The Longest Sunday.

It ends with fireworks.

I hear it outside. I hear the jubilee, and beyond that I hear the celebrations, imagined the joy and cheer and merrymaking, those that fill itself with night and stars and the great big bottles of beer.

It is 12.

It is The Celebration of Light.

And it is my pleasure in wishing everyone a Happy Deepavali; if you’re celebrating it, then my best regards and wishes, and if you’re just enjoying that extra bit of holiday then I say go out and have fun and fall in love, or keep loving, because you have time and parking is free.

I’m wool-gathering. Forgive me. The night is of such, and I’m trying to tell something that wouldn’t come immediately. Or, at least, I feel that going into it immediately wouldn’t come off as right or proper. Then again, you’d do better someplace else.

It’s a long post, as far as I see it now. And I haven’t actually started.

Where do I start?



I kept thinking… ruminating, more like, in a reminiscing sort of way, of what my brother would’ve said today. I’ve sat down and waited for him to sit beside me, where we would’ve been silent of a bit. And then he would’ve turned and said to me; “This is just how it is. One rock in that rivulet; one chink in the chain, and the whole process changes. And everything, norms or monotony or whatnot, becomes chaos.”

And he would’ve said it sagely, though he wouldn’t sound like one any day. He would’ve said it like he had forgotten he’s told me the same thing for more than 5 times now.

But 5 times or not, he would’ve been right. This is how it is. This is the reality of the world; how easily it crumbles, and how easily to look at the broken, unfixable path and say, but there’s where I’m going. Nope. The road always changes. It’s all about keeping to that right direction, and knowing where that exit is.

I’ve made it sound dramatic. It isn’t. It’s no biggie, I guess, and that perhaps would tell you to go away; you won’t find anything here. This is just rambling. Thoughts that I feel that I need to put down for no significant reason, aside from personal satisfaction.



It started with rice vermicelli in soup.

That was breakfast. Sunday’s breakfast. We haven’t had something else for a long time now, and that was fine by us. It was good, within that expectation that won’t likely break. And it was with its pleasantries. It was quiet.

And then we cleaned the store.

Here’s the thing about spring cleaning with the father. He gets grumpy and starts blaming everything else for the pile of junk we somehow ended up keeping. He’d accuse people for putting things away and forgetting it when its needed, and then he’d blame useless junk on other people. He’d forget that most of the junk was kept there by himself, or by his orders, and now that it’s piled up he’d clear off every fingers of accusations pointed towards him and frame it on everyone else. And then he’d say how much other people talk back to him. He believes in national democracy. He practices tyranny at home.

And after getting the store down we cleaned Gary’s aquarium, and all in total it robbed me four hours of my life.

I had bathed in cold water and was preparing to get started on a freelancing script when the phone rang, and said that the grandmother had somehow sprained her waist, which rendered her immobilised, and that she was in so much pain she couldn’t be carried to a car and now awaited an ambulance.

We got there and waited for the ambulance, and when it came the parents went on it and I trailed it on the Accent with 6th Aunt as company. It was the 6th time I ended up in Kajang Hospital, and I take that as something of a bad thing.

I am one of those people that dislike hospitals.

It’s not so much of the smell of sickness, or the medicine, or that looming shadow of death that hung low like a hairy mop in cheap thriller parks. For me, it is that feeling of unreality. It’s like walking into a place that was rightfully and blissfully hidden behind the stone walls, because the old people say that it is horrible and terrifying, and that we shouldn’t gaze upon it because it is otherworldly. I walk into it and find it a completely paradoxical world; I’d see nurses joking and laughing while pushing decrepit patience around on wheelchairs that squeak something in B minor. I’d see children running around and a man holding his urine sample to his chest, and then see the doctors with scrubs looking like theirs the hands of God. Then I’d meet doctors that are saintly in speech and care, and nurses that are too sombre for the life of them, and then that hurt women and burnt men and myself in the mirror, too utterly fine, too utterly fortunate.

I don’t like that feeling.

They made us wait for an hour, maybe two. And when we couldn’t wait anymore we walked into the emergency ward, disregarding that No Entry sign, to find my grandmother somewhat uncared for. All she had was just an injection. And then she was left there until people felt compelled enough to take her for an x-ray.

My grandmother is fine; she had a sprain, but the doctor warned that she, being older now, is starting to have weaker bones.

My grandmother is the greatest grandmother there is. I’ll tell everyone that, and I won’t be exaggerating. That, coupled with the fact that I cannot respect my grandfather beyond the point of obliged piety, makes her my single-most loved (living) grandparent.

We talked to the doctor, who said that my grandmother was free to go, but when we tried to help her up she hurt so much that the doctor suggested that we admit her for one night. We did that, and then regretted it, because the wards are… well, horrible. Perhaps I’m just being a jerk about it, but truly. It’s a horrible place. It’s a place that deserves better, could be better, but it is there, like limbo, like the stuff we can say we detest but truly cannot do without.

My first impression was a World War 2 infirmary. I’m being overtly histrionic. But impressions are impressions.

Here’s the part where it got ironic. We don’t want our grandmother (mother, in my mom and aunt’s case) there. And my grandmother actually got better; she could walk and it didn’t hurt as much. So we say, we want her out. It sounded like a kid wanting to a go at that Ride of Terror, and then realising that it’s all too scary, after the tickets are bought and the seatbelts fastened. We know we annoy, but that’s the thing to do, because it had to be done. Turned out that to discharge a patient from the wards we first require a doctor’s diagnosis, and then the green light. The doctor wanted a night for further observations. We said, no thanks. She said she would need us to sign a letter. And then she said her senior doctor wouldn’t allow that until the senior him/herself took a look first.

So we had to wait.

I’ll tell you that we waited until 11 at night and there the senior never showed up, and by then my grandmother was feeling so guilty for having bothered us this much that she insisted she stay for the night. That was when I got home, took a bath, and sat here, listening to fireworks.



I’m thinking now… imagining it, that my brother would be calling me gay for sitting here and writing into the night. He’d be calling me gay for quoting him somewhat, and I’ll call him a big asshole. Then he’d hit me and ask me to repeat that (and I would, and get hit again; some things never change). But I’ll see him wear that tired face into the bathroom, and then we’d probably end up talking into the night.

We’d talk about grandma and grandpa, about hospitals and doctors, about death and life and dreams. And then, when it’s late, we’d say goodnight and go to sleep.


I talk to a computer screen now. I told it about the longest Sunday.