it is ironic that i am beginning this blog writing about the death of one of my personal heroes. moreover, it is ironic that i intended this blog to be a record of my musings about food and life. i had procrastinated over it for some time now because i wanted to post picture perfect renditions of my recipes that i had developed and collected over the years now. however, i never really got started on it because i was always thinking i could make the recipes even better and i wanted the pictures to be a certain way - perfectly plated as i thought it in my mind. i would spend time searching in boot car sales and charity shops to find the odd, charming, vintage platter that i wanted this certain pie slice to sit on, with a vintage, perhaps slightly tarnished fork with the roccoco designed handle - both of whom i have yet to find. and so my blog sat there in cyberspace unwritten, my recipes still filed away in their memory blocks of my mac hard disk.
two days ago, i received word that yasmin ahmad, one of my personal heroes in my life, passed away. i am not going to eulogize the achievements of that woman - you can google her to read all about who she was, what she had done and what many people thought of her. i am going to write about my personal experience and the privilege of having met and encountered yasmin ahmad.
i met yasmin through my creative director, andrew bell, who was my partner then at leo-burnett when i was a suit. when we had both left the business, he had a big birthday party where he invited a few of us and i was thrilled to be on that list knowing yasmin was going to be there. i already had met her twice before. the first time was at a workshop, where like everyone else, as usual, we were all blown away, intimidated and in complete utter awe of the genius that yasmin ahmad was. to be encountering her on an entirely personal level, i felt, was going to be the experience of a lifetime.
the first time i met yasmin at the workshop, during her talk, she was discussing the role of research and focused group discussions in evaluating the suitability of advertising strategies. she said something along the lines of - 'Why do we place our faith in placing women in a room with a mirror asking them about what they thought on how this detergent removed stains? Has it ever occurred to anyone that by placing them in that room, it is about as far removed as possible from the reality of their life? As advertisers, we like to talk about connecting with them in as real a way as possible. However, we place them in a little box, asking them to intellectualize about stain removal and hair conditioning and all those sorts of questions and we forget that they are mothers, daughters, sisters - as women simply who go about their lives, who bleed, who get their hearts broken.'
I think that was the beginning of my beginning to realize that I had made the error of making my job my life, when life was infinitely so much more. i was agonizing my days away trying to get women to believe that our shampoo was better than anyone else's but i certainly wasn't doing anything else in my life much less getting my heart broken.
at the time of the asian financial crisis, our clients called for a regional meeting where all the regional heads from the ad agencies were mandated to attend. the conference started out where the regional client director stated that because of the currency crisis, they were forced to raise the prices of their products, like soap and shampoo, to higher levels in order to continue making profits and protect the price of their stock shares. the challenge therefore was to develop advertising campaigns to keep the consumers buying and to justify the price increases that had to be done in response to the financial crisis.
at this point yasmin stood up front and center and said 'i'm sorry - did you just say that you want us to make advertising that will keep these women, who are probably now in dire financial straits because their husbands have lost their jobs, if not their own jobs, buying your overpriced shampoo? i'm sorry i refuse to be part of this.' and with that she walked out of the conference and never worked on that clients' brands again.
the second time i met her was when i was about to leave the business and i had no clue what to do next. my personal and professional life was in shambles at that time - i didn't know what i wanted to do, i felt broken and disillusioned. i didn't know where i wanted to go and i was simply clutching at straws. i was asked to go visit the kl office to interview for a strategic planning post and as such i met yasmin ahmad yet again.
yasmin was a very astute human. she had his amazing ability to sense how a person was feeling, to connect with that person's mental and emotional state, to get to the heart of it and discuss it with the person with all candor without making that person feel small or belittled. i knew she sensed how troubled and lost i felt at that point, that i was holding everything up with a false sense of bravado masked by intellectual sounding talk. at some point in the conversation, she asked me 'so what's next for you?'. i rambled on, rather arrogantly i think, that i was one of the few women that the london business school sent an invitation to apply to their new global mba program. she replied 'wow that's amazing but what do you think they can teach you that you cannot learn from life?'
i don't even remember my answer anymore but that moment in her office is etched forever in my mind. i heard her say that line again in my head when i got accepted into the imperial college of london business school. it raised the same reaction the first time she asked me that in kl. i asked myself then and i asked myself again 'what are you doing with your life jilly? more over, what do you really want out of it?'
there is an infinite list of things to say about yasmin that made her my personal hero.
the first is that she lived a life where her self-purpose was evident in everything she said or did. many of us i think spend many hours thinking and meditating and praying about finding our life's purpose. she simply lived it. there was no personal nor professional divide in her life. who she was in her personal life, that was also her in her professional life. it was clear to me, she knew why she was here, she knew what she wanted and needed to do and simply went about it. hers was a life of purpose and conviction - whereas i was and continue to deeply struggle to find mine.
the second was her razor sharp insightfulness about life. yasmin, i think, was one of the few humans i had ever met who could get to the heart of the truth of any matter and who could talk about the most painful truths without being hurtful. she approached life's truths with a razor sharp honesty but she never wielded it to cut anyone to the quick.
she was gifted with this ability to connect to anything and everyone. she had this openness of spirit and soul that was simultaneously incredibly fascinating and frightening to someone like me who spent her life maintaining a facade and a wall to keep many, many people out.
