I remember my years as a primary school boy crying in unison with my friends the word “MERDEKA” and writing it in huge letterings across our classroom chalkboard. It was always the right word to use in that situation to express our overwhelming joy.
That is, the joy of having finally completed the week of our final exams. We did this year after year not realizing the real significance of the word and how our lives would’ve been different without it.
It wasn’t until recently when I started working on a project for a Merdeka Edition T-shirt that I started doing research into the little details of that extraordinary day. The day that ultimately gave us all the equal chance to behave like buffoons, nonchalantly throwing around this powerful word without knowing its true substance.
Many of us do not truly grasp the significance of the word Merdeka. It is important as Malaysians to understand that this word doesn’t just signify another public holiday on our calendar or another season of tear-jerking vintage styled ads but is really the memory of the day our nation got past its teenage years of being mothered and made its transition into adulthood.
The word itself means nothing without the memory. It is the waving and swaying of the red, white, blue and yellow, our dear Jalur Gemilang, that will always be the greatest reminder of the day our fathers and our grandfathers, regardless of race, regardless of religion, regardless of social status, stood together chanting this one word seven times with our forefather.
It is with this that I have come to finally understand the cohesion of the word Merdeka, along with these four colors and the vows we made to our country every morning during our school assembly.
“Independence is indeed a milestone, but it is only the threshold to high endeavor”
- Tunku Abdul Rahman
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