‘Me, Mamak’: a life too big for 120 pages

Faridah Merican’s memoir is short, candid and gloriously idiosyncratic - a revealing portrait of the woman behind six decades of Malaysian theatre and broadcasting.

“Me, Mamak”, launched in June, runs to only around 120 pages. It does not attempt to account for every year, production, friendship or professional achievement in the life of one of the country’s most enduring performing arts figures.

Instead, it wanders. A childhood memory leads to a story about her parents; a recollection of teaching in Kelantan opens into an account of discovering theatre; broadcasting gives way to advertising; a professional anecdote becomes a reflection on ageing, motherhood, loss or the state of Malaysian arts.

It is, in other words, shaped less like a resume than like memory itself. That is both the book’s greatest charm and, occasionally, its limitation.

Faridah’s voice is what makes “Me, Mamak” such an enjoyable read. She is funny, opinionated, occasionally prickly and refreshingly willing to laugh at herself.

The early chapters are particularly entertaining for the glimpses they offer of the girl who would become the woman known as the “First Lady of Malaysian theatre”: the tomboy from Ayer Itam, the young woman who travelled alone to Kota Bharu, the teacher who stumbled into acting, and the broadcaster who moved between radio, television and theatre.

Her account of “The Taming of the Shrew”, including the memory of slapping Petruchio onstage, beautifully captures what theatre meant to her long before it became a profession.

Decades later, she still remembers the actor’s face and the sensation of the moment. That passion eventually hardens into something more formidable.

The Faridah of “Me, Mamak” is not merely a pioneering artiste – she is a woman with standards. The advertising chapters reveal the famously demanding “dragon lady” side of her personality, while the broadcasting chapters show someone capable of being fiercely critical of institutions while remaining deeply affectionate towards the people who made those institutions meaningful.

The book is at its strongest when these contradictions are allowed to coexist. Faridah can be stubborn and generous, funny and severe, fiercely independent and deeply sentimental. She can celebrate the people around her while admitting to mistakes of her own. She does not turn herself into a heroine.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the chapter about her son, Feroz. “It’s Very Beautiful” is the emotional centre of the memoir, recounting the complicated relationship between a mother and a son who was himself intensely creative, but had his share of struggles and eventually died at 46.

Faridah does not offer an easy version of motherhood. She admits to guilt and acknowledges that, in Feroz’s eyes, she had failed him.

Yet the chapter is also full of extraordinary, devastating tenderness: her years of trying to get his writing published, her persistence after he was no longer able to fight for his own work, and the eventual publication of “Ladder in the Water” after his death.

The latter part of the book shifts again, from personal recollection towards something closer to a manifesto. Faridah’s frustrations with Malaysian arts education, institutional complacency, censorship, cultural fragmentation and the marginalisation of the performing arts are expressed with characteristic bluntness.

These chapters are not always the easiest to translate into conventional memoir storytelling, but they reveal something essential: why Faridah has spent so much of her life fighting for the arts in the first place.

And then, after all that, comes a chapter about cats.

It’s an unexpectedly delightful coda. Faridah’s menagerie of animals, her Shakespearean cat names, her determination to care for creatures that cannot speak for themselves, and her dream of establishing an animal sanctuary may seem far removed from Malaysian theatre policy.

But perhaps it isn’t. The chapter reveals the same compassion that runs through much of the book, while reminding readers that Faridah is considerably more than the public figure whose achievements can be listed in a biography.

There are gaps, of course. “Me, Mamak” is not a definitive history of Malaysian theatre, nor is it a comprehensive account of Faridah’s career. Some people and episodes receive only passing attention; others are left deliberately unexplored.

Faridah herself told FMT Lifestyle that some stories were simply not hers to tell, while others were left unsaid for reasons known to the people involved. That incompleteness is not a weakness – it is part of the book’s honesty.

What ultimately emerges is not a monument to an institution, but a woman remembering the life she actually lived and who still seems unwilling to sit quietly at the sidelines.

For readers interested in Malaysian theatre, broadcasting or cultural history, there is plenty here to savour. Thankfully, “Me, Mamak” does not require specialist knowledge. It is a short read, but a surprisingly full one.

And that, perhaps, is the most Faridah-like thing about it: “Me, Mamak” leaves the reader wanting more.

‘Me, Mamak’ is priced at RM35 and can be ordered here.