A labour of love. That’s really the only way to say it right.

Last Wednesday I was invited to Dina Zaman’s official launch of her new book, I Am Muslim at the Central Market Annexe. My first experience of Dina’s writing was via her Dina’s Dalca column in The New Straits Times. She later wrote a column for the online newspaper Malaysiakini, frankly titled I Am Muslim, which now sees light in the new form of a book. And such loving care, from the design of the cover which features her baby nephew, to the actual preparations for the launch itself.

Weeks before the event itself, all of us knew it would be a night to remember.

Dina Zaman herself, a portrait of joy

What a delightful soirée it turned out to be! The enchanting music of a hundred or more guests chatting away excitedly and there I was — turning up in my office attire and holding on to an umbrella to boot! (It was a dark and stormy night, which meant the roads were tied up and I had to resort to public rail just to get there on time.)

I’m sure there were plenty of celebrities abound; I wouldn’t have recognised them much since I gave up watching television. Pretty people in numbers I haven’t encountered before, and scarier still, they were writers too, and poets and publishers and all manner of beings highly intelligent, more so than me at least.

Those were the first sixty seconds. Then I noticed the registration table and things fell in place for me again. I can do this, I’m all about order. There were two separate, long and narrow rooms — both galleries of local artwork. I moved from the first to the next and spotted Eric C. Forbes and Janet Tay of MPH Publishing immediately. Next to them stood Chet, a writer/blogger — ah, friends!

Time to work this room.

Amidst all the performances (including a rather unique “whirling dervish” by the Chakra dancers, all clad in white, graceful ladies we later discovered to be actually men, if only by the sudden flashes of armpit hair) and speeches (Dina was luminescent, truly the picture of beauty and joy), I ended up meeting a whole lot of people.

Some I knew, some I met online but haven’t yet in person, some appeared completely out of the blue. The number of “Oh! So you’re Kenny Mah!” I received is testament only to the strong turnout of bloggers that night.

We were out in full force: Kak Teh (made me giddy just to have met her finally), Eliza of Eliza’s Haberdashery, See Ming Chong (founder of Word Up!), Leon Wing (with whom I discussed poetry with, sort of, considering I know nothing of the subject), Ruhayat X (who polished off a significant amount of shellfish and worried about salmonella afterwards; I hope he’s alright, it is more than a week later now), Animah (blog commenter extraordinaire), Ninie of HatiYoga and The Yoga Instructor’s Diaries, and others whose blogs I need to visit again.

(l-r): Animah, Chet, me, Leon Wing, Aishah Ali, Kak Teh.

After the party, us bloggers decided to head to a good ole mamak for drinks and to chat and gossip the night away. Or at least till 10:30pm when we were unceremoniously chased out — didn’t they want our money and wholesome patronage? Perhaps they had heard us bloggers were liars. (To which Tunku Halim has a most ingenious comeback.)

The sweetest part of the night for me was when Aishah Ali, veteran journalist and Kak Teh’s former editor, presented her with clippings of her old newspaper columns. Surrounded by friends new and old, sharing stories and laughter and tears, that’s where I’d want to be, ten, twenty years from now, if I am good and live my life fully.

And this is what you do when you get invited to a book launch: you make the most of it, as with life. Thank you, Dina, for inviting me, for having such a swell bunch of friends, but mostly for the courage to write from the heart — I’ll be reviewing IAM soon, promise.

Photo credits: Pictures taken from Sharon’s and Dina’s blogs.
Elsewhere: Other accounts of the IAM launch by Sharon, Ruby Ahmad, The Yoga Instructor, The Madcap Machinist, Chet, and of course, Dina Zaman herself.