“Merdeka! Reflections on the Padang.

 Time-stamp: 0541 hr, 27^th March 2015

“Merdeka!” the rap guttural urgent cry of post-independent Mr Lee Kuan Yuan, resonating in my subconscious mind, was interrupted by the young man in army fatigues.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the bespectacled young man in crew-cut shouted “move in and make yourself comfortable! There is no need to squeeze or rush. Find a space to rest. We will be here for a while, before we move further into the queue. I repeat…. Do you have any questions?”

This was 0541 am on in the soft Padang grass, in semi-darkness, broken by the glare of several harsh floodlights as we were gently herded into a pen the size of 30 carpark lots. The young man of 19 or 20 spoke confidently and forcefully, above the din and crackle of shuffling feet, biscuits packs, black umbrellas and bottled water.

Here was “the improbable solder, in an unaccustomed environment”, as Dr Goh Keng Swee had put it in the foreword to the 1978 book in Leong Choon Cheong’s Youth in the Army.

Well now we are in an unaccustomed situation, a unique event, a validation of the improbable soldier and a poignant reminder of what 40 years National Service has brought us. Wherever his instructions came from, the young man seemed to know his task, and he had the rapt attention of sixty odd eager people from 10 to 60 years old. Here we were, to pay our final respects to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and having queued for the past 2 hours to get this far, we were now on the Padang, in the hands of this junior national serviceman.

I turned my head to look for the others behind us in the queue… there was nobody, no more lines behind us! Where was the queue? In the distance, along the bright white lights of St Andrew’s road, the thin but urgent lines of the elderly, handicapped and very young, seemed very much on the move. Here we were, like a mail-train brought to a dark depot, we seemed to be alone.  Have we ended in a cul-de-sac?

A Monochromatic Kaleidoscope

As we moved along to our ‘pen’, we passed two groups of people in theirs. Most were sitting, not standing. They looked a little worn, some bleary-eyed, in their black and grey monochromatic kaleidoscope of colours, against the backdrop of the incandescent street lights and the submarine yellow barricades.  Queues of people filing past one another, separated by barriers, herded into pens, a modicum of anticipation, a tincture of the unknown. In another place, another circumstance, it could have been a refugee camp, or a scene reminiscent of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, a bleak adaption of P. D. James’s 1992 novel of the same. Except for one thing. Nothing was at stake.

 

Nothing at Stake

There was no hunger, no thirst. There were no precious medicines or packets of food to be obtained, no salvific or material redemption at the end of the line. I studied our barriers closely. These were cold heavy duty thick metal barriers, painted in bright yellow, peeling in places – Caution! Do Not Cross – they cried! But they were not locked together, and they slide apart easily in the soft grass. The barriers were an illusion. My fellow travelers were free to leave. Or stay. I studied them carefully.  Across me, a father and daughter, dressed in white waited silent, glued to their smartphone. To the left, a mother with her five children and teenagers. They were in school uniforms. The youngest was maybe ten, rested against her lap as they settled down to rest. To my left, a family of five chatty women in black or blue, accompanied by a distracted man in a white shirt, with headphones, glued to the internet. He pulled a bag of napkins from a Blackberry shopping bag, and rested his head on it as he spread himself out onto the deceptively spotless dark grass. A fat Indian man to my right was quietly checking his phone, and spoke into it (“I will be late”); he too pulled out a discard cardboard and laid down on his arms. A man stood at the end of the barrier – speaking quietly to the young soldier in fatigues. It was a conversation in normal tones, but I was too far away to catch the details. But he waved his hands across the Padang, toward Connaught Drive, across to the other ‘pens’. From the body language, he was asking…’how does this work, and where does it go, and when are we up next?’ But there was no anxiety or frustration in his body language. Just a need to know and to plan. He exited the barrier and did not return. My son pointed to the lady he saw, a thin dignified, groomed and coiffured in dark navy blue. She had left our part of the pen too. But we think she moved forward, not out. Perhaps she did not know, but we were fellow travelers, united in a pen, joined in the middle – we were going nowhere except together.

