SARIKEI REVISITED

I just realized that my last many postings have all been related to the recent general elections. I really should try to take my mind off that even if the debris in its aftermath have not settled down, and are not showing any sign they will any time soon, making the post-general elections scenario somewhat uncertain. But, enough, no more general elections talk for this posting …

At some late stage when friends get together to reminisce, often we hear laments of how “children today are not like when we were children” or “the present students are no longer the same as when we were students” or “today’s generation is so unlike ours” or “how very different the place was then” or “things are not what they used to be”, and many, many more!

All, of course, are true. After all everything changes and with time everything becomes a little, if not altogether different. The thing about the past, though, is that everything always seems to be better and nicer compared to today; and seemingly the farther back the more so. Somehow things of the distant past seem to exude such magic making them seem so appealing and interesting – well, mostly.

Perhaps this appeal of the past has really little to do with the present. Perhaps the mind has a way of filtering out the negative emotions retaining only the beautiful memories and warm nostalgia, magnified over time making the past more attractive than it actually was. Perhaps too, the increasing blank spots would need to be filled to create recall – and filling them with joyous emotions is probably the most logical thing for the mind to do.

I think that was what happened to me some weeks back when I visited Sarikei after so long. Today, the town is four times bigger, the shops better stocked and freshly painted, and the decrepit police station I knew is now a modern beautiful building with its entrance now facing the river. The river-front itself has been nicely spruced up with partial embankment and rows of palm trees, and no longer just a dangerous untidy steep bank plunging into the swirling yellow water. All the roads are well surfaced, very different from the narrow potholed and dusty stretches they once were; and there are no more stray dogs running loose in the streets – and the public toilets are clean.

All in all Sarikei has been transformed into a beautiful, thriving, and really neat town that is way better than the one I knew and briefly lived in a long time back. Yet as I stood there looking at the neat empty lot where the mess once stood, I actually longed for the old Sarikei!

By the way, the BN won in Sarikei – but by a mere whisker of a majority of just over 50 votes or so! This can mean trouble for the BN the next time around. I wonder how many spoilt votes there were… ... oops!