03/10/2026

SATURDAY | OCT 3, 2026

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The lost art of staying I HAVE been thinking about love this week. Not the Instagram kind. Not the kind first “I love you”, the wedding, the honeymoon. But nobody puts up a Because marriages do not collapse only in dramatic moments. Sometimes they disappear slowly; one unspoken resentment, one neglected conversation, one “I’m too tired”, one “you don’t understand me” at a time. P O T T U O N P O I N T

beautiful Instagram post saying: “Day 4,327 of tolerating his snoring.” Nobody celebrates the 17,000th time a wife has heard the same story. Nobody makes a reel about staying when both people are tired, broke, stressed and annoyed with each other. Yet, that is where marriage actually lives. In the ordinary. Siti Hasmah once recalled that the two of them would quarrel during their courtship, then go out for a meal and make up. I smiled when I read that. Because suddenly their 70-year love story did not seem so impossibly grand. They fought too. They annoyed each other too. Mahathir was particular about time. Hasmah apparently was not always in the same hurry. And eventually, he accepted that she was unlikely to change. That little detail says so much. Maybe marriage is not about finding somebody who never annoys you but about finding someone whose annoying habits you eventually learn to live with. Or, as Mahathir himself described it, tolerance. And perhaps that is the word we need to bring back: Tolerance. Patience. Compromise. Forgiveness. Not because people should put up with everything but because two imperfect human beings cannot spend decades together without occasionally driving each other slightly mad. Today, we talk a lot about “red flags”. And yes, some red flags should send you running. But perhaps we have also forgotten about green flags. Someone who stays. Someone who listens. Someone who apologises. Someone who changes when they are wrong. Someone who doesn’t give up at the first difficult chapter. A V I S H T R I

with roses, matching outfits and captions about “my forever” that disappear three months later.

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And when marriages break, families feel it too. Children are often the ones standing in the middle of decisions they did not make. We cannot pretend every broken marriage can or should be saved. But surely, as a society, we should still want people to have the tools to build families that are loving, stable and kind. That is why the passing of Siti Hasmah feels like more than the end of a remarkable woman’s life. It feels like the closing of a chapter in a Malaysia that once believed deeply in growing old together. She and Mahathir did not have a perfect marriage. No one does. They had something perhaps more valuable. They had a long marriage – a marriage that survived real life. And now, after 70 years, death has done what all the little quarrels, frustrations, differences and difficult years could not do. It finally separated them. That makes me think about my own generation. We want love but we also want convenience. We want companionship but we don’t always want compromise. We want someone who understands us but sometimes forget that we also have to understand someone else. We want forever but we sometimes get frightened when forever becomes hard work. Maybe that is the lesson Siti Hasmah quietly leaves behind. Love is not always fireworks. Sometimes, it is two people sitting at the same table after an argument. Sometimes, it is waiting. Sometimes, it is forgiving. Sometimes, it is rolling your eyes and thinking, aiyoh , this person again. And sometimes, it is simply choosing, once more, to stay. For 70 years, Siti Hasmah and

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I mean the real kind. The kind that survives bad moods, money problems, family drama, irritating habits, grey hair, ageing knees and seven decades of life. The kind Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had. Seventy years of marriage – 70. These days, even saying “forever” can feel a little ambitious. We live in a time when relationships can end with a WhatsApp message, a blocked number or a quiet unfollow. “ Takngam .” And sometimes, yes, walking away is necessary. Nobody should be told to stay in a marriage that is unsafe, abusive or deeply harmful. But somewhere between knowing when to leave and when to stay, I wonder if we have forgotten something: The art of trying. Siti Hasmah and Mahathir met as medical students in Singapore. On April 23, 1949, after watching a movie, the young Mahathir told her three simple words: “I love you.” No dating app. No carefully selected profile picture. No “typing…” anxiety. Just three words. They married in 1956. And then life happened – children, careers, responsibilities, politics, public life, successes, difficulties and everything that comes with growing old. And somehow, they kept going. There is something wonderfully ordinary about that. Because perhaps that is what we have romanticised away. We like the beginning of love – the butterflies, the first date, the “ Tak boleh tahan. ” “ Dah tak bahagia .”

