasmin Ahmad was, and that she was responsible for the Petronas ads we often watch in silence with an awkward lump in our throats, it was as if this whole world had unfolded suddenly before me. everything moved so quickly after that. in a very compressed span of time, Sepet was all over the place, in every newspaper and magazine, and everyone was the new expert on Yasmin Ahmad and her “indie film” messages. it’s quite like how you learn a new word for the first time, and suddenly after that you see it everywhere and you wonder how come you never noticed this alien word before. people talked about her so much because she touched the Malaysian heart like no filmmaker had ever done, whether Rabun, Sepet or a Petronas ad from the early 2000s was one’s first emergence into Yasmin Ahmad’s creative and emotional space. i remember how excited i was when her next film, Gubra, was released in cinemas. and the first time i’d ever gotten tongue tied while talking to someone was when TV Smith introduced me to her at the press screening of Mukhsin. i wanted to ask her so many questions. how do you do it? where do you find room in your heart to be this forgiving? did you know that you inspire so many people to have hope in Malaysia? did you know that you remind us all that our country’s problems are so real, but still so very manageable? did you know that you made Malaysian cinema cool again? of course, i asked her none of the above and just stammered my name. i shook her hand, and saw up close her crooked teeth and her kind smile. she was very busy that day, but never too busy to let forth that kind smile. and then she wrote me a comment on my blogpost about Mukhsin. how lucky i am, that she so briefly read what small and puerile things i had to say about her prized movie, and actually said something back to me in return.

i was out partying when the news of her death broke. the first thing i saw when i drunkenly checked my Twitter in the middle of the dance floor was– RIP Kak Yasmin. and that was it, that’s how she left my world. i’d never really had someone close to me die, but if anything felt remotely like it, then this was that. she’d been unwell for days then, but that one day, she just died. this is why life is unfair. everything about it is unfair if such an. important. person can die even before she’s finished what only she can do. of all the malaysians to take away, why did it have to be Yasmin Ahmad?

and now it’s been almost a year since she died, and beyond Talentime, there is nothing that we have to look forward to. nothing at all, because people can try to be like her but no one comes close to being that soft, that dark, that hopeful, that emotionally perceptive, and that intelligent. we screened 15Malaysia here on campus last week, and while it was possible to watch Chocolate without skipping a heartbeat, it wasn’t as easy actually seeing her on the screen, in her utterly disarming makcik-with-an-edge manner, in the short titled House. thank you, Linus Chung, for that last and unexpected goodbye that you allowed us here at this university to have with Kak Yasmin.

now that i’ve realized how awfully true it is that she is gone, i don’t quite know what to do. it’s like anything to do with ‘harapan’ seems so fakely forceful and hard-edged now, and i need to watch the latest Yasmin Ahmad film to be grounded once again in the softness of the things that matter. all these crazy politics, crazier politicians, injustice, corruption, awkwardly latent racism, social stigma — they all make sense and they all become malleable only if you watch them in a Yasmin Ahmad movie, lovingly and fastidiously set in perspective for us by a talent whose art can never be replaced.

The making of Chocolate– a small insight into her very frustrating genius

Hokkien Aunties– an absolute work of art

Reunion Dinner– utterly arresting

Dinosaru. this came from the Tan Hong Ming series of ads, with Tan Hong Ming of course being the most wildly popular ad, but this one was actually by far my most favourite ad in the series.

Tan Hong Ming

do you know how unfair it is that Yasmin Ahmad died? what, really, do we do now?