Kuala Lampur, May 14 -- We are shaped by our past.

Anyone walking past a university's history department would half expect to come across a poster like that. Nothing gaudy like dinosaurs or Roman slaves rowing a galleon as backdrop pictures but it is not hard to imagine. The poster, not T-Rex or abused collaterals.

However, hardly anyone has a carbon copy recollection of "what occurred before" exactly like another person in the same room, even in a very large room, say the population size of a metropolis. In its very nature, history is divisive. What is less mentioned, it is deeply personal.

Ask 10 persons in a family about a commotion 10 years ago and various accounts are produced. That's one family.

Multiply that by the millions liv...