Kam Raslan抯 Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato

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Talk of the blogs
THE success of Kam Raslan抯 Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato

mantan

jiwarasa dah bagi review buku ni kat blog dia, aku pun cadang nak beli bila balik nanti

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ulasan yg dibuat...

Kisah Datuk Hamid Budak Kolej
.
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Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures
Kam Raslan
272 halaman
Penerbit : Marshall Cavendish Editions;
Cetakan Pertama February 25, 2007
Harga : RM32.00




Tajuk dan ilustrasi buku ini hampir menipu saya. Sudah beberapa kali saya belek buku ini tetapi tidak sikit pun timbul keinginan untuk saya memilikinya. Pertamanya kerana saya menyangka buku ini adalah memoir seorang bernama Datuk Hamid, nama yang saya tidak kenal. Siapa pula Datuk Hamid ini, kata saya. Kalau ini adalah memoir Hamid Othman atau Hamid Zainal Abidin, saya tak minat nak baca. Saya sangkakan Datuk Hamid itu mungkin bapa atau saudara penulis dan mungkin buku ini mengisahkan sejarah hidup beliau yang juga bekas budak Kolej Melayu Kuala Kangsar. Pada saya, apa yang menarik sangat kisah seorang bekas budak Kolej?

Keduanya, kulit buku ini juga tidak langsung menarik minat saya. Macam buku kanak-kanak. Jika anda jenis yang suka mengadili buku dengan memandang kulit, buku ini sudah tentu awal-awal lagi tewas.

Namun, bagaimana mahu dikekang naluri ingin tahu, apabila membaca banyak komen tentang buku ini di media juga di blog. Ulasan yang menarik di blog Sharon Bakar telah memberikan gambaran sebenar tentang buku ini. Akhirnya saya capai dan beli buku ini di Kedai Buku Popular, Megamall Penang. Tambahan pula membeli buku ini di Popular, saya dapat diskaun yang bagus, juga kerana ingin mencukupkan bilangan buku yang ingin dibeli.

Seingat saya Kam Raslan tidak pernah menulis buku. Saya ingat memang pernah membaca buku tulisan abang beliau iaitu Karim Raslan yang telah menulis siri buku Ceritalah... yang memang menarik

Rupa-rupanya buku ini adalah sebuah karya fiksyen, dan fiksyen tempatan yang bagus. Ianya mengandung beberapa cerita pendek dan panjang yang berkisah pada watak Datuk Abdul Hamid bin Datuk Sidek. Datuk Hamid adalah seorang bekas pegawai tinggi kerajaan yang jika masih hidup, sudah di usia senja. Datuk Hamid lahir dan dibesarkan di zaman British. Dididik oleh British melalui Kolej Melayu dan bangga menjadi budak Kolej. Beliau bangga dan memuja British. Segala-gala tentang British adalah bagus. Pencapaian tertinggi dalam hidup bagi orang seperti Datuk Hamid ini ialah jika dapat berkahwin dengan perempuan Inggeris. Setiap tahun mereka akan berziarah ke London membeli-belah.

Ada 7 cerita pendek dalam buku ini. Yang pertama lebih berupa pengenalan diri Datuk Hamid tentang kisah pengembaraan yang akan diceritakan seterusnya dalam buku ini. Ianya diikuti dengan dua cerita pendek iaitu Bikers dan Datuk In Love. Cerita The Beat Generation lebih panjang sedikit, tetapi dua cerita seterusnya adalah yang paling panjang dan yang paling menarik. Keseluruhannya, saya sangat tertarik dengan cerita Ariff and Capitalism dan Murder in Chindai.

Kisah dalam buku ini penuh dengan humour dan kelucuan. Watak di dalamnya rasa seperti benar-benar wujud dan seperti biasa kita jumpa dalam negara. Cerita Ariff and Capitalism paling saya suka. Macam biasa dengar.

Cerita Murder in Chindai seperti membaca cerita Sherlock Holmes. Kisah penyiasatan sebuah pembunuhan misteri dalam sebuah keluarga yang juga penuh misteri. Buku ini diakhiri dengan kisah The Malayans, dialog watak yang lahir zaman Malaya bercerita tentang harapan dan idealisme mereka terhadap sebuah Negara yang sudah jadi Malaysia.

Saya terhibur baca buku ini.

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The Bringing to Book of Dato' Hamid

Kam Raslan had everyone deceived.

How many readers of arts magazine Off The Edge suspected that that old codger Datuk Hamid, reminiscing about earlier and happier times in his monthly column, was actually Kam, giving voice to one of Malaysian literature's most engaging characters? I twigged quite early on because I'd heard Kam read extracts of a work in progress at our monthly gathering. And now finally, Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures is in our hands.

