I am so sad that I am sad that I am back. I’m so sad I started to eat meat, cultivate an appetite for back-to-back episodes of LOST, and wonder when all the things I have to do will start to fix themselves.
I should also accept that I am suffering from poetic culture shock. I shiver at the sight of my country’s citizenry not unlike Stepford-dom (why do the hairdressers torture us lesser mortals so with duplicate hairstyles, why do people seem more like walking-consumer-junkyards to me as opposed to flesh and blood?). I find myself flipping travel books on the ‘cool, slick, hip and ultra-modern’ Singapore in a bid to see a future on this island.
But the children are the most reassuring as always, giving me strength to find more reasons to live the way I want to live.
Coming home on a public bus today my brother and I sit next to a pair of Malay boy twins. They run happyfeet first for the back seats -just as I had grimaced a second ago to have only the back seats to go for- and gleefully park themselves with a view fit for… them. Not too long ago in Nepal I had rejoiced in sitting in a truck that chortled down a hill, as I watched my hilly world tumble behind me. I seem to forget to do that here. It shouldn’t be any less climatic.
I like how at the back of their white-washed shoes show up as they kneel on the seat. Their shoes read, ‘Amin’ for one kid, and ‘Aiman’ for the other. Ownership. Amin fell asleep, sweet dreams given by the view he ran for from the back of the bus. Contentment.
Filed under: Blogroll
