Reality check: We are now the ‘other generation’!

I WAS on the cusp of being a teenager in 1962 when I first watched the Rodgers-Hammerstein’s musical ‘Flower Drum Song’, which gave us the beautiful Nancy Kwan and made me, an impressionable 12-year-old, a fan of hers for life.

The song that had kept me enthralled with its simple melody and prophetic lyrics, ‘The Other Generation’, had included these verses:

‘What are we going to do about the other generation?
‘How will we ever communicate without communication?
‘You don’t know where they go or what they do,
‘And what peculiar thoughts they think,
‘They never reveal to you.
‘A very discouraging problem is the other generation,
‘They want to lead a life that’s all their own.
‘Perhaps we ought to let them.
‘Forsake them and forget them!
‘But then we’d only find ourselves alone.’

Sixty-two years and two generations later, in 2024, the gap has widened and the ‘non-communication’ part has perhaps worsened.

My great great-grandfather Ong Ewe Hai had first set foot in Sarawak in 1846 at a very young age of 16. He was born in Singapore in 1830, and his father Ong Khoon Tian (born in China) had passed away when he was only seven years old.

Ewe Hai received little education as being the eldest sibling, he had to help support his family from an early age.

Today, we have had eight generations of the Ongs who had made Sarawak their home.

On Christmas Eve in 2023, we bade farewell to the last surviving member of my father’s generation, the fourth Ong family clan member, with the passing of my godmother Rosalind Ong Sai Khiok at the age of 90.

Today, my 36 first cousins and I account for the frontline and living elders left of the family being the fifth-generation Ongs.

It has been 178 years since the landing of my forefather, and my generation has now been thrust into being the ‘Older Generation’, with a few exceptions of a handful of ‘elders’ from the extended Ong family not directly within the Grandpa Ong Kwan Hin’s brood.

My younger siblings had just reminded me that when the New Year started, I must now consider myself to be the ‘tua pek kong’ (eldest uncle) of my family.

The times have certainly changed.

Having witnessed the funerals of four generations of Ongs – my grandfather, my parents and my godmother, my peers and a couple of nephews – we have, as an extended family, borne witness to varying rites of passages as well as customary practices, and have observed vastly different mourning periods and funeral services.

Today we have among our family members who are Christians (Anglican, Catholics, Methodist and other denominations) Buddhists, Taoists/Confucianists, Muslims, Hindus and atheists.

Our political and religious beliefs, as well as sexual orientations are as varied as any other families. We are engaged at all levels of society and make our respective living in a wide and varied range of professions and in many fields of human endeavours.

I was just a babe in my mother’s arms when great-grandfather Ong Tiang Swee died in October 1950.

When Grandpa Ong Kwan Hin passed on in 1982, when I was 32, it was probably the most ceremonious and lengthiest period of ‘abiding by Buddhist customs and traditions’, with the entire family having gone through the entire intricate and time-consuming process with much rather dogmatic drama.

We had all spent intensive days and nights of strict mourning observation of what was dictated and instructed to us by the temple and our family elders. It had involved round-the-clock rituals with night-guards over the remains and also lots of food and drinks and attending to hundreds of families, friends and visitors who had descended onto No 14 of Ong Kwan Hin Road to pay their last respects.

The funeral procession itself was one of Kuching’s longest; Grandpa had his wish fulfilled by being cremated (at the now-defunct open-air Sikh crematory site at Pending). As his descendants, after three days, we had all assembled to slowly and meticulously sort through the aftermath and transferred some of the cremated remains into an urn for the final placement at the Buddhist Memorial Home.

My own family had converted to Christianity when my folks (and brothers and sister) were ‘born again’ in the mid-1980s. The funeral rites and service of both my father and mother (as well as my godmother who came to the Lord two years before her death) were all held in church, and burial at the Anglican Cemetery in Batu Kitang. Godmother Rosalind was cremated at the Nirvana Crematorium, which proved a swift and efficient method, and her ashes were interred at Batu Kitang.

By this time, we had done away with the traditional practices of ‘mourning periods’ and customs like the banning of ‘brightly-coloured clothing’, as well as not partaking in any festivities for as long as a year.

A combination of religion and practical modernity did away with many of such practices, customs and ‘the ways of old’. As the world turned and times progressed, we too had changed along with it all.

As an extended family, due to familial habit, pressure and tradition, most local families had tended to stay together under a big communal roof or at least within close proximity of each other.

This was especially true during the 1950s up till the 1980s.

From around the period when modernity had set in, with mobility in the form of more affordable forms of transport like motorcycles, cars and better infrastructure of roads and cheaper airfares and more routes – all having coincided with a growing middle class, better healthcare, and more jobs being made available – there was a boom in the development of lower-end homes and the fast growth of ‘the suburbs’ when people had accepted the idea of commuting short distances to their workplaces.

Within about two generations, the bigger towns of Sarawak had become cities and there was a boom – in population, in a growing economy – which had benefitted almost everyone.

With this growth, a major shift of family life had also evolved.

For a majority, part of this change had meant that with all the opportunities now available, they could leave the chains (and comfort?) of their patriarchal homes, and make for themselves their own – now newly-married, maybe with a child or two, and yearning for the freedom to be able to do whatever they want and be able to afford to pay for it (although truth be told, the ease of financial institutions extending loan schemes for every durable product from refrigerator to bikes from cars to houses, has been a major windfall).

Bank Negara Malaysia statistics for household debts shouldered by Malaysians showed a total of RM1,375 billion (as at December 2021) with 58 per cent being housing loans, 13 per cent personal loans, 12 per cent car loans,; and 17 per cent accounting for credit card and other loans.

In plain terms, almost every employee has been living on credit.

What’s next? The next generations will face one of life’s biggest challenges – how to take care of their ageing elders and in this case, they mean us!

I know, from my personal experience, that looking after our elders would prove to be the most arduous task to ever face us in our lives, especially now with much better healthcare facilities and extended lifespans (Malaysia’s average mortality rate is now 77 years; in 1950, it was only 54 years).

For many after retiring, say at 55, if you’re lucky, you’d expect a decent life of peace, good health and contentment for another two decades.

For some, health issues and other ageing problems may compel you to draw from your (and maybe your family’s) life savings to live out the sunset years.

For many, it is an utterly resource-depleting exercise.

We are all most fortunate and we praise God that we have, for the majority of us, families, close friends, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as government agencies to help lighten our loads and to smoothen our final stretch down that path that all of us must eventually tread one day to meet our Maker.

As a newly-anointed ‘family elder’ now, that journey is looming ever larger and nearer on the horizon.

Praise be to God for another healthy and peaceful year ahead. Amen.