Mariani and Ellek, the first rescued gibbon that she ever took care of. © Mariani Ramli

Mariani willingly sold her house and her beloved superbike, and she used up her personal savings for the small apes.

“You should take it as a compliment,” a female boss once said to her subordinate, when the latter told her that a male colleague had been making crude remarks about her breasts.

MANY countries have long had female prime ministers, but not Malaysia. The appointment of a female deputy prime minister on May 10th – a day after the country’s momentous 14^th general election (GE14) – was a first.

Kamini Manikam in a thematic Bharatanatyam Recital called Dancing With Shiva © Kamini Manikam

WHEN other 13-year-olds were frequenting fast food joints, Kamini Manikam decided to become vegetarian after reading a book about cruelty to animals.

WHILE reading a business report last month that listed Malaysia’s top 40 richest people (in 2017), it struck me that only one of them was a woman. And she ranks 19th at that.

In Malaysia when our mothers and certainly our grandmothers were young, traveling alone as a woman was literally unheard of. In many traditional cultures, unmarried women are not allowed to roam around unchaperoned.

Credit: Tim Steele (photographer) Copyright: Felicia Yap

Imagine a society divided not according to wealth or education, but on its capacity to remember. Humans are either lowly Monos (those who remember only yesterday) or enviable Duos (who can also remember the day before). The only connection to the past is an iDiary (hello Apple!) in which people record and keep track of all notable events – or at least, their version of them.