{"id":398,"date":"2013-11-07T08:07:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T00:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/?p=398"},"modified":"2014-08-18T02:11:45","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T18:11:45","slug":"letter-lets-learn-to-respect-one-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/?p=398","title":{"rendered":"Letter: Let’s learn to respect one another"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my letter, featured by The Star<\/a>\u00a0on 5th Nov 2013.<\/p>\n

Let’s learn to respect one another<\/h2>\n

WHEN I was six years old, living in Pontian, Johor, my neighbour was an Indian family.<\/p>\n

Maniam was a cendol seller and his daughter Sugami, who was 13 years old, was very bubbly and friendly.<\/p>\n

She was close to me and she considered me as her sister as she was the only child. She was very protective.<\/p>\n

Her watchful eyes would observe me like a hawk and she would run after me when I absent-mindedly sprinted across the dusty kampung roads, trying to catch whatever insect that caught my interest.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

As my parents were in the medical line, their working hours were irregular so sometimes, my mom would remind Sugami to watch over me as I spent my time with my grandma.<\/p>\n

We would play \u201cmasak-masak\u201d or \u201cteng teng\u201d. Sometimes, I watched her read her books aloud, admiring how intelligent she was for being able to read so well. It was so easy to impress a kid.<\/p>\n

Every Monday and Wednesday, she would accompany me to Muqaddam classes over at my neighbour\u2019s house, a stone\u2019s throw from my grandma\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

She would pick me up after the classes and send me home safely.<\/p>\n

Being a kid there were times I felt lazy but she would reprimand me and tell me that I needed to learn.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, I would hang out at Sugami\u2019s house and her parents would give me goodies like murukku and idli and delicious cendol.<\/p>\n

However, when I was eight years old, Maniam moved to Negri Sembilan and that was the last time I met Sugami.<\/p>\n

She taught me that love and compassion did not depend on your religion, the colour of your skin or how much money you make in a year.<\/p>\n

Maybe I was too young to understand the significance of this but when I hear my mom retelling this story, the memories come flooding back. I remember how I cried when Sugami left and how much impact she had on me, a small Malay Muslim kid who grew up to be an educator.<\/p>\n

When I look back at my childhood and reflect on how Malaysians treated one another, I wish more Malaysians realise that if we don\u2019t learn to respect one another, if we don\u2019t learn to tolerate, if we stop loving one another because we are of a different race or religion, we will end up being heartless intellectuals who see things from our own dogmatic perspective and not from our instincts as mere mortals.<\/p>\n

To all my Indian teachers, lecturers, neighbours, friends, students and Malaysians, I wish you Deepavali Vathukkal.<\/p>\n

Let us all respect one another and learn to love and never to hate.<\/p>\n

NOR FADZLEEN SA\u2019DON<\/strong><\/p>\n

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my letter, featured by The Star\u00a0on 5th Nov 2013. Let’s learn to respect one another WHEN I was six years old, living in Pontian, Johor, my neighbour was an Indian family. Maniam was a cendol seller and his daughter Sugami, who was 13 years old, was very bubbly and friendly. She was close […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[60,71,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malaysia","category-merdeka","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p50s1P-6q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fadzleen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}