What it cost to get here — Nahrizul Adib Kadri

OCTOBER 6 — Over the past week, Universiti Malaya has just welcomed another batch of young men and women taking their first steps into university life. Residential colleges became unusually busy. Suitcases, luggage, and backpacks of various sizes were wheeled across campus paths, and countless family photographs were taken whenever a UM crest appeared (and nowadays, beside the newer “I [HEART] UM” landmarks) before the inevitable goodbyes. Every registration season carries the same mixture of excitement, uncertainty and hope. It is, after all, the beginning of a new chapter.

This year, however, the arrival of another registration week (better known on campus as UM-WOW, or Week of Welcome) has brought back a memory I had not revisited in quite the same way before.

It has only been a month since Mak passed away.

Since then, I have found myself remembering not only the extraordinary moments of her life, but also the ordinary ones that quietly shaped mine without me ever fully appreciating them at the time. Some memories return unexpectedly, triggered by something as simple as a drive home, a supermarket trolley or, in this case, another registration week at UM.

My own journey to UM began in August 1998. I still remember opening my eyes at Puduraya and looking up at the large clock hanging from the ceiling. It was only half past two in the morning. I had arrived from Pontian barely two and a half hours earlier, but sleeping on one of the terminal benches proved almost impossible. The place was hot, noisy and still full of people coming and going. Every now and then another bus pulled in, another announcement echoed through the hall, and I simply lay there with my two bags beside me, waiting for dawn to arrive. 

I was twenty-three years old and about to become a UM student. 

After performing Subuh prayers at Masjid Jamek, I returned to the taxi stand and told the driver only one word: “UM.”

He looked at me and replied, “RM30.” I agreed immediately.

The author argues that a student’s journey to university often rests on quiet parental sacrifices that may only become fully understood many years later. — File picture by Miera Zulyana

Only years later did I realise I had probably paid much more than I should have. At that moment, however, I was just a young man from Pontian making his first journey alone through Kuala Lumpur. Whether the fare was fair or not hardly mattered. My thoughts were already somewhere else.

The taxi dropped me in front of the Seksyen Kemasukan dan Rekod (SKR) (where the High Impact Research building now stands). I showed my offer letter, completed the registration process and was informed that I had been assigned to Kolej Kediaman Kedua. After asking for directions, I picked up my two bags and began walking across the campus that would eventually shape much of my adult life.

For years, that was how I remembered the story of my first day at Universiti Malaya. It was a story about an overnight bus, an uncomfortable bench at Puduraya, an overpriced taxi ride and an anxious walk towards a residential college I had never seen before. It was the kind of story people tell with a smile because every difficult beginning eventually becomes easier to laugh about.

Only after Mak left us did I realise that the story had never really begun at Puduraya. It had begun a few days earlier in our home in Pontian.

At that time, Abah was working in Brunei, and the money needed for my university registration had not yet reached us. I remember Mak quietly leaving the house one morning before returning sometime later with RM500 in her hand.

“Nanti dapat duit daripada Abah, Mak beli balik.” 

She did not explain very much, and I did not ask.

At twenty-three, RM500 simply looked like enough money for university registration. I had no idea that the bracelet she had worn for years was no longer on her wrist, nor did I understand why she seemed so determined to make sure I boarded that bus to Kuala Lumpur on time. Like many children, I mistook my parents’ ability to solve problems for the absence of problems themselves.

It has taken me almost three decades, and perhaps also her absence, to understand what that RM500 really represented.

Parents have a remarkable way of protecting their children from worries that properly belong to adults. They quietly postpone purchases, borrow when they have to, work a little harder than they let on, and sometimes give up things they treasure so their children never have to give up opportunities that matter. They rarely announce those decisions. They simply become invisible parts of our own success stories.

As another registration week comes to an end, thousands of parents will already have returned home after sending their children off to universities across the country. Some will have driven through the night to be there. Some may now be wondering how they are going to manage financially over the coming months. Others may have quietly made sacrifices that their children will never know about, at least not yet.

I hope every one of those students enjoys the excitement of beginning a new chapter. I also hope that they will one day look back and realise that their journey to university did not begin at the registration counter, the hostel or even the bus station. It began much earlier, in countless quiet decisions made by people who loved them enough to place their future ahead of their own comfort.

It has taken me many years to understand what it cost to get here. I only wish Mak had been here long enough for me to tell her that I finally do.

* The author is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, the Director of UM Press, and the Principal of Tuanku Bahiyah Residential College (KK2), Universiti Malaya. He may be reached at [email protected]

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.