It was 1995. I was in Form 4, in a girls’ secondary school in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. A few months into the year, I was selected along with a couple of other students (I think there were 20 of us in total), to lead the field performance for the National Day celebrations in Dataran Merdeka.
I was ecstatic as it meant skipping classes. I was 16 and could not care less about lessons (probably something I slightly regret until now as I failed at the time to foresee the amount of homework I would have to work on). I also felt an immense pride to be able to contribute to something as grand as the yearly Hari Kebangsaan celebrations.
Practice was held in Convent Bukit Nanas secondary school, and our trainers were Nona and Nina, twins who were indescribably nice but stern. We met with students from various schools and made many new friends. It was also the first time I stepped into the gates of CBN.
After the training for trainers, we then had to go back to train our peers. A few weeks after that, if memory serves me correctly, all of us headed to Sekolah Menengah Cochrane where we had practice with all the schools that were taking part. We learnt that our performance had the underlying theme of unity and that got us more enthusiastic. It was also there where we met with students of all other religions and races whom we ultimately stood under the scorching sun together and sat in groups to eat egg sandwiches with a mere half a teaspoon of egg filling inside, and drink ridiculous amounts of bottled water; sometimes sharing a box of juice that was bought with money pooled between a few of us.
31st August 1995 eventually rolled around, and on that day, it did not matter if we were Malay, Chinese, India or lain-lain, or if we were wearing blue, red, yellow or white. All of us were on that field before 7 a.m., and we all got drenched by the heavy downpour while waiting for the Prime Minister to arrive. We had different colours of the Jalur Gemilang running down our necks, depending on our uniform colour, ultimately from the caps that we wore. That morning, we pulled fabrics of massive lengths, half of us jumping in and out to make sure visually the weaves looked beautiful from up above. The other half (me included!) had to stand static with the fabric over our heads, not heeding the pain our arms felt as we made sure the fabric we held were taut. At that point, no matter who your leader was, you listened to his or her counts of one, two, three all the way up to ten, and on repeat. One mistake and the weave would lose its pattern or sag! We never envied the flag bearers more at that point!
All of us heaved a sigh of relief when it was finally over. The months of teamwork, missing classes and getting yelled at had finally paid off. We went around looking for our new friends, asking for a way to keep in contact. Most of us exchanged landline numbers, the only way we could back then. We parted ways, but quite a few of us agreed to meet up at a fast-food restaurant not far from Dataran Merdeka to regroup and talk about the day. Plus, we were famished by then!
This event was a core memory for me. Not only was it a chance of a lifetime, but it was also at a time when the colour of your skin or what you believed in did not matter. Although between schools we always had had competition on which was the better school, whose girls or boys were smarter and the various other “nonsense”, but during that period, we worked together and put our differences aside. We also rejoiced in losing some weight!
Deep down, we knew we were Malaysians, and our duty was not only to make our school proud but also bring pride to the nation. In our own way.
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