A Bit of Earth

Last Saturday, Singapore celebrated her 43rd birthday. The weekend papers carried readers’ reflections and writers’ hopes for this country we call home. One article and one poem touched my heart. I summarised the article in this post. The poem can be found in the next post.

I found hope in the prose of Christine Suchen Lim. In the article, she pondered on why she loves Singapore. She asked if readers would still love a Singapore stripped of her wealth, shopping malls, standard of living, leaders, hawker food, etc. The writer would because of quiet places, a crooked path and two cleaners.

Born in Malaysia, she migrated to Singapore at age 14 in the 1960s. Her daily morning walks, along the East Coast beach under the angsana trees, to a school by the sea helped her to cope with a new life in a foreign land. The beach and the sea became her sanctuary, quiet places she started to love. She found solace in the ancient “songs and voices embedded in this bit of earth.”

The writer reminded readers of the possibilities that dwell within us, the individual paths that we can create. She offered the imagery of a crooked “path of beaten earth, made by anonymous feet that quietly went off tangent; feet that refused to follow the straight-as-the-crow-flies concrete path built by the authorities.” This is in contrast to “nature in neat grids, rows of trees and bushes planted at regular intervals.”

The writer takes pride in our literary heritage, Singapore’s creative blend of “Singlish, pasar Malay or pasar Mandarin.” She celebrated an ordinary conversation between an Indian cleaner and a Chinese cleaner, how they chatted in a mix of local dialects, while sharing bread, feeding birds.

There is hope. It is possible to find meaning in simple things - enjoying nature, exploring new trails, chatting with friends - when our hearts are willing.

The quotes are from the article, A Bit of Earth in the Sun, by Christine Suchen Lim, published in The Straits Times, on Sunday, 10 August 2008. The full text can be found on wildsingapore news blog.