"1991, the most significant year." I said, as we were driving home.

My mom, rolling her eyes,"Yes, I know the year you were born."

I replied indignantly, slightly prideful, "Besides that glorious birth, that was the year the Soviet Union collapsed, mom. The world was set free."

"What set free?!", my dad assertively conjectured, "...its bloody, American propaganda."

"What are you talking about, dad?"

"You've been brain washed by Americans into..."

I interrupted, "Communism fell in 1991, and the world was set free!"

My dad replied, "Communism is the greatest ideology ever conceived."

My mouth dropped opened. Suddenly the composed sentences, the logic, the reasoning completely helter-skeltered. My own father? Could it be possible? He, a communist?

He continued, " Yeah, look at damn China. She's magnificent, glorious, independent. America's being drained dry by fucking democracy."

"You can't be serious. We all know Communism is bad. Look at North Korea, Vietnam..." , I repositioned myself on the car seat, trying to look calm and nonchalant in-spite of this startling confession, "China is more Socialist than Communist; a capitalist nation, under a communist banner."

"American bullshit." my father retorted, now it was guns out, "Son, you honestly think that Democracy can heal the bloody world? Europe? America? Africa? Fuck India, thats democracy gone fucking bad."

"No, I don't believe Democracy can heal the world."

"So, why then do you still cling to that stupid idea that promises every Tom, Dick, and Harry a vote, so that only a few get rich? Its so stupid that it actually worked. People believed in a fucked up system while a few rape them."

"Dad, its not right for you to say so. Malaysia is a democracy-sort of- and it has given you so much freedom."

"Screw it, I was Communist since 1960."

MY DAD IS A COMMUNIST?!!?!?!?!?

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And too often is his gold complexion dimm'd:
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or natures changing course untrimm'd;
By thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

William Shakespeare