Yesterday it was my birthday

I hung one more year on the line

I should be depressed, my life's a mess

But I'm havin' a good time...

Another " Bulan Kemerdekaan " has come and gone. In fact the celebratory mood that was meant to last month-long until Sept 17 has long fizzled in the stupor of mega-sales and the contrived rejoicing of Aug 31.

Maybe September is no longer the month for any happy commemorations, especially if you are Muslim. Off to a lethargic start in mid-August, the tourism minister lamented this year's much subdued display of patriotism as he counted far fewer flags on our windscreens.

We could do with a lot of celebrations, really. After all we have clawed back from the brink on the strength of our own formula, and the man whose dismissal sparked ungrateful Malaysians to challenge the authority and nearly brought the nation to its knees is increasingly isolated and forgotten in Sungai Buloh.

The movement that he initiated is now only a minor irritant, a rag-tag band of irresponsible anti-national types. Let us get back into line, stand united, be grateful for what they have given us and let the good times roll again.

How we wished it is all true. For all that self-deluding slogans and reassurances that the worst is behind us, we have that uneasy feeling that we are living on borrowed time and borrowed money, maybe even borrowed labour. We are continuing to pay for our recklessness because we have not really learnt the lessons of our recent past.

During this high point of our national calendar, we are given to narcissistic preening and overblowing our mediocre achievements, mainly because we like to compare ourselves with our poorer neighbours and those wretched people whose lives are ravaged by famine and wars in some far-flung continent. But spare some moments for some critical introspection, and we can't help feeling that the Bahtera Merdeka , Kassim Masdor's beautiful metaphor of the young independent nation on the threshold of a voyage of self-destiny and actualisation of dreams, is lurching from one squall to another and running into occasional heavy storms.