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By Mihar Dias July 2026
Before the British left Malaya, they gave us railways, a civil service, the English language, and, perhaps by accident, a national addiction to titles. We have since improved on their invention. We industrialised it.
Some countries produce semiconductors. We produce Datuks.
Imagine the scene.
You are back in Alor Setar after decades away. Sultan Abdul Hamid College is still there, but time has marched on. The legendary Aboo of Mamak Mee Rebus, who once fed generations of hungry students from his stall outside the school, is gone. Nobody remembers you. The town has politely erased your existence.
Then, out of nowhere, an old classmate recognises you.
“Hoi, Din, apa macam?”
You expect a slap on the back, followed by stories about skipped classes and disastrous examinations.
Instead, he stiffens.
“Sorry, you can't greet me like that anymore. I'm a Dato'.”
Not “How have you been?”
Not “Long time no see.”
Straight to constitutional protocol.
One almost expects a palace aide to emerge from behind a nasi kandar stall carrying a scroll detailing the correct forms of address.
The poor fellow greeting him probably thought he had bumped into the Yang di-Pertuan Negeri by mistake.
The comedy is not the title.
The comedy is the software update.
Somewhere along the journey from schoolboy to retirement, this perfectly ordinary human being downloaded Version 2.0 of himself.
Back in school, he was just Din.
Now he is Dato' Din.
Please update your operating system.
This is not a prince descended from ancient Malay royalty.
His father, by all accounts, was a respectable police sergeant.
He worked hard, earned a scholarship, obtained a degree in Malay Studies from the University of Malaya, joined the Kedah civil service, climbed the ranks, became a member of the prestigious Kedah Golf Club, and even enjoyed the rare privilege of playing golf with His Royal Highness the Sultan.
Wonderful.
Good for him.
That is called success.
But somewhere between the eighteenth hole and the clubhouse, success quietly packed its bags and ego took over.
Suddenly every conversation becomes an annual report.
Scholarship.
Degree.
Government service.
Golf club membership.
Played golf with the Sultan.
One waits for the waiter to ask whether he would also like to list his handicap.
The transformation reminds me of construction sites.
Yesterday he was one of the workers carrying cement.
Today he has been promoted to mandor.
Not manager.
Not director.
Mandor.
Immediately the walk changes.
The voice deepens.
The instructions multiply.
“Sekarang sikit atas, boss.”
A magnificent promotion of approximately eighteen inches.
The fascinating thing about genuine achievement is that it rarely needs advertising.
Really accomplished people usually spend more time asking about you than talking about themselves.
The insecure, on the other hand, travel with their résumé permanently switched on.
Malaysia has become wonderfully creative in measuring social elevation.
Some collect luxury watches.
Others collect honorary prefixes.
One title becomes two.
Two become three.
Business cards become wider.
Wedding invitations become longer.
Eventually the name occupies one line while the honorifics require three paragraphs.
If this trend continues, passports will need additional pages just for names.
The saddest part of the story is not that someone became a Dato'.
It is that an old friendship became collateral damage.
School friendships are among life's rarest treasures because they were formed before promotions, titles, pensions and golf handicaps.
Your classmates knew you before the hair disappeared and the waistline expanded.
They remember you borrowing homework.
They know your embarrassing nickname.
No medal can erase those memories.
Or at least, it shouldn't.
The classmate who recounted this encounter has decided never to meet him again.
Perhaps that is for the best.
Because if forty years of shared memories can be defeated by one honorific, maybe the friendship had already retired long before the civil servant did.
The moral?
Wear your medals on your chest if you must.
Wear your titles on your business card if protocol requires.
But when an old school friend shouts, "Hoi, Din, apa macam?" and your first instinct is to demand constitutional recognition instead of giving him a hug, perhaps the title has not elevated you.
It has merely raised your nose several inches above your old classmates.
And that, unlike a Datukship, is an honour nobody ever confers.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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