He taught himself to read and write Chinese, and acquired a
pretty good knowledge in Chinese medicine I must say. But as years went by, Singapore had moved so quickly into the
future that my father could no longer run shoulder to shoulder with
her.
Orchard Road and Clarke Quay are now devoted to the young and
the foreigners. My father can’t fit in with the fancy bars and
restaurants, and god forbid, the reverse bungee jump. The places
where he shed sweats of hard work have since been cleaned up and
developed to be more inviting, but paradoxically, more rejecting at
the same time.
Have you been to any of the malls sir? I would advice you to
bring a guide if you visit one. One after another, they grew so
big, so tall and so inconvenient for the aged. The escalators are a
challenge to their wobbly legs (that’s 421,000 pairs assuming legs
turn jelly after the age of 65), the lifts are hardly enough and
the toilets are always at the next and the next and the next
corner.
Outside, Singapore is like a table of mahjong tiles. Every now
and then buildings are shifted, thrown in or removed. My father
finds his way around through trial and error. The road signs, all
in English, are practically redundant to him. And so he is damned
when the roads are reconstructed, which happens ever so often.
His problems with language also interfered with his efforts to
participate in my school life. I used to dance and emcee many
concerts in secondary school, but my father only attended once. He
was so bored out of his skull he never showed up for any more,
until I graduated from college this July.
Just as I had expected, the ceremony, held entirely in
English, made him feel out of place. When the graduating class was
invited to rise from our seats to thank our parents with a round of
applause, my father wasn’t aware of its significance.
I had asked the valedictorian to say a few words in
Mandarin, but he rejected my request. He said it would be
discriminating against the minority groups. I understood the
sensitivity of the issue but it left me with a bitter
taste.
Please do not be offended sir, but I feel that the
valedictorian’s approach bore an uncanny resemblance to how your
government handles many issues, especially pertaining to race,
language and religion.
Many a times you stay put at the traffic junction to avoid
causing any accident.
For instance, if we have to put up street signs in the Chinese
language, we have to do so in Malay and Tamil too. So if there’s
not enough space for all four, we just make do with a sign only in
the English language.
But we’re not moving forward either sir.
Individually these issues may seem trivial to
you, but together they conspire to reject and exclude my father,
and those alike.
Please do not point my father to the parks and community
centres (or even house him in Johor Bahru). Are these the only
things that Singapore can offer to her pre-independence population?
Do you really want to herd them into places out of convenience, and
compel them to hang out with people they don’t know and may not
want to interact with?
Or if you sir think this will require too much work and money,
we could wait till everyone in that generation kicks the bucket.
Let’s assume the youngest of that generation is 50-years-old and
the average life expectancy is 80, it’s impossible to ignore their
needs for 30 years, don’t you think sir?
Moreover, at the lightning speed at which Singapore is
progressing, I doubt this will be a problem contained within one
generation. We too will have our time of failing eyesight and
restless legs, which cannot be made exception by any amount of
education or technology.
But what I can do with these privileges given to my generation
is to write you this personal letter, Mr Prime Minister, hoping you
would understand what Singapore is becoming to my father, and
eventually you and I.
http://sgblogs.com/entry/opinion-letter-country-sheere/365522
