Excerpt #11: A Much-Needed Break!

Excerpt # 11:  A Much-Needed Break!

M. Bakri Musa (www.bakrimusa.com)

My first extended weekend off was for Chinese New Year that February, only a few weeks after I had started work. Mahmud was kind enough to cover for me and I took my family back to Seremban for a much-needed break.

            That late Friday afternoon as soon as I reached my parents’ home, I crashed, waking up only for meals. I was exhausted. Karen was familiar with this pattern of my behavior during my residency days, especially after I had a busy weekend. My parents however, had never seen me like that before. They thought I was sick and Karen showed no concern!

            My new work flow may have become smooth but the transition, unbeknown to me, carried a heavy price, and borne entirely by me. I had been carrying the extra load by myself by being available 24/7. With the excitement of my new job, I had not realized the toll that it took on me.

            That long weekend break was just what I needed. It recharged my battery. Back to work that following Tuesday I was raring to go again. Some of my interns, especially the Chinese, were still sluggish, hungover from the weekend’s festivities. However, with my charging from behind, everything was back to its original fast pace in short order.

            With the clinical activities now under control, it was time to initiate a formal teaching program to befit a university unit. Up till then there were no seminars or lectures except for a weekly radiology conference. It was informal, with the radiologists going over the films and us clinicians listening in silence, with the occasional queries for clarifications.

            The head of the department was Dr. Hussain Ghani. At my first appearance for his conference he mistook me for a junior medical officer and began quizzing me like one. Zul interrupted and introduced me to him, as well as to Mr. Balasegaram, head of the second surgical unit.

            Bala was a Hunterian Professor, a high academic honor bestowed by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. I complimented him; he beamed. He smiled even more when I told him that I had read many of his excellent papers. He was an expert on liver resections and had invented the Bala clamp to control liver bleeding during surgery.

            I did not know Dr. Hussain. At the end of that first conference he cornered me and could not apologize enough. He told me how pleased he was to see me, another consultant who was a Malay. There was only one other at the hospital, Dr. Noor Maharakim, later honored as “Father of Malaysian Ophthalmology.”

            Dr. Noor used to live in Seremban only a few doors away from my parents in a modest neighborhood. He could have afforded a luxury bungalow in an exclusive part of town. He was also very charitable, contributing generously to his local surauthat both he and my father attended. My father would never fail to apprise him of my progress in Canada. When I introduced myself to him sometime during that first morning I was at GHKL, he already knew a lot about me from my parents.

            Back to Dr. Hussain; he was so eager to talk to me after the conference as if desperate to make amends to what he thought was his earlier slight. He began asking where I was from and who my parents were, all attempts to place me in the local social hierarchy. He took me to his private office and began reminiscing about his days as a medical student in Singapore and how he had very few Malay classmates. He did most of the talking. I felt that he was taking me under his wing, my self-appointed mentor. He sounded mellow and benign enough, like a faraway uncle who had been spared your daily juvenile tantrums and now desperate to make up for lost times.

            Then, in parting, “Bakri, don’t try to be a hero. Do your job well; don’t worry about being recognized.”

            I did not know what to make of his parting comment. Then I noticed the bare sign on his door, unlike Menon’s with a “Datuk” in front of his name and a series of non-academic initials following. I also noted the similar bareness with Dr. Noor Maharakim’s door. I thought that their being the first few Malays in medicine and having excelled, our society would have recognized their achievements if for nothing else so as to encourage others.[1]

            Today, two or three generations later, Malay leaders are still lamenting the lack of Malays in the sciences and the professions. Yet when we peruse the nation’s honor list, the one thing that stands out is that we continually honor the crooked and the corrupt amongst us. Former Prime Minister Najib Razak still trots around the country with no sense of shame touting his “Malu apa bossku?” (What’s there to be ashamed of with my boss?”), conveniently forgetting that he is enmeshed in the world’s most expensive financial scandal that is still winding its way through the country’s sluggish court system.

            My wise village folks have an apt observation to describe this major lapse of our culture, of valuing plastic trinkets over geniune gems. Or as my village elders used to put it, Pasir berkilau disangkakan intan(mistaking the glint of a pebble for the sparkle of a diamond).

Today, barely a generation or two later, Malay society is paying a severe price for having ignored the rare gems in our society, individuals like the late Drs. Hussain Ghani and Noor Maharakim.  [Note:  Both were later honored upon their retirement.]

From the author’s second memoir, The Son Has Not Returned.  A Surgeon In His Native Malaysia(2018).

Next: Excerpt #12:  Starting A Formal Teaching Program

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[1]Both Drs. Hussain and Noor Maharakim were later honored with their Datukship; likewise, Mahmud.