Just When I Thought They Have Regained Their Sanity…

It is probably an accepted and measurable fact among the many things that drive Malaysian cuckoo, politics ranks an unchallenged first.  I was on the phone with my Mum today and she told me what recently happened in Kelantan: the inglorious kampung.  Here’s the tale.

Apparently, a cousin of mine got himself a girlfriend.  Things were going well and the families were beginning to become involved.  I’m not sure how it happened but somehow the girl’s family paid my aunt and uncle a visit, and that’s when things took a turn into the twilight zone of lost minds.

To understand what happened we need to take a flashback to the recent General Elections.  Some how, one morning not long before the elections, when my aunt and her family woke up one morning, they found a few political flags hanging from the branches of some of the trees on her property. Now, these weren’t tiny barely noticeable flags but big blue ones.  Bear in mind that my this family is more or less ambivalent when it comes to politics. Anyway, they couldn’t be bothered to take the flags down because they were busy with other things at the time – that’s different story for a different time. 

So the elections came and went and still no one came to take the flags down.  So, my aunt, who is a firm believer in re-using and recycling, decided to make use of these pieces of cloth that someone had kindly left hanging from her trees.  She took them down. Washed them and kept them. A little while later she decided to use them as tablecloths because the ones she was using at the time was getting somewhat tattered. 

Now, apparently, when the girl’s family visited these tablecloths were on the table and apparently, also, the girl’s family are diehard card-carrying manifesto bashing PAS supporters.  The visit actually went uneventfully. They came, they had some refreshments, they talked, they left.  A little while the young couple are no longer together. That’s when we learnt of the family’s political affiliation.

I guess tablecloths are a political statement in Kelantan and psychiatrists can probably make a lot of money there.