Untuk Cikgu yang sangat dihormati (by Dawn Morais, 2016)

SBJ always spoke very highly of his former University of Malaya student, Dawn Morais now in Honolulu, Hawaii. It turns out the feelings are mutual. Dawn subsequently dedicated a whole chapter on SBJ's contribution to Malaysian literature in her PhD thesis. She wrote this piece after listening to some the recently-posted 'smart phone' recordings of SBJ reading poetry on his home verandah.

I just listened to a recent recording of Salleh Ben Joned reading from two of his poems. Hearing that familiar voice, the same boyish chuckle, the sly irreverence, was like traveling in a time machine. I was back on the campus of the University of Malaya as an undergraduate, listening to Salleh teach us, by example, how to break the rules!

It says something about Salleh’s gifts as a teacher, that despite being a fairly conventional Catholic student who took few risks, if any, I found lessons for a lifetime in the things he said and did – some of which have become the stuff of urban legend. Except the legends are (mostly) true! To this day, I cannot read the poetry and prose that came out of his self-confessed “stinking big mouth” without both laughing and agreeing.

Nearly four decades after I first entered his classroom as an undergraduate, and worked behind the scenes with him as he directed our student production of Brecht’s “A Man’s a Man,” I remain deeply grateful that Malaysia has been blessed with a voice - a Malay voice - that speaks for who we can be as Malaysians. It is an earthy, devil-may-care voice that no amount of censorship can ever silence because too many Malaysians have heard it, and responded to it, and own it as theirs to treasure and share.

Sajak-sajak Salleh give us hope that we are better than our pemimpin tell us we are. His defiant poems and essays mock the idea that we are not supposed to use the “akal yang di beri oleh Tuhan” (God-given intelligence) for anything other than “cari makan” (making a living). Next to the mind-numbing processed cheese of the “Malaysia Truly Asia” tourism campaigns, he gives us a rich spread of pungent introspection and salty observation. He is a gift and a guide who goes off the officially approved track to give all who want to know and understand the Malaysia that lies beneath the shame-covers and the faux piety of our so-called leaders - a glimpse of what we once were, and could be again.

Yes, we were a “kebudayaan rojak’ - with all its tangy complications. Salleh Ben Joned’s work is a key that helps unlock the cells of ethnic isolation that politicians keep trying to trap us in. He is the antidote to the tedium of what passes for making a living. He challenges us to get beyond “menjilat jari” (finger licking) as we eat “Ayam Kentucky” and drown in the mindlessness of TV. He points to the spice we could all put back into our lives if we stop accepting what is handed to us; if we allow ourselves to think, and breathe and walk into each other’s homes without fear of tainting ourselves with the touch of our neighbors and the aroma of their kitchens, and what’s cooking in their pots. It smells good, and tastes even better. We would be a better country and a better people if we would only, once again, allow ourselves to sit down and eat with our neighbors as we once did. Salleh writes to make us remember. Because forgetting is fatal.

~ DAWN MORAIS