Story by Vasu Subrahmanyam

The poet T.S. Eliot was wrong. For Malaysians, the month after April is, in fact, the cruelest month.

Whether May 13 or 9, it has become the month of retelling stories of crushed hopes and preserved pain, pressed ever so delicately, between the pages of mind and memory.

It has been two years since that fateful Saturday when serpentine lines formed outside polling stations, inching forward to finally awake from a never-ending nightmare of diminishing hopes… for change.

The anticipation of victory was palpable as strangers smiled knowingly at each other while awaiting their turn to cast their hopes. It was felt on the streets, in shops and stalls, across fences, online.

After victory was eluded in 2008 and 2013, when the ramparts were almost broken, 2018 seemed different. For the first time since 1957, a unifying symbol of public disdain – a loathsome name, synonymous with a dignified pejorative starting with “K” and anecdotes about unbelievable ostentation – fuelled the final thrust to force a change.

Stoking the long-smouldering embers was an old hand – a familiar face whose legendary energy and focus at an impossible age only added to the mystique of an avenging warrior and generated sympathetic cries among the masses. Around him were other known faces in various shades of grey – all seemingly united in intent and interest.

The final moments of that interminable dawn on May 10 were dreamlike and fleeting. Uncertainty first, then rumours. Then finally, as clocks across the nation struck 8am, whoops of delight echoed in succession across most neighbourhoods. The impossible happened. Hope prevailed, and an uncertain beginning beckoned.

There were celebrations to come even as stories were retold about the sacrifices made and heroes who emerged. But in the following days, a cryptic and daunting new world of a truly multiethnic governance would give everyone new cause for concern. That was then.

Seeing these images now, after that fateful weekend in February when secretly sharpened self-interest and blunt-edged ambition shattered hopes to emerge supreme, there is only the renewed pain of betrayal. Of two-faced deception. Of emptiness, heartache and despair. Unconscionable in every way. The familiar faces that, until recently, meant flickering hope for new beginnings, now evoke nothing but familiar pain, of distilled contempt. And derision.

Who would have thought that the cure for this sickening sense of abandonment would be a virus so potent that even the newly crowned would feel cheated, denied and constrained?

Who will continue to hold on to hope, which has slowly seeped through clutched fingers over 18 months? Who among us will try to piece together the heap of broken promises, ideas and beliefs for a better nation, discarded in the dust of our dreams? – May 11, 2020.