The day after I left Petronas for good in 2009, I sat down and read. In no time I found myself collapsing into a reading binge, or binge reading, you choose. I read, read, read, read, days on end. I tore open the wraps like a hungry wolf, downing two or three copies of the cold magazines in one helping. I had something like 126 more copies to go when I happened upon a feature on aging: a scientific study has revealed that degradation of memory power and thinking skills late in life can be prevented by regular sudoku, ballroom dancing and memorizing. I can accept sudoku and, grudgingly, ballroom dancing, but memorizing? A paradox of sorts. If you lose your memory, you've to memorize. So counter-intuitive, it's like, if you lose your appetite, you should eat more. What should be memorized? High on the recommend list was poems, song lyrics and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
I was actually struggling with a failing mind. Not mine, but my father's. We're losing him. His memory was patchy and he lived in lapses. He'd lost most, if not all, sense of proportion. Every action or inaction was flawed. Once he drifted out of my sister's home in PJ and I'd to recover him at the Sungai Way police station when he couldn't find his way back. A kind cabbie had sent him there when my old man flagged him for direction to Kg Laut, his home in Kelantan. Looking at him, I could almost feel all the emptiness. It's too late for him to memorize poems.
Maybe it's about time for me. I was already doing a lot of reading. It's just one additional step. Instead of read and read, it's read and read and retain. Reading the pompous and ponderous magazine is tough enough as it is, now I've to memorize it, just to keep my mind in operating condition. Please, Petronas, give me back my job and any bad boss. I don't want to be the first and the only person to memorize 150 issues of the Economist. I took a while to gather myself and finally settle for poetry, as recommended by the dreaded study. Poems are certainly prettier and friendlier. Some are devilishly easy to memorize, they come in ten lines of one gorgeous word per line. Example: Sepi, Sepi, Sepi. So easy. There's a Malay masterpiece with half-page of binary glory: "tak, tung, tak, tung". Still it all looked wishful and daunting as I couldn't bring myself to memorizing anything bigger than grocery lists. I was flicking through an old favourite "sajak-sajak pendatang" by Muhammad Hj Salleh when it suddenly dawned: why not memorize the "ultimate poetry", the Quran?
The start was slow and painful. Actually I didn't even know where to start. According to Obama, I was showing all the symptoms of poverty of ambition. Al Fatifah is cakewalk, then comes Surah Al Baqarah, a page turner (45 pages, 700 lines) in classic Arabic. No pictures, no pie charts. Lucky thing I'd the benefit of a training on lateral thinking by the thinking maestro Edward de Bono. Why follow the flow? I could start from the end and memorize shorter and snappy surah first. It should be easier and more motivating this way.
Not so fast. The going was still heavy, with the usual dithering and pussyfooting. I knew too well that a project without timeline and stiff fines will get delayed. The only projects that finish early are those with toll booths. In my case what's needed was probably a little something that could push the plot forward, so to speak. A turning point, or the killer nudge.
It came. I was doing my haj in November 2010 and my "project" bore the brunt due to tight schedule, rude crowds, noise, dust, strange food, huge Nigerians, and other excuses. Somehow in the morning of 10 November, after days of stalling, I finally managed to ace Surah Al Bayyinah (The Proof, eight verses, eight lines). That very evening, during the maghrib prayer, the grand imam came on and recited loud and clear.......Al Bayyinah. God, what's this. The odds of this happening are something like 1 in 1200, or less than 0.1%. This might well be pure coincidence or statistical quirk, but it's all the proof I needed. I was, to say the least, overjoyed, inspired and all fired up to push on. No targets, no timeline.
What's the point of all this, you wonder. Let's be clear, I'm not trying to compete with Ustaz Haslin Bollywood. Or trying to show off or something. Thing is, there's nothing to show or shout about. People memorize the whole Quran at twelve or earlier in less than two years. I started at 57. I'm into the 28th juzuk after two and a half years. Don't panic. I started from the back, remember. So it's only my third juzuk, about 45 pages, only 7% of the whole Book. If I soldier on at this santai speed, I'll be done earliest in 2041, still ahead of Kajang-KL LRT line. No, that's grandiose. Seriously, I'll be more than happy with 20%.
Memorizing is fun. This is what I want to pass on. You've to believe me. You should try it today. Just do it anywhere: traffic jams, LRT, Firefly flights, performance meetings, Malaysian Super League games. Put on your Beats By Dr Dre knock-offs for style and impact. You'll get high and plenty of kicks and chemical reaction at the end of every page you memorize. You'll waltz your way through a tapestry of God's graceful words and verses, flowing prose and rhyming lines. No pain here, only pure pleasure. Along the way, you'll pick up Arabic, and, if you're talented enough, you could create your own signature tune. Or two tunes, an uptempo for daytime traffic and slower one for romantic nights. Hit a few bars to calm down your eager husbands. My tone is dead flat day and night, prompting friends to suggest that it's good enough for reading weather forecasts.
