Sakinah Abdul Aziz

I finally understood what it was which truly bothered me through this passage of time where I was feeling bits of dissatisfaction from being in some social groups. It has to happen when I was abroad and living a much quieter and simpler life in order to realise the type of conversations which tend to dominate some group text conversations from friends back at home. It then became more obvious when I return to Singapore, and having to be in a few social gatherings to observe with a fresher pair of eyes, the types of conversations which hold those social gatherings and social bonding. It is worrying how we have allowed certain lifestyle come to dominate our lives and how we have normalised it. The dominant lifestyle I'm referring to is one that is driven by capitalist forces in feeding into this so-called rosy version of what life is supposed to be, which entails the modern notions of 'productivity' as well as hyper-consumerism and hedonism to appease us and compensate for

I had one of the most interesting but harrowing conversations today with one of the interviewees for my research. She is one of those people known for her bluntness and tends to say things in the most candid and unfiltered manners. During our exchanges, it sounded like she had a lot of frustrations and needed to ventilate about many things. For some reason, the conversation became something about death. She was trying to make a point that death is inevitable and can happen at anytime. So she told me that, death can even happen after I left her place. While I can understand where she was coming from, I really shudder at the thought. I walked out and made prayers. I returned home and told myself that if I die that same day, that woman must really have an impeccable intuition and superpowers i.e. premonition. May God have mercy on us all.