Recently, you might have heard about a corn seller in Sepang who did not want to sell his corn to Indians.
If it was bad enough that he decided to exclusively exclude Indians from being his customer base, how he expressed his exclusionist desires caused a minor controversy to erupt on social media.
“Sorry, ini jagung tiada jual sama orang K****g” the corn hawker made a notice and posted it on his stall.
What he did reminded me of the movie Die Hard 3, where John McClane, a New York cop, will be forced by blackmailers to wear a sign that says “I hate n*****s” in Harlem, which almost got him killed.
Thankfully, Malaysia is not Harlem, because instead of finding himself deeply in trouble, all that the corn seller had to do was publicly apologise and retract his statement, and the matter seemed that it was about to be put to rest.
"I admit I was wrong. I apologise to all Malaysians, especially to the Indian community.
"This incident happened unintentionally. There were no bad intentions on my part. I didn't realise that it had negative connotations. Now that I've been made aware, I know what I did was wrong," the corn seller said in his apology video.
From a logical point of view, I am sure all of us can see that the corn seller’s apology is filled with plot holes.
It is of course doubtful that what the corn seller did was something that happened unintentionally without him knowing that it was offensive. How can anyone post such a derogatory notice without having intentions to be offensive?
However, I also feel that once the corn seller had decided to retract his notice and offer his apology, most of us had simply chosen to overlook the matter, simply because most of us are aware that although what the corn seller did was wrong, it was not that unexpected or shocking, against the backdrop of what we have to deal in our regular course of life.
Life as a commoner in Malaysia is not always a walk in the park . Sometimes when a person is having a hard time in their life, they might lash out against their surroundings, and in Malaysia, their lashing out might sometimes take on a racial dimension.
In Malaysia, no one is a saint, but most of us are not monsters either. If every once in a while, you get subjected to a negative experience, the best possible way to move forward, might indeed be to just accept that you hardly are perfect yourself, and forgive others for their flaws as a human being so that you can forgive yourself for your flaws as well.
Thinking in this way, I thought that since the corn sellers had apologised and exorcised himself from the "racist spirits" that had "possessed" him with a “racist viewpoint”, in a way that made him say and do things that were harmful to himself and others around him, why not let bygones be bygones and move on.
The corn seller, after all, is not a prominent figure in society, for his action to be taken as an example by many.
We have over 30 million people in our country. If we expect everyone we meet in our daily life to meet our approval, we are going to be deeply dissapointed with life.
However, imagine my surprise that despite me, being an Indian, being willing to put aside the matter and move on with life after the corn seller brought down his sign and apologised for putting it up, Akmal Saleh, of all people, has taken offense on my behalf and has come out to advocate for the corn seller to be made an example of .
“Regardless of who the perpetrator is, legal measures should be taken to set an example for others.
“Otherwise, this culture of doing something wrong, then apologizing, will only become more widespread, and these individuals will continue to get away with it!” Akmal Saleh posted on Facebook, demanding that the corn seller face punishment for his antics.
I don’t know whether it was due to Akmal’s urging, but yesterday (February 17), the police have decided to arrest not only the corn seller, but also his wife.
Why his wife?
Well supposedly, in the course of investigating the corn seller for “sedition, misuse of network facilities, and making statements intended to cause public fear or alarm”, the police also found out that the corn seller’s wife, who was probably a foreigner, had also overstayed in the country.
It seems like it nothing is working in favour of the corn seller in recent days. First he got into trouble with the Indians, then he got into trouble with the police and now he has gotten his wife in trouble as well.
If there is one thing that I am finding myself missing, after I read about this storm in a teacup involving this corn seller and his racist rant, is the the good old days when racism was dealt with in a much simpler manner.
Back then, if a person was lashing out against against anyone in a racist manner, everybody around them will assume that their behaviour represents them, instead of assuming that their behaviour represents everyone else, until they become ashamed of themselves and modified their behaviour.
Today however, when a person lashes out in a racist manner, everybody will make it sound as if their behaviour is symptomatic of larger problem that affects the society at large, and prompt even the likes of Akmal Saleh to join in the fray and attempt to fix society at large.
I must also say that it is a strange experience for me to drastically shift my views about Akmal Saleh after this corn seller kerfuffle, and suddenly see him as an Indian hero or a champion of multiculturalism, who feels our pain like it is his pain, after being accustomed to seeing him the way that I had been accustomed of seeing him since the KK Mart socks issue erupted, and brought him into national prominence.
All this is making me see clearer why the younger generations seem to complain much more about mental health problems than the older generation.
When the things you deal with are so bewildering, that one day you have one sort of view about someone like Akmal Saleh and the next day you are forced to see him in completely different light, you might start to question your grasp of reality, to the point that you might feel like your mental health is affected.
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