Ah, my old man. He passed away in his sleep early this year. I owe him everything. I'm sure he likes what I'm doing.
I was actually struggling with a failing mind. Not mine, but my father's. We're losing him. His memory was patchy and he lived in lapses. He'd lost most, if not all, sense of proportion. Every action or inaction was flawed. Once he drifted out of my sister's home in PJ and I'd to recover him at the Sungai Way police station when he couldn't find his way back. A kind cabbie had sent him there when my old man flagged him for direction to Kg Laut, his home in Kelantan. Looking at him, I could almost feel all the emptiness. It's too late for him to memorize poems.
Maybe it's about time for me. I was already doing a lot of reading. It's just one additional step. Instead of read and read, it's read and read and retain. Reading the pompous and ponderous magazine is tough enough as it is, now I've to memorize it, just to keep my mind in operating condition. Please, Petronas, give me back my job and any bad boss. I don't want to be the first and the only person to memorize 150 issues of the Economist. I took a while to gather myself and finally settle for poetry, as recommended by the dreaded study. Poems are certainly prettier and friendlier. Some are devilishly easy to memorize, they come in ten lines of one gorgeous word per line. Example: Sepi, Sepi, Sepi. So easy. There's a Malay masterpiece with half-page of binary glory: "tak, tung, tak, tung". Still it all looked wishful and daunting as I couldn't bring myself to memorizing anything bigger than grocery lists. I was flicking through an old favourite "sajak-sajak pendatang" by Muhammad Hj Salleh when it suddenly dawned: why not memorize the "ultimate poetry", the Quran?
The start was slow and painful. Actually I didn't even know where to start. According to Obama, I was showing all the symptoms of poverty of ambition. Al Fatifah is cakewalk, then comes Surah Al Baqarah, a page turner (45 pages, 700 lines) in classic Arabic. No pictures, no pie charts. Lucky thing I'd the benefit of a training on lateral thinking by the thinking maestro Edward de Bono. Why follow the flow? I could start from the end and memorize shorter and snappy surah first. It should be easier and more motivating this way.
Not so fast. The going was still heavy, with the usual dithering and pussyfooting. I knew too well that a project without timeline and stiff fines will get delayed. The only projects that finish early are those with toll booths. In my case what's needed was probably a little something that could push the plot forward, so to speak. A turning point, or the killer nudge.
It came. I was doing my haj in November 2010 and my "project" bore the brunt due to tight schedule, rude crowds, noise, dust, strange food, huge Nigerians, and other excuses. Somehow in the morning of 10 November, after days of stalling, I finally managed to ace Surah Al Bayyinah (The Proof, eight verses, eight lines). That very evening, during the maghrib prayer, the grand imam came on and recited loud and clear.......Al Bayyinah. God, what's this. The odds of this happening are something like 1 in 1200, or less than 0.1%. This might well be pure coincidence or statistical quirk, but it's all the proof I needed. I was, to say the least, overjoyed, inspired and all fired up to push on. No targets, no timeline.
What's the point of all this, you wonder. Let's be clear, I'm not trying to compete with Ustaz Haslin Bollywood. Or trying to show off or something. Thing is, there's nothing to show or shout about. People memorize the whole Quran at twelve or earlier in less than two years. I started at 57. I'm into the 28th juzuk after two and a half years. Don't panic. I started from the back, remember. So it's only my third juzuk, about 45 pages, only 7% of the whole Book. If I soldier on at this santai speed, I'll be done earliest in 2041, still ahead of Kajang-KL LRT line. No, that's grandiose. Seriously, I'll be more than happy with 20%.
Memorizing is fun. This is what I want to pass on. You've to believe me. You should try it today. Just do it anywhere: traffic jams, LRT, Firefly flights, performance meetings, Malaysian Super League games. Put on your Beats By Dr Dre knock-offs for style and impact. You'll get high and plenty of kicks and chemical reaction at the end of every page you memorize. You'll waltz your way through a tapestry of God's graceful words and verses, flowing prose and rhyming lines. No pain here, only pure pleasure. Along the way, you'll pick up Arabic, and, if you're talented enough, you could create your own signature tune. Or two tunes, an uptempo for daytime traffic and slower one for romantic nights. Hit a few bars to calm down your eager husbands. My tone is dead flat day and night, prompting friends to suggest that it's good enough for reading weather forecasts.
Ah, my old man. He passed away in his sleep early this year. I owe him everything. I'm sure he likes what I'm doing.
