Singapore – Take Two

For somebody who remembers the smallest of details about the randomest of things, I often suffer from deplorable loss of memory when it comes to certain things. Such as the date I first set foot in Singapore. It was the fag end of July, the date being 23^rd or 27^th, I forget which. But that was the year 2012. It is now July of 2014. Two years. TWO years. Did I notice it’s been that long? Hell, no!

Time, to employ a cliché, really has flown by. And I can’t even begin to explain how quickly. Life until the age of 23 (well, a month short thereof) was simple, steady. Not boring, never boring; but… predictable. The levels of naiveté demonstrated by me were of stratospheric proportions. Knowing all of this full well, the sister decided to accompany me on my first foray into an ‘unknown’ land. Now, knowing—and loving—Singapore as I do, it seems a laughable matter that I or anyone else could ever have considered this place as one where I needed to be careful, on account of the ‘unknown’ factor.

The first year went by with life and, more importantly, my lifestyle, undergoing no major changes. Much as I dreaded becoming a student again, I found that I could slip into the role—the pursuit and achievement of good grades included—easily enough. Buddies were exactly the kind of people I had always befriended even back home – vice-less, rock solid and thus, to some, boring. The year was interesting enough to teach me how to multitask, how to survive writing the most boring papers while holding a myriad of different day jobs/internships. Getting out didn’t happen often, given that I lived on pretty much another planet. But when we did, it was fun. I did have a few friends outside of Uni, thanks to Couchsurfing, but I’d meet them only once in a while. I went to a bunch of cool places, too, thanks to the enterprising CSers!

Graduation was a time of great pride. It also brought the brother to Singapore. Considering how adamant he was never to visit, this was a major highlight for the year! Post graduation, the job search languished. In the meantime, I shifted houses twice—which would have been impossible without aforementioned Uni mates—and visited Bali for 11 days. A trip home ensued, in which a short term work project in Goa was also included. The Bali trip ensured I was flat broke by the time I got back to Singapore and, once again, the dear darling Uni mates came to the rescue, as did another Couchsurfing friend.

Amid all of this, life’s ups and downs did not leave me untouched. From the highs of living an independent life to the lows of losing a very young friend, it’s been a constant see-saw ride.

November was a period of desperation. Two months for the visa to expire, a mind-draining part-time position in hand, but no full-time job in sight. Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. And thus, when I got a call from a certain country club, I blazed in and pretty much put down an ultimatum. “You either hire me, or you don’t,” I said to them, though not in so many words. Contrary to my own expectation, I wasn’t thrown out. Starting January 2014, life in a stable job began. Early mornings and long working hours meant early nights! Add to that the daily chores before turning in each day, and I had newfound respect for all working women with families. Move over, Superman.

But let me backtrack here a bit. While the job search was ongoing, moving out of NTU meant I had more time, better access to people and places. And so it began that I started going out more often, meeting lots of fun people. It was always interesting because I met new people, learnt new things. And then, in early 2013, I met a few people who went on to become faces as familiar as my own. Was that necessarily a good thing, given that I now spoke to fewer ‘new’ people every time I went out? Maybe not. But did the experience of hanging out with them change my life? Yes – some for better, some for worse.

Essentially, I was now, well and truly, ‘on my own’. Even though I had lived in Singapore for a year, so far, Uni had closeted me. The outside world was a whole different ballgame. Between job searches and painful landlords, the list was endless. To add to that, I came to be in touch with some people who were so different from me, I think it was the wonder of it all that attracted me to begin with. I often felt ridiculously naïve; almost as often as I felt glad to know a bunch of people who had so much to teach and share; it was incredible.

But my time in the ‘outside’ world also brought me in touch with elements I had never experienced before. From not having my best friend standing next to me to offer a way to politely refuse the advances of men at clubs, to seeing the absolute recklessness and debauchery demonstrated by some people, I used to be left speechless. And then I was asked, “Why do you get so culture-shocked?” That’s when I knew I had to either get with it, or get out of it. So I chose the former – to some extent. Has that always been a good idea? Absolutely not. Has it taught me more in the past one year than I learnt in 24 years prior to that? Yes. I still can’t understand some behaviours, thought processes and attitudes, but at least now, I can camouflage my feelings.

Sadly, I have also begun to do something I never thought I would – I have begun to comprehend things that, in the past, wouldn’t have penetrated my power of reasoning because they were so alien. And that was a good thing. Because this, the new me, the one that comprehends all this, has also learnt to be less rigid. The world is no longer all white or black. The shades of grey that I had managed to avoid for the longest time have seeped into the lens that I view the world with, as well. But what hasn’t changed, is the way I feel about it. And that’s worse, because I now do things that are in accordance with my new behaviour, but not so with my old beliefs. And this constant internal tug-of-war is soul draining.

That’s life in Singapore so far. But it certainly wasn’t all bad. The only difference is, some of these are things I should have learned much earlier in life, to save me the multiplied effects now. It’s always better to learn late than never to learn at all, but the longer we take to learn life’s lessons, the harder the task of doing so. And I had to learn the really, really hard way; but at least I learned.