 

Not Just the Destination

So why did we come? And what was at the end of the line, worthy of the wait? After all, had we not known all along what to expect? Mr Lee Kuan Yew, lying in State at Parliament House, at the dawn of the fifth day of national mourning. We would have but seconds to pay our respects, to shuffle silently and respectfully, sans our biscuits, our bottled water and umbrellas, to bow deeply in the customary sign of deep respect, and then to shuffle quietly out into the pleasure of the mid-morning sun, a stones-throw from the glassy sheen of the Singapore River that Dick Lee and Kit Chan recount in Home.

We and our travelers were there to make this journey, and it did matter as much as the destination. As if the longer we waited, the ‘harsher’ the (relative) discomfort, the greater our expression of gratitude. A reverse schadenfreude if you will. Singaporeans’ last chance to put in action an expression of gratitude which could not have been easily expressed in words, in his lifetime, to our Lion in Winter.

 

Switching off the Floodlights

An hour into our wait, more people came into the pens. A different corral. Another train. The definitive solders repeated themselves. The new travelers looked fresh, eager, surely a far cry from the slightly weary look of our night predecessors. Did we too look like that at the start? And how do we appear to these newcomers now? As dawn broke over the Padang, we were treated to a spectacle of the soft lights emerging lightening blue hues. There was no golden reflections or hues as it was a clear sky. The outlines of the soft army green tents that was all but hidden in the shadows beneath the Cricket Club and the Victoria Memorial Hall clock tower emerged. Across the road, against the sea line beyond the Esplanade, giant red and white rubberized barriers emerged – construction work for the grand parade in August – sadly, it will miss its founding father.

Our squad leader in green summoned us to rise – we were on the move again! The man in white to my left dusted the specks of mud off his back. The chatter of his women companions rose a decibel. The parents of the five gathered their brood, their umbrellas.  The Indian man smiled benignly and left the cardboard for the next grateful user. A bedecked photojournalist strode through (“how long have you queued? Wow! Since 4 am?” Wow? – where have you been my brother!) and started snapping away.  Our group queued in formation on the Padang spine as we awaited the signal to be released onto the final pathway along road, into the tunnel beneath Fullerton Road, emerging along the banks of the Singapore River into Parliament House.

As we left, I saw two more soldiers in green, attending to several poles and structures. Morning parade? Impossible! I leaned in closer and looked up. They were switching off the floodlights and covering them. Like clockwork. As it should be. Mr Lee would have been proud. A disciplined nation. A nation on the move.

 

Epilogue

This was a reflective piece. Our gratitude cannot be measured in words. And it was indeed an emotional experience for my family ……. but emotional in the Singapore way. While my fellow travelers and I did not chat (except when I met my good friend and colleague, the father of the family with five young children), there was quiet camaraderie, and a commonality of goodwill and purpose. This is how the typical Singapore resident behave. We are neither effusive nor aloof. And we do not wear our emotions on our sleeve, nor feel the need to recount our lives Ophra-style or to make light conversation in a sparse elevator.    But it does beg the question of whether the views of those of us, the travelers who chose to come, the pens with the illusionary barricades, this self-selected group, is heard, and heard enough? And if not, whether we do realise that if we are indeed the majority who will underpin the future character and discipline of the Singapore, our views cannot remain silent.      

 

References

• In 1959, when Mr Lee Kuan Yew declaims “Merdeka!” a number of times, leading a crowd that had gathered at the Padang to celebrate Singapore’s attaining self-government. In that year’s elections the PAP had won a landslide victory in the legislative assembly general election. And the secretary-general of the PAP, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, was sworn in as Prime Minister. (http://singapurastories.com/merdeka-singapores-merdeka-talks-of-1956-and-1957-and-merdeka-proclamations-of-1959-1962-and-1963/)

• In May 1978, then Minister for Defence Dr Goh Keng Swee remarked, “In the course of my work, I often visit military camps. One of the lasting impressions I get on these occasions is the image of the National Serviceman on sentry duty – a bespectacled youth of slender proportions, ill at ease in an unaccustomed environment but trying to conceal it. An improbable soldier.” In foreword to Leong Choon Cheong’s Youth in the Army (Federal Int’l Press), 1978.

• PD James’ book Children of Men is a bleak futuristic science-fiction novel, adapted by Alfonso Cuarón, the gifted director. Several segments, including a 6:18 single-shot sequence of the movie is widely acknowledged as technically brilliant.