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Siti Hasmah and Mahathir did not have a perfect marriage. No one does. They had something perhaps more valuable. They had a long marriage – a marriage that survived real life. – SYED AZAHAR/MASRY CHE ANI/THE SUN

perhaps that is something worth remembering. Love is not just about finding the right person. Sometimes, it is about learning how to stay with the person you chose. Hashini Kavishtri Kannan is the news editor at theSun. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

Mahathir chose each other. Perhaps that is what makes their love story so rare. Not because they never had problems. But because they stayed long enough to have a whole lifetime of them. And in a world that is becoming increasingly impatient with everything, including people,

COMMENT by Ben Fong Kok Seng

Budget 2027 must look beyond income, recognise real cost of living WHEN Budget 2027 is tabled on Oct 9, I hope it will pay closer attention to a question many families in the Greater Klang Valley, especially Kuala Lumpur, face every month: How much is left after the bills are paid? On paper, many households in this area may earn enough to be classifiesd as M40 or even fall at the lower end of T20. But in reality, rent, childcare, groceries and the cost of commuting to work can quickly eat into that income. fancy restaurants, some families in the DBKL flats along Jalan Hang Tuah and pre-WWII homes in Brickfields struggle to make ends meet. My first wish for the Budget is, therefore, a review of how we decide who qualifies for assistance in the Greater Klang Valley. National income bands are useful but the same income does not go as far in KL as it does in a smaller town. Loke has kept its attention on improving the network. Anyone who remembers how limited the choices once were should recognise that. But a train fare is only part of the journey. If a commuter cannot easily get from home to the station or has to pay for an extra ride after the last bus has gone, the savings shrink. their jobs and lead to better-paying work. The aim should be to help households improve their income, not leave them dependent on assistance year after year. Finally, the current minimum wage of RM1,700 also raises a broader question: Should one national figure apply uniformly when the cost of working and living differs significantly between Kuala Lumpur and other parts of the country?

and some small business premises, giving traders some breathing room. There were also efforts to make access to recreational activities more affordable. Budget 2027 should bring the same attention to households whose incomes look adequate on paper but leave them struggling with the cost of living in KL. KL cannot be treated like every other part of the country. Its jobs attract people from across Malaysia but its costs can leave working families struggling. A Budget that recognises what residents actually spend as well as what they earn would be a good place to start. Ben Fong Kok Seng is the chairperson of the Bukit Bintang Parliamentary Zone Residents’ Representative Council. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

More reliable feeder buses, safer walking routes and better links between services would make the existing network work harder for the people who depend on it most. Greater reliance on public transport also means the government can reduce its hefty fuel subsidies. My third wish is for support that helps families move forward. Free or low-cost after-school tuition in neighbourhood facilities would ease pressure on parents while giving children a fairer chance to get ahead. Working adults also need free skills programmes that fit around

For certain forms of welfare aid, the government should consider local living costs and household circumstances when setting eligibility. A family should not lose help simply because its income has crossed a line while its essential expenses remain high. My second wish is for continued investment in public transport. We have made real progress. The My50 pass, for example, has made regular travel more affordable, and the Transport Ministry under Anthony

A separate regional rate may be difficult to administer but that is a reason to study the options carefully, not to dismiss the question. The same local-cost principle should guide decisions on aid eligibility. Over the years, the government has introduced KL-specific measures in alleviating costs of living in the city. For example, under minister Hannah Yeoh’s watch, DBKL has halved the rent for its hawker sites

In other words, despite earning more on paper, their disposable income after essential expenses may leave them under financial pressures similar to lower-income households in less expensive parts of the country. I see this every day, especially in Bukit Bintang. It is an area people associate with glitzy shopping malls and tourist hotspots. But a short walk from the bright shopfronts and