By Jagdesh Singh | Opinion |
At my age, true absolute horror is learning about the death of a young person leaving behind distraught parents and siblings shocked at the sudden loss. Even more horrific if the young person is murdered. Harming another human universally gets a natural reaction from loved ones asking for justice no matter the circumstances. Ending that human’s life forcefully demands for justice by any means possible.
Authorities are investigating and hunting down the perpetrators who murdered this young woman. I have faith justice will prevail and whoever did this will be treated accordingly. At this point, faith and hope is all I have for the authorities to take action, for the sake of her family going through this torturous and hellish time. I cannot imagine anything else worse and I do not wish it even upon anyone I have grievances with.
As a father of 3 girls, news like this has a strong impact on me. Especially when the deceased is of the same age as my eldest. It terrifies me that our girls, our wives, our sisters are not safe in our society today, in this day and age. It makes me paranoid and will somehow inevitably heighten my fears and anxiety whenever they’re not at home safe close to me and my wife. They’re at the age where they will need to be away from home to grow as adults, be it studying abroad or socializing locally.
But how long can we live in fear? I’ve already got a curfew for them, much to their chagrin — with their freedom, being outside ‘lepaking’ with their friends at the local ‘mamak’ — stifled. I mean I used to spend hours late at night out at these shady mamaks when I was their age, so why treat them differently? Yes, I am aware that my sex is different from theirs. But does that even matter nowadays? My better half and I had decided long ago to bring up these girls being treated as equally as possible to the boys. So, I can’t be a hypocrite now and treat them as the weaker fairer sex.
How late is ‘late’ for curfew? What difference does it make if curfew is at 10pm or at 12am or at 1am? I struggle with this especially when horrific news like this murder heightens my paranoia while I try to be fair with my daughters.
There’s only so much we can do to ensure the safety of our girls from the horrors of modern society. You could argue that modern society should really be safer with so many technological advances over the years that enable us to monitor closer and react faster during emergencies. But when news like this breaks out, I realize that our girls are no more safer than when I was their age in the 90s.
My late mother often repeated this to me when I was much younger and was afraid of the dark, my imagination on what lurks in the shadows is strong at work – “Mama isn’t scared of ghosts lah. Mama is more scared of evil humans out there wanting to hurt me”.
At some point, I resigned myself to the fact that we can only continue to teach them about independence just like how we’ve been doing it all their lives. But we also continue to teach them about vigilance, and the harsh reality that it’s a dangerous world out there. Continue to teach them that they cannot let their guard down, that there are people who can be vicious and malicious without any reason they can understand.
I know this is contradictory to the more basic humane lessons that they need as well. Like treating every human with dignity, and trusting that the human nature of not wanting to hurt us should be stronger than to hurt us. I believe we continue the course on par with this, but our girls need to also know that they are going to practise all this while living in a dangerous and perilous world. In my line of work, we call it Risk Management. Trust but verify. Don’t be cynical and doubt everything every time but be careful and vigilant. This balance is very hard to achieve even at my age. We can only hope and pray that our girls strike this balance sooner than later in life.
For now, we pray for this girl’s family to be strong and resilient during this very dark period in their lives. May they get answers to questions that can give them a little peace.
Jagdesh Singh, a Kuala Lumpur-based executive with a US multinational company, is a father of three girls who are as opinionated as their mother
* This is the opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.
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