The small annoying daily aggravations living cheek-by-jowl. Mr. Toh up on the second storey had been irritated by Eric’s late night returns using the long electronic roller instead of the recently oiled gate for his entries. Grate-Grate-Grate12am, 1am…. Upstairs in our section too the young Chinese lad when he returned in his Honda neglected to close the roller behind him, leaving the driveway wide open all night. In the concrete echo chamber of the building Mr. Toh could hear the Courts salesman our side clearing his throat in the mornings, gargling like Niagara Falls. The sewer-tobacco odour might have become an issue at the store, manager concerned about customers being lost. It was certainly one hullabaloo that racket, sounding like the old snorting of the liquid through the nose and expelling mouth—unpleasant over breakfast. Mr. T. might not have been able to identify the culprit; at first the white Toyota had been suspected in this case and it had only been checking one morning for the car that the matter was established. Mr. Toh told too of the Toyota man on exiting the house each morning dropping a long string of saliva into the grate on the door step, a habit before he got behind the wheel. 7: 15am Mr. T. found himself looking out for the man. Sleep was always hard-won for Mr. Toh and the lounge-chair on his balcony provided second chance.
Last night the Tamil Uncle whose brother was hung at Changi some years back stopped by Wadi. Having read the piece in which he featured many things had been “triggered” for him, the man reported, unexpectedly using the term. Memories, reflections, aggravations of his own.
The Tamil Uncle’s parents had evidently been much in the man's thoughts these last days. As a youth the father had come out to Penang and met his wife, the Tamil Uncle’s mother, in Johor. A smile the Tamil Uncle gave re-tracing the fateful union of the pair.
Good people. Truly good, the parents. As was the brother, the one who hung, the Tamil Uncle stated with judicial conviction.
There was good in all, the Tamil Uncle proceeded shortly afterward. Man in general— Uncle nodding his head with the assertion.
Turned-eye Reprobate Jack Nasri was known to the Tamil. That man too was included among the good. A good man, the Tamil Uncle affirmed; gone off the rails admittedly.
For his own part the Tamil Uncle was a sinner, he admitted. There could be no pretence: the man had sinned and continued in his way.
Those who went to the gallows had sinned too, the Tamil Uncle also granted. But, the Tamil Uncle asked, what of those who sat in judgement? What could be said of them?
The Tamil Uncle did not say.
Likely the Tamil Uncle had arrived at these questions without any reading of the philosophical texts on ethics and morality. As a Hindu, these arguments had not originated in sermons either; in Hinduism there was no sermonising. Would a Hindu drunk receive counselling in the temples in Singapore from enlightened priests and holy men? It seemeddoubtful; questionable at least.
It seemed memory of his parents had returned strongly recently to the Tamil Uncle, perhaps triggered by the record of his and his mother’s visit to his brother in the prison shortly before the execution, where his voicelessness on that occasion at Changi so strongly marked the event.
Dreams being often mute, and more often than not as a man aged featuring the dead, perhaps the Tamil Uncle had received visitations in recent days, vivid returns of his mother and father and his brother.
There were indications the Tamil Uncle had recently passed through some kind of ordeal; some kind of examination.
Recollections of the goodness of his parents and brother had overpowered the man. Having the good dead raised up only highlighted one’s inadequacy.
The Tamil Uncle had trailed off.
Snowy-haired and bushy-browed, an old scar gouged on his right cheek high on the bone.
The long white bristles of his brows had been left to grow out by the Tamil Uncle. Sitting with elbows resting on the orange Wadi table-top, during one of the Uncle’s lingering pauses the strands were pulled out either side, pulled smooth and into line during a minute or so of quiet. Loose tobacco was sometimes rolled into shape in somewhat similar fashion; moustaches of course. A kind of unusual grooming the Tamil Uncle might have undertaken now and then without any mirror.
Such gifts the Tamil Uncle had received and then lost when he had been unprepared. Overwhelming memories of goodness. After some years the memories perhaps needed triggers and what returned arrived as a shock like the unfolding of unaccountable events.
Were the good dead still in life, the Tamil Uncle came to further suggest after the pause of the toilette, he, the Tamil Uncle, would not be like he was, he declared. Not sloshed, reeking of the drink, living rough and showing himself in soiled clothing, he meant.
The dead former guardians, protectors, guides and companions, could never be replaced. An individual was bereft without them, the Tamil Uncle suggested in his person, most strongly in his manner, gestures and expressions.
Irretrievable losses. For a community, a social body, the calculated taking of life appalled a man of that mind, of one who found good in all. How could it be otherwise?
Geylang Serai, Singapore
No comments:
Post a Comment