If I had been born a thousand years ago, I would have a voice. I might have travelled from village to village singing or reciting stories to the people. As it is, today I know a few languages...but never found my voice. At time I'd feel I am rudely awakened, from a deep land of dreams that speak only one theme. Namely, man and dignity.

At the outset, I began early in noticing we simply refused to listen to each other. We read the papers, listened to radio and when the TV arrived we forgot what to see. We are good at practising whatever was in fashion. As I live mostly under the sway of dreams, that I forget the exact years.

When I was 12 years old, I was thrust away from my mother's care and protection. I noticed other kids around me reciting words in a strange language called English. I came from a family that spoke Fukien (a Chinese dialect) and found my new friends ashamed of speaking that dialect. I was compelled to memorized every word in this foreign language they used.

My distorted mouth must have put me off, for I remember my mind refused to retain any of the words everyone so loudly chorused in the classroom. My teacher tried his best to coax me into speaking that language.

"Why do you want me to learn a language we don't use at home?" I was so puzzled.

He told me a strange story - to soften my attitude to the language - he said that there lived people over the sea in another country who went about doing what my parents had been doing before they come to Malaysia. They had been farmers, carpenters, fishermen and heroes. One began to babble. He went to sea and picked up quite a lot of words from strangers who had crossed many seas. Then, he taught others these words, and soon everyone knew how to sell their fish and vegetables instead of just giving them to those who needed them.

Slowly, by using the new language they built powerful ships and travelled a far. Later they conquered the air with aeroplanes and in the big war, they killed many enemies.

"You tell a good story" I said, and went back to the lessons.

A few years later, he still teaches me English in high school, "Why do you become a teacher?" I asked.

"They are so many things to discover in this life" he smiled, "I could start off by sharing what I already know with the young ones"

"How?"

"By rubbing off my enthusiasm and dreams onto them" he said, "There's nothing like extending the frontiers of wisdom. To discover in the beating of the heart, to abide in the breathing of the soul"

"Such grand thoughts" I probed further, "But can you be more specific?"

"To bid for and never give up"

Over the years, this conversation crept into me like a strange void voice that I couldn't explain. I feel wrenched from the person I really wanted to be. And English had openned me up to posibilities than my classmates did. Could no man find dignity by discovering vocation? There seem to be a vision, understanding at last for imitation. I played up to their impression of me, a ridiculous failure.

I had not encountered images of truth to be drastically apparent, nor expect respect immediately neither. Besides, there were no rituals left in my community except the amassing money and worshipping it. Knowledge that we existed for more than just money, property and titles came in an almost inperceptible manner. Amidst the cacophony of voices around me, I hear other more insistent murmurs. At first I tried to dismissed these murmurs as ringing hunger pangs in my ears. In those days, I'm often hungry.

The phenomenon came when I was listening to my elders discussing their problems, about the futures they wanted for their families. When they spoke, I observed their faces.

Their faces didn't follow the words that issued from their mouth. They seemed to be trapped in pain. Trapped into words or phrases they didn't want to utter. As the vision of speech became brighter, the suffering on the face became more evident.

A voice. It took over communications, it wanted release so that it can say what it wanted. Say and feel what was truly evitable.

Soon I could not look at people's face directly when speaking. I dreaded the compulsion of their voices that seemed to want to get out of the life they lived. I became a child again. Romping around, exploring daringly, discovers and living in the restrained world of dreams.

These days English in is demand. Everyone swore by it though never dreaming in it. The swirls of thoughts that surfaced in my own mind could be expressed in English. This couldn't be done in isolation. Fukien doesn't fit to everyone, I had to try a new language to get heat and comfort - but there's also furziness and mysteries into the body.

Sitting here now - I listen to the foreign language which my family conduct business with. Life goes on as if nothing could disturb it, like force of independence.

Maybe I shall never be heard. The language have passed by me. As with languages, so too with loyalty. Human are not prepared to put themselves together. Only a certain something beneath any language can give back to us the wholeness that we have lost.

Long time ago, when I was younger I lost my innocence...and ceased to hear myself beyond words.