Queen Elizabeth II is No Longer Our Queen But Some Malaysians Still Adore her!

Queen Elizabeth II is No Longer Our Queen But Some Malaysians Still Adore her!
By Mihar Dias
(C) Copyright February 2022

Britain’s Queen is about to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee. It seems that I have known her all my life although we have never met face to face.

When Queen Elizabeth II, ascended the throne in 1953 I was barely six years old. I remember my dad carrying me on his shoulders, in front of the state mosque, to give me a better view of decorated floats passing underneath an arch specially built for the event.

“Long Live the Queen” was all over the floats and arches around our small town of Alor Setar.

I learnt from my dad what the four words meant and repeated them for days later, writing out on every blank space in our tiny village with charcoal, dirtying house walls, much to the dismay of my grandmother who could neither read nor write.

She thought I was protesting against the Queen whom she threatened would come after me, if I didn’t quit, although I knew she was thousands of miles away in England and would never care to visit our tiny village just because a six-year-old was wishing her a long reign on the throne.

I honestly wished and prayed like a child desperate for divine intervention, for God to save the Queen for a very long time. I did not understand the concept of time then. So, I ended my prayers, “forever, Long Live the Queen!”

But now 70 years later, it seemed like yesterday when I straddled my dad’s shoulders straining my neck to get a good view of the floats shouting “Long Live the Queen” at every passing vehicle on that Coronation night.

Over the years since that night I have had opportunities to visit London to gaze at the Queen’s Buckingham Palace and watched the changing of the guards but never once did I get a chance to see the Queen in real life. I was happy to know the Queen was still there alive and well.

Anyway, when she came to officiate the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, I did get a glimpse of the Queen for the first time in my life. I had to strain my eyes peering at her through a pair of night binoculars a few meters away from the Royal Box.

She is 95 now and I read in the news that she was making preparations to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee of 70 years on the throne.

Reports say she had started her celebrations in a subdued manner at her Sandringham estate in eastern England. I had seen that estate too at a distance once when I was invited to visit an English gentleman’s family home in a nearby town in the 1970s because I was dating their lovely daughter.

They were hoping I would propose to her but I was more interested in the estate on the horizon and the Queen in her castle.

I would like to think that our shouts that night in 1953 for the Queen and a kid’s prayers at a tiny village in Alor Setar somehow did help prolong her life and her reign on the English throne.

Although she’s no longer our Queen my friends and I who were at that event in 1953 still love her all the same.

Long Live Queen Elizabeth II.

Mihar Dias is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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