My Web of Ideas and Thoughts Where My ideas stuck here

Salam alaik..

Recently, my friend, Pokcik aka Firdaus A. Bakar has posted an entry about reading campaign. And my other friend, Khairul Syahir has posted about reading culture among ourselves. I think both has some similarities in expressing their thoughts and ideas about how reading is important for us as regard a newly-established adulthood environment. Yeah, for most of us (me and my friends) are now in universities, i do agree that we need to have a reading culture suitable with our environment, present and future. The more we grow up, the mature will be. Thus,maturity is not only has to be gained by experiences in life. It should be full of informations. Absolutely through reading.

I am not saying that we as adult cannot read entertainment books like novels or manga, but it should be appropriate with our stage nowadays and to let our adult-brain have appropriate knowledge proportionate to our age. Enough said. We can think for ourselves. If you go to both link,you can find out how truly reading other than school textbook is giving a blast impact. As Pokcik said, don't blame others if you have few knowledge in your head.

By the way, my truely intention of this post is to write a review about a novel which i think is awesome. Its title is Manikam Kalbu. I finished it last week, which was during my holiday. I took about 4 days to finish it due to 'busy of having leisure'...haha..you know what i mean. (i dont know either).


This 357-pages novel is written by Faisal Tehrani. It is an islamic novel and its language is simply malay and a kind of malay literature in certain chapters. It has glossary at the  very last pages if you don't understand the certain sastera words tough. The story is simple and contain some humors. However it is focusing on one theme which is Fashion and Clothing in islamic point of view.

The story is brought to you in two different eras which are the modern day and the other is the era of Malacca empire. The modern day is starring by a teen boy named Ziryab as its main character who is an orphan,lived with his alzheimer grandmother and stepparents,and the only boy who took ERT (ekonomi rumah tangga) in his school. Meanwhile, the era of malacca empire is starring by Manikam Kalbu who is originally a son of a servant in the istana (castle) and has became a royal jurubusana who travels to many countries to gain more knowledge in fashions and clothing. Both Ziryab and Manikam Kalbu has the same mission which is to create and popularize the Malay cloth (busana melayu) to the whole world, along with its principles as regard to islamic rules and regulation.

The plot is not that twisted and is easy to understand. The author use a magical cat as the story-teller. I think this is a very creative way to express the plot. The story describe the perspective of clothing from Islamic point of view in a very interesting way. Besides, the other knowledge that can be earned is types of cloth,sewing, and other that related to fashion and cloth. I think this is a very awesome idea to combine the idea of fashion, history, love, and islamic religion. As we can see, many inappropriate fashion and clothes has been introduced by the West. The teenagers in our country nowadays are terribly and dreadfully out of clothes. For example, the girls wear sleeveless shirt,bikini,no hijab etc and shamelessly show off their body to public. This is absolutely wrong and far from our eastern culture and islamic religion. Okay,i'm about off the topic again. Whoops.

As a conclusion, this novel is pretty amazing for teenagers especially and to all generally in educating and understanding the clothing way suitable with islamic rules with all its dalil from Al-Quran and Hadith. Not only that, we also can learn the history of malay clothes, which i think it is informative and beneficial. For example, why the baju kurung is named so, what does teluk belanga means, why does tengkolok exsist, how to make colours for clothes during ancient times, and so on. These are the things and informations that aren't be taught in your school textbook. Neither the newspaper will suddenly feed you with such knowledge. Probably teenagers nowadays not even wonder about those things which seem not very interesting in daily life. Unless you are becoming a history researcher though. So where else you can have this kind of knowledge in a supposed arranged manner? At the end of the novel, the author stated that this story is written under full and deep researches. So i think the historical informations is not bias or wrong. Moreover, the author is someone who is famous for his effort in strengthening the malay-islamic literature.

I give 4 out of 5 stars for this novel.

So i wonder,are you convinced enough to read this novel too?