Kam writes in the foreword to the book that he feels as if he's known Datuk Hamid all his life, that it felt as if he needed to exist. And in an article which appeared in last month's Off The Edge he says:

I like to think Dato' Hamid is very real (even though I made him up) and that he encapsulates a breed of person that many of us know and most of us can recognise. He is of the old breed that has been airbrushed out of our history, bu who would sooner quote Shakespeare than wave a kris ... would be more a ease in a cocktail party than a kampong ...
And being a friend to many MCKK old boys of my husband's generation and older, I feel that I've met Dato' Hamid many times over!

Dato' Hamid was born, we're told, somewhere between the 1920's and early 1930's, educated at Malay College (dubbed the Eton of the East and set up by the British to create a Malayan civil service) and then at university in the UK before returning home to take up a post in The Ministry. He's a charming old rascal - cultured, well travelled, hedonistic ... and also a little lazy and easily corruptible.

He narrates his memoirs in the book. (Dictates them to Kam as in the picture below?)


Dato' Hamid doesn't actually seem to like the present day and the direction Malaysia has taken very much, and expresses to some extent the Kam Raslan's own sense of alienation.

The author says in the Off the Edge piece.

Many of us gaze over the serried ranks at an UMNO general assembly and do not recognise ourselves or our aspirations in that crowd. These are the Malay masses and they deserve to be represented vigorously. But I'm not one of them. Where do we go if we're not one of them? In my own case I have gone back to the past. I wanted to find a voice in another outsider.
Dato' Hamid's son, "the Ayatollah" represents a certain type of "new Malay" that's only too familiar (goatee-bearded, fanatical, politically ambitious and smugly self-righteous) and is a character I would have liked to see very much more of in the book, particularly because he gives rise to some inspired moments of social commentary.

I don't know where they came from and I don't know where they are taking us ...
says Hamid, speaking I'm sure for many readers. (How many times have I been told that the country was a gentler, kinder, more tolerant place "back then"?)

Hamid finds that he has much more in common with The Grandson, a computer animator who makes good in Hollywood, despite his purple (and later green!) hair and the ring though his nose.

Confessions is a collection of stories, four of them short episodes, and three much more substantial pieces.

My favourite is Ariff and Capitalism, set between Kuala Lumpur and London in 1972 in which Hamid gets drawn into a get-rich-quick scam with hilarious results. (Below, Hamid, being seduced by the buxom "Edwina" at the Sheikh's dinner party in London.)
I also thoroughly enjoyed the rambunctiousness of Dato' in Love which involves among other things the seduction of a Swiss milkmaid and the theft of a diamond.

In The Beat Generation Hamid reminisces about the time in the 1950's when he was dragged along by his friend Nik to work in Paris and Algiers a drummer with a band. Kam writes in his Off the Edge article:

I wanted to show the Malay/Malaysian wanderlust ... Dato' Hamid came back after his adventure, but so many Malaysians have travelled and have never come back. ... What happened to that spirit of adventure? Who let complacency in?

The longest story in the book is Murder in Parit Chindai, which gives a Malaysian twist to the traditional Agatha Christie type murder in the library at a country house with a cast of eccentric characters, any one of whom could have done the grisly deed. It's a very clever piece, and I appreciated the fact that Kam brought in characters of other races (which happens too rarely in fiction by Malaysian authors). But I felt that Hamid and the others seemed like pawns being moved around the chessboard of the necessarily complex plot of the whodunit, rather than initiating action themselves. (It felt in this story as if Kam were pulling the strings rather than taking dictation which for me made it less effective than the other stories.) (Below ... another body.)

The Malayans is set "Somewhere near Seremban - 2001" and is a conversation between a group of old friends, Malaysians of different races (a reminder that the ethnic divisions was not a feature of the landscape of the country in the past) following the death of one of their gang on the golf course. They mull over life, talk about their children and contemplate the principles and idealism on which the new country was founded at Independence and how it has lived up to them.

Would I recommend the book? Most definitely. It's hugely enjoyable, deeply relevant, and beautifully written. I read it with a huge smile on my face, often laughing out loud at the turn of a phrase.

I am left saying that I want more, much more of Dato' Hamid, his friends and family ... especially The Ayatollah!

A very nicely written review by Dzireena Mahadzir appeared last Sunday's Readsmonthly supplement of the Star.
Labels: kam raslan, malay college, malaysian authors, my reviews


posted by bibliobibuli at 1:09 PM

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cik_kaer

kite dah bace buku ni bln lepas...suke ...sbb die cam sinis2 ..cam perli2 dato's keje govt...kelaka pun iye..tp kalo ikutkan dr tajuk die mmg kite takkan beli sbb ingat politik...

terbace buku ni pun sbb ada org tinggal kat dlm flight..ingat nak gi pulangkan tp tak jumpe..so sudahnye kite perap dlm laci...pas 2 minggu baru tergerak nak baca ..sib baik tak bosan

aiharanaoki

funny sangat..wut a wry..i wonder if there'll be dialogue like these in malaysian movie..