Friends from India who have stuck by my side like my shadow during this phase know the changes and therefore empathise, but I suspect those whom I haven’t met in the last two years will barely, if at all, recognise the person I have become.

So that’s what two years in Singapore have been like. I love my life here and I love the independence, the sense of accomplishment that I feel every day. So what if I don’t always like the me doing all of these things.

P.S.: I’ve sat in a car in Singapore plenty of times, but never on a bike. Just as the two year-mark was coming to a close, and I was panicking at crossing another year without a bike ride in Singapore, an angel heard me and I got the most perfect bike ride – empty stretch of road, at 2:00am, with a cool breeze. Dear angel, if you are reading this, a big Thank You! (And I wouldn’t mind another ride.)

The Sequel

I read a book as a youngster of about 9 or 10. Even then, I had a voracious love for reading. So much so, my friends used to come up to me and ask for a book recommendation. At the aforementioned age, I had recently read Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster. So whenever anyone asked for a recommendation, I would suggest the novel. It was, and still remains, an all-time favourite. Daddy Long Legs is the story of an orphan girl. The story, written entirely in letters, tells us about the girl’s life in an orphanage under a harsh mistress. But, as all children’s/young adults’ novels, it had to have a happy ending. So, by the end, we come to know through the letters she writes to her sponsor (who sends her to college), that she has grown up to find herself a man worth keeping. Who is he? You’ll just have to read Daddy Long Legs to find out.

Years have passed since I read Daddy Long Legs. The novel is confined to the ‘sweet memories’ part of my brain. A few days ago, while doodling on the Net, I came across a site which offers free, legit downloadable ebooks. The best thing of all – most of them are classic! For a classics-fanatic like me, this was brilliant news. I found loads of brilliant classics that I downloaded. Of the existence of some of these, I didn’t even have a clue – such as the Scarlet Pimpernel series! (Did you know there was more than one book? I didn’t!) So then imagine my great joy when I discovered the sequel to Daddy Long Legs, and by the same author; not one of those pointless sequels written by some random person who can never have a hope in hell of capturing the writer’s essence (who ever can?). I downloaded that faster than you could say Google Chrome, and started reading it immediately. I read it at work, at home, even while travelling.

The story of Dear Enemy (the sequel) is something like this: while at college, Jerusha Abbott (the protagonist of Daddy Long Legs) made a life-long friend in well-to-do Sallie McBride. While Sallie is a sweet-natured girl, she is shown to be a little flaky and frivolous, unlike Jerusha, in Daddy Long Legs. Dear Enemy opens with Sallie as the protagonist. Jerusha Abbott (now married) has taken it upon herself to institute Sallie as the superintendent of the very orphanage where she herself grew up. (If I tell you how that happens, I’ll be giving away who is Jerusha’s man.) Sallie takes up the position only to show her friend Gordon Hallock (whom we see early on as a romantic prospect) that she is capable of the responsibility. Earlier quite opposed to her job, by the end of a few trials and tribulations and many laughs, Sallie McBride is a changed person. She is a frivolous girl no longer; she has matured into a responsible woman. The name of the novel is the title give by Sallie to the on-site physician, Dr. Robin McRae, whom she always gets into arguments with, but whose wise counsel she always seeks – she, an Irishwoman, and he, a Scotsman. I will say no further, but it is obvious where the story ends.

The point of narrating this is to give a little bit of background before I establish why it’s important. Both these books, similar in their writing style (Webster is hilarious and possesses amazing dry wit – a quality I’ve found to be present in abundance only in Wodehouse so far – not that I’m comparing them; Wodehouse is a class apart), were introduced to me at very different stages of my life. The first I read as a little girl who didn’t know much about the world. My life was my family and friends; I had a sheltered upbringing between school and home. The other, I read as a 22-something-year old. My world is still family and friends, though a lot of priorities have now changed. I am no longer naïve (well, at least not as much as I used to be), I have seen a lot of the good and bad that the world has to offer, been through various dramatic moments in life, and still emerged more or less in one piece, though maybe not entirely unphased. Oh well – that’s life.

But the effect of Dear Enemy is what is important. A person can be irrevocably changed due to his/her experiences in life; I have too. But Dear Enemy evoked in me the same feeling of happiness that Daddy Long Legs did. I wrote a few days ago that “Hope is a brilliant, fascinating thing. No matter what the circumstances, no matter how dire the situation, it refuses to die and burns on...” and the truth of that is resounding in my emotions towards Dear Enemy. You could blame it on the fact that I’m a hopeless romantic – guilty as charged. But the idea that no matter what, the end is happy, and in fact happily ever after, never ceases to give me that warm, fuzzy feeling; to make me happy and to take away, even for just a little while, the veil of constant cynicism that I wear.

Literature, in its simplest form, has had a tremendous effect – on a 10-year old, and a 22-year old.