Reds Forever: The thing we treasure so much in our lives

“Dey macha, how are you laaa?”

“Wadeyea?” “Engge?” “Canteen la, sapade, hungry sial..”

(Hey you want go or not? Go where? Canteen la, go eat, hungry sial... in Tamil)

These were how we spoke in school when we were still in secondary school. “We” refer to a bunch of Indian, Chinese amd Malay students joining together as a group. “We” called ourselves “GENG MAMAK” in the year 2009. The name was actually given by my English teacher, Pn. Chan when the group of us made so much noise and she blew her top.

“Hey! Why are you all so noisy? Especially the group of students there! Geng Mamak ar?”

Apparently, all her anger and shoutings fell on our deaf ears. We began laughing and agreed to name our group as “Geng Mamak” with Viknesh as our “group leader.”

Growing up as a Chinese boy, I was sent to a Chinese primary school nearby my old house. My mother started to worry when I spoke too much of Chinese and did not excel in my English Language speaking. As a result, I did not achieve Grade A for my English Language in my UPSR. As she had given a high expectation on me, she became so furious and signed me in for a English secondary school a stone's throw away from my grandmother's house. I was so lost during my first day of secondary school. Though some of my ex-classmates were there, but they had some basic in English speaking. Therefore, I struggled so much until I began realizing that learning English was a must during that period.

I joined most of the students who had the same problem as me in class. Therefore, there was a huge wall between us with all the English-ed students. However, improvement began when I was in Form 3. I had some problem looking at the notes copied on the blackboard. As a result, I was shifted beside two Indian students, Arvinth and Viknesh to slove the problem. At first, we remained silence and talked only when needed. However, I slowly realized that the bonds among those students were incredibly strong and they could share their food and drinks among themselves without any problems. We became closer day by days and I even accepted all the food they shared. A sausage, fried mee, or even a piece of “karipap” could be shared among about 8 of us. Well that was how we spent most of our times together.

I was a soft-spoken and shy boy when I was in Form 2, I could not even speak English well! As a result, I was not given the post of AJK in my prefectorial board although I was nominated by a few seniors. However, after speaking much English when I was spending time with them, English was not a big problem for me anymore. During weekends, we would play futsal or badminton together. Afterwards, we would go paint the town red or even caught a movie not necessary whether it was a Chinese, English and Indian movie together. We would talk about the particular movie for a long time and even enjoyed using the interesting quotes used by the characters. They would also teach me some tamil song and we would sing together when the day was too boring to cheer the class up. In a nutshell, we enjoyed most of the time together very much.

When I was in Form 3, they invited me to join the Hockey Club and played as 1 of their first team player in interschool competiton. We also featured as a team in most of the interclass competition and won a lot of prizes. I even gave up on my badminton though I had endured so much in badminton. That was the time when I became closer with my Hockey teacher, Mr. Sasi. He would bring us out for the nearest “mamak” to refresh ourselves up when we had a long and tiring day. He is really the best teacher I have met so far. However, I had to quit in the year of 2010 after I sustained a serious injury. I was named only as the Assistant Manager of the school club.

There was one morning when one of us brought an article of a newspaper entitled “Geng Mamak was finally caught after a short chase by the policemen”. It became the “joke of the day” and we decided to change the name of our group to “Geng Karat” in order to prevent ourselves from being caught by the policemen (well, maybe..). The name came when Viknesh, our “president” of the club was purple with rage after his clean white uniform was corrupted by the rusty window and he began shouting:”Dey haiyo, karaattt laaaa!!!” We burst out with laughter and here comes our “Geng Karat”. We even started using the word “laaaaa” after every sentence.

“Dey why ponteng school laaaa? You never tell me we can ponteng together laaaaa...”

In the year of 2010, although I was the Assistant Head Prefect of the school, I was caught a few times playing football with them without changing into our t-shirt or even played truant on the lesson of the teacher whom we disliked much. We got a few strokes of cannes and was recorded in the disciplinary card of the school. However, we did not cry nor blame the one who suggested the idea but laughed at our own pure stupidity. It was really a new experience to me as I had not been canned in my entire school life. Though we might sound naughty or have been in most of the teachers' bad book, but we always put their thought on a doubt by achieving flying colours in our monthly exam or even in SPM examination. One of us was even the “top 5” student in our class.

Now, we were scattered around the world with 2 of us currently studying in India amd the rest were on their own path to succeed in our own lives. Though we may only meet up for “mamak” once in a blue moon but our bonds remain as strong as usual. However, we would never forget the experiences and time we spent together. People may say that we are the bad peers to be with but I totally disagree with them. They were the best part of my life and they will be for a long time more to come.