it now occurs to me that yasmin has probably gone through a lot of pain herself in her life. i think she was a natural empathetic but that natural ability to connect was further sharpened by perhaps some painful experiences. she knew what it was - pain, anger, loneliness, frustration. this is why she could recognize it in the people she met and she understood that many of us respond to life and to people based on what we have known. the thing i think about pain is that it turns us into only two things. when you have been dealt a lot of pain, you begin to understand it very, very well and we either become masters at inflicting it on others or we become healers. only one who has travelled that road and back could ever know what it takes to be on that journey. very few i think become healers because you will have to possess an enlightened soul to resist the human tendency to lash out from a place of pain, to hurt others because we are either hurting or have been hurt as well.
only one who has been completely healed and transcended a tremendous amount of pain could ever be a healer. healers know how pain feels, healers know the struggle to transcend it and healers above all refuse to inflict it because, once they were in that position themselves.
yasmin, wasn't just a storyteller. yasmin, to me was ultimately a healer.
yasmin was also possessed of this serene self-confidence that defies words to describe what that kind of confidence was. there is this line 'to belong in the presence of kings as equally in the presence of beggars' - that was her kind of self-confidence. she could sit in with the advertising gods on the jury in cannes and fit in with them and the next day be exchanging life stories with the man pedaling the rickshaw she was riding in somewhere in india.
during andrew's party, i didn't know anyone else and since it was going to happen for a few days, i was kind of worried to be with this group of people whom i didn't know at all save for andrew and few. i actually ended hanging out with yasmin which i had hoped would happen.
on the second day, yasmin and i were chatting to this photographer whose name now escapes me. we were taking turns flirting with him and he was clearly enjoying having that kind of attention from two women. until his wife arrived after which, yasmin and i were then bored with him so we moved on to other things.
i remember reading yasmin's cards (i used to read tarot cards) but i don't remember what it was all about now because we were then in an alcoholic haze. i remember having outrageous conversations with her - about the filipino men she had slept with, the indian men she had slept with, the lesbian affair she had where she said after a few sessions with a dildo you really just want a real penis. we were on the same flight from bangkok to chiang mai i remember and i was talking to her about the flight attendant who looked like lou diamond philips. she was actually one of the few people who took note of that fact that i notice and remember an astounding amount of detail.
and in that few days where we were doing party activities, drinking and talking, i think it was 2 in the morning she told me matter of factly ' you're very insecure aren't you?' and the way she said it, was so matter of fact it didn't even offend me at all. she said it as if i was actually waiting to hear it from her. i remembered responding enthusiastically 'yes! i am. i actually don't know what to do with myself most of the time but i just go about it pretending i know what i am doing and very few people have a clue i'm actually very frightened inside. you're the first yasmin to understand this.' and we ended up laughing about it.
whilst we were talking about insecurities, she told me once of her experience when she was sitting as a juror in cannes. she was of course, seated with all those big named global executive creative directors and one of them, whose name i won't mention was a day late in arriving. when he had finally arrived, all the other creative big-wigs were chiding him 'good of you to deign joining our company'. he then threw a tantrum saying he was late because how dare his agency network booked him on a business class flight when all he ever flew was first class. everyone else laughed as he was his usual big, grandstanding self. as the laughter died down, yasmin then remarked 'you know what? you must have been really poor when you were growing up that's why things like these bother you so much. that's why it means something to you because you never had that as a child'. our creative big-wig stuttered for a moment then realizing the truth of her statement, gracefully acknowledged it - 'you're right yasmin. absolutely right'.
when we were about to leave, she texted me 'you are an amazingly interesting, incredibly insecure person'. and i texted her back 'and you are an amazing teacher, woman, lover and mummy all in one'. the 'mummy' word made her laugh out loud.
by the time i was boarding the plane back to manila, i realized while i wasn't still entirely sure about what i was going to to do with my life, i knew i wanted to do what felt good to me, say what i believed in and do my best to connect with and learn from as many people as i could. i also knew that when i died and had the choice to come back as someone else, i wanted to come back as yasmin ahmad (or kumuda rao who is my other personal hero - and one of my BESTEST friends in the world whom i love very, very dearly and think the world of and she is an entirely different story altogether). i also knew, like yasmin, i wanted to be grateful for everything i had in my life - big or small.
i am privileged to have known yasmin ahmad. i am grateful to andrew bell, that depressive genius queen bitch who taught me to call shit, shit and not apologize for it, who taught me what was really good creative work and again is one of those whom i love very dearly - because he let me into his life, he introduced me to yasmin and because simply of who he is.
lately, i was mired yet again in angst and self-flagellation, agonizing about what to do with myself. i actually was thinking of emailing yasmin but i was embarrassed that it felt like being too familiar with someone who was too important. i regret i let that feeling get the better of me because knowing yasmin, i knew she would have remembered me. she wouldn't have ignored me because she never ignores anyone. i also know she would have given me a perspective so wise it would have again knocked the socks of my feet. three weeks after i spent agonizing whether i would email her or not, she was gone. that is now officially, number one on my list of regrets that i ever failed to do in my life.
with her passing, i took stock of everything else that was lying around in my life in half done states because i wanted them to be perfect first before i did them. what the fuck?
and so i decided to just write, write this and get my blog finally going. i've decided now to just write and continue writing. i will tell people exactly how i feel. i will connect. i will eat. i will figure it out one day at a time.
i am very, very sad that yasmin is gone. however, i am still here and my hero continues to be with me.
