I have known Shidah for a very long time.. since secondary one, in fact. We were both in 1-5, supposedly the best class in school back then, and there were only three of us Malay kids: Shidah, Aishah (whose 272 PSLE aggregate placed her as the top Malay scorer then, but surprisingly, she chose to go to a neighbourhood school) and myself. As expected, we grew pretty close (it was us against the cheenas!!! haha) but after our 'O' Level exams, everyone went their separate ways, never looking back. Those were the days when unlimited broadband and cable were still unimaginable and mobile phones were a luxury, not the norm. Pagers were still in, I believe. Then, through another ex-school mate, Siti, who I bumped into at uni, Shidah and I got in touch with each other again and on occasion, we'd meet with a couple of other old alums of our secondary school, to reminisce about the good old days when students never talked back to their teachers.
This evening, Shidah will be flying off to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam with her beloved family. I pray that she will complete her pilgrimage safely, with no untoward events to mar her memories of her sacred journey.
"Nanti sampi sana, doakanlah, biar saya jadi millionaire soon..." I told her in jest, at our meeting yesterday.
"Insyaallah; tapi kalau tak beriman, apa gunanya kekayaan?" she responded with that knowing twinkle in her eye.
It's funny how all of us just keeps growing in different directions. Ex-school chums committing themselves to marriage, having babies, embracing parenthood, etc. There are even some others, who have passed on, charting their lives no longer.
"We are the captains of our own ships" -- Chuatee used to say (it's amazing the number of times she has appeared within these blogpages! Has she really affected me that much??) and I gravely suspect, there is a lot more truth in those words than I'd dare to admit. Frankly, there have been some years in my life when I've been living in darkness and total uncertainty. Now, with God's will, there is some light in the gloom, and I could see that the path ahead of me is rather meandering, with sharp bends and some not-too-easy obstacles.
Looking back, not once in my entire, innocent, teenage life did I expect to traverse by this path. I must confess that as a youth, I've secretly longed for a career in writing, where there'd be plenty of opportunities for me to touch lives with the power and craft of the written word. Even back in uni, I was the only idiot probably who chose cross-faculty modules from the English lit department; following my heart, not my brain. Thankfully, I managed to obtain decent enough grades but due to a marked lack of background in the relevant subjects, I was mostly like a cripple in those classes.
My love of writing, I finally realized, can only manifest itself as a personal interest, not a livelihood. Of course, this revelation disheartened me somewhat, but on the other hand, I was also determined not to spend the rest of my life cooped up in some laboratory, examining microscopic organisms, finding the next cure for cancer, HIV or SARS or avian-flu or other human-life-threatening disease. I don't have such heroic pretensions. Haha.
So here I am.
"Saya doakan kamu dilimpahkan rezeki yang banyak semoga kamu pula yang pergi haji nanti..." read Shidah's last text message last night.
Insyaallah. Where my path leads me to, only God knows.
