Watching #HungryGhosts is reminding me of the stage & VR project @mochamas_ @Srikandi_Budi and I were starting to work on before all this happened. The Djinn, The Witch, and The Faerie, looking at our relationship to Islam, migration, the supernatural, identity.

I would have been the Faerie. This all sparked from some rumblings I've had over whether I've got some Fae-like situation going on, given how I sympathize with them more than normal & some other weird life things. A couple of spiritually inclined friends suggested it's likely.

The conversations that led from it are deep and complex, more than one thread can hold. But one bit that rings in my head even now is the story of Ulek Mayang, a traditional Malay dance about a tussle between sea princesses & fishermen for the soul of a drowned fisherman.

The song is haunting, haunted perhaps. Despite it not being exactly my culture (I'm Malaysian but not Malay) it still draws me in. I especially wonder about the drowned one in this story - what did they actually want? Whose world did they want to live in?

In the original story, the eldest sea princess comes in at the end and says "Those of the land belong to the land, those of the sea belong to the sea". her youngest sister lets go of the fisherman she hoped to marry & he revives on land, his comrades grateful.

What did he want?

It's like the stories about portal fantasies, being kicked out of Narnia or Wonderland or whatever temporary magic place you ended up in. What if you didn't want to go back? What if you ever wanted to return? What if you just wanted the ability to visit once in a while?

People always warn against getting lost with the fae because you'll be trapped forever. But what if the "real world" is hell? What if the worst torture the Fae could put you through is more bearable than whatever horrors you're going through right now? What if it's not that bad?

(the last time I talked about that specific thing at least one friend thought I was suicidal, so I should add here that I'm not. I'm speaking more generally.)

The point is, we never hear from the fisherman caught in the middle. We never know what choice they could have made. And why isn't "both" a choice? Or "neither"? Or "somewhere else"?

I relate a lot to that fisherman, caught between worlds, choices made for me.

So that would have been my contribution to this project: caught between worlds, sympathizing with beings that get accused of being "untrustworthy" or "inscrutable" because so have I just for being all kinds of Other, wondering if that also holds true spiritually because Why Not.

I've long thought of an Ulek Mayang adaptation long before DWF, long before #HungryGhosts. I thought maybe a game, or a burlesque number. Now maybe a TV mini series though some may say I'm just trying to copy the concept? "Oh yes another Asian migrant supernatural story?"

And it'd be very thinly-veiled (ha) autobiography meets wish fulfillment anyway. The lead character is just the version of me that gets to actually talk to faeries (or sea princesses) and see whether moving in with them is viable. It's just me processing liminality in public.

But hey if comedians can write sitcoms starring themselves about a fictionalised version of themselves, why not drama?

I'm getting ahead of myself. It's not like I've written a TV script before. And I'm sure many Malays would complain about appropriation if I did this.

"Don't let the dirty Bangla do better than you in your own Malay culture, even though we must make her assimilate to our culture because her people do Islam wrong, yet she must never be considered one of us and get the roles meant for Malays because she is a dirty Bangla."

Hey, at least I've heard it all before.

Here's an animation showing the story of Ulek Mayang. It's in Malay but you can probably get context:

And here's a video of the dance and song proper: