Fiction

rumours in the city: "the statue galloped last night!"... "and the stars are unfavourable!"... but despite these signs of ill-omen, the city was poised, with a new myth glinting in the corners of its eyes. august in bombay, a month of festivals, the month of krishna's birthday and coconut day; and this year - fourteen hours to go, thirteen, twelve - there was an extra festival on the calendar, a new myth to celebrate, because a nation that had never previously existed was about to win its freedom, catapulting us into a world which, although it had five thousand years of history, although it had invented the game of chess and traded with middle kingdom egypt, was nevertheless quite imaginary; into a mythical land, a country which would never exist except by the efforts of a phenomenal collective will - except in a dream we all agreed to dream; it was a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by bengali and punjabi, madrasi and jat, and would periodically need the sanctification and renewal which can only be provided by rituals of blood. india, the new myth - a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the other two mighty fantasies: money and god.

hon lyn would really like her camera now because the view is moving. the two of us sit on a jetty in sembawang and the twinkling lights from the shipyard, dickens's fairy lights, sing a rousing chorus with the quiet night, breaking waves and soft wind.

i cant quite decide if i like this place and i tell her that. at times like this, when we are quiet and the weather is not oppressive, there is a possibility of this being home. and then there is the unforgiving crush of humanity, Singaporean humanity, and the midday heat to contend with. here there are annoying 20 year-olds talking nonsense in my mother tongue.

there is a song in that language, its title transliterates to son of the island, and i feel like i could be that guy. but this island city is constantly taken away from me, it calls me an others; i am other-ed, robbed and excluded. when this home expels its sons like that, i cannot see its history and our ties, and that makes me sad. it says to me, you dont actually belong here, you are only fictional.

but i have talked too far, a little too far from hon lyn and the story she is telling me now. she's on a bus full of singaporeans, malaysians, indonesians, thais, and vietnamese. this bus - i can already imagine it - is travelling from thai malaysia to muslim thailand. luscious green trees speed by the windows, rubbish littering the roads. maybe the airconditioning isnt working and a hot sticky stream of air passes the windows bup-bup-bup-bup.

they communicate with a blend of malay and hokkien, maybe a little thai - no? we wish this could happen more, this mixed bag of southeast asian-ness, because we're quite sick of poms, aussies, and german gappers every time we travel. we say it's about time for southeast asia to represent.

but, ah, no, not going to happen. whereas i instantly identify singapore with southeast asia, more people feel related to japan, hong kong, taiwan or korea. after it exiled me, singapore extended its project to itself, and there are now five million mental exiles who do not feel at home in their backyard. the 550 million people around them are too strange, too... brown. their city and their other-ness in their neighbourhood are objects of their diligence and creation and now this place has become too unreal, a fiction of its own creation.

as i write this in my own anglepoise, i'm forced to ask myself if perhaps my state of exile is due to a lack of my own imagination. am i unlike my father, who, at the age of 57, wants to change his name, dreaming up a new identity and history more in line with his self-image? is that what i should learn from that old man, to fight fiction with fiction?