The Gift of Rain could be one of the best books that illustrate this region’s pre-war and post-war colonial history. It is about Philip Hutton, a Eurasian born to a British father and Chinese mother in Penang. Malaysia. He struggles to realize his self-identity, should he belong to the Chinese community or the British community. With his mother dying when he was young, being the youngest child in the family and a confusing and complex family background, he seeks refuge and self-discovery with a Japanese, Endo San, staying on his father’s island, learning martial arts, Japanese, however, to discover later he is a spy when World War 2 breaks out in South-East Asia, and is forced to make hard decisions to save his family and friends. He recall this many years later when the wife of the late Mr. Endo came to visit him when he was 72 years old.
Personally speaking, I feel that this book shows a very vivid description of the Malaysia peninsula’s beauty and splendor at that time in history. The strong emotions and pains in the many characters are highlighted strongly, and it was with much interest and thought too when I was coincidently, reading this book on holiday in Ipoh, Malaysia.
The main theme that resonates in this story is destiny and choice. Is our life a matter of our own hands or our fate? It attempts to look at this in both Western and Eastern points of view. However, I feel that the author may have put too much emphasis into the Eastern ideology, which is forgivable, given the context of this story. Even so, I feel that a line in the story struck me, even thought I believe that life is about your own choice and lies in your own hands. When Philip asks his grandfather about choice, he asks him back “Who makes the choices for you then?”
It made me think hard really. I had encountered failures too in my life. It may not seem significant now, but then, it was really a hard time and we often want to blame the Gods, the heavens for our suffering and where we are now. However, I personally think if there is such a thing as fate, we still can live differently.
In our lives, we always meet things we do not like, and want another choice. However, is it not our responsibility too? When we make the wrong decisions, when we have sad and unlucky encounters, we blame fate. More often than not, we are the ones who chose to make the decision in the first place, and since we had made such a decision and this had happened to us, there is no use denying and just accepting the ways things had turned out. World War One and Two did not just end due to luck and miracles. The Nuclear bomb did not fall onto Japan without its reasons. Disasters had been linked to Climate Change and Global Warming, whose responsibility can ultimately be attributed to humanity. There is no denying that we are the authors of many of our failures, but are we willing to learn from it? There should not be crying over spilt milk. Instead of blaming something we cannot see, we need to take up the moral courage and personal responsibility to reflect and admit we had been wrong too, live on and persevere. Only then can we change in future to become a stronger person. Only in agreeing that we have a part in our pains, can there be salvation.
However, another argument is that what happens to us can be unexpected and are beyond our control, like Natural Disasters, illnesses and other “Acts of God”. This could be used to show that fate chooses our lives. However, the blessing that humans also have is their brain. The ability to persevere, never look back and just accept things for the way they are. People are pulled out of rubble from earthquakes mostly because of their perseverance to live on and their strong human spirit. Such scenes were seen in Xinjinag Province in China in 2008, Japan this year and Christchurch, New Zealand similarly. The Japanese Economy had recovered quickly as the Japanese do not sit around and mourn but work their way out of their problem. We have a choice to take the hard way out or sit and die in the flood of doom. What will be our decision?
Fate may be a realm of religion and myth, or it could be very real in our lives. However, despite our beliefs, to end off, we must always remember that ultimately, we are still the pavers of the large part of the road we make and walk on, and there is always a way, a reason and silver lining in a dark cloud.
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