THE CITIZEN
It is 2.22pm in the afternoon when the policeman catches me scratching my crotch in public. But today, I am not ashamed. I am not afraid. I stare defiantly at him, and continue to scratch; to hell with this damn police state we call a first world country. The policeman continues to glare at me as I dare him to do his worst, while others strolling through Toa Payoh Mall avert their eyes and rush past. Exclamations of ‘oh my god’, ‘siao ah’ and ‘ee yur’ tickle my earlobes. Somewhere, I know someone is whipping out a smartphone to take a photo of this standoff. But I decide not to respond; I will remain here, present, mindful. Here I am, making the point for everyone, for the common man, the perpetual lower-middle class... and all they can do is laugh. Such are the beginnings of revolution.
His eyes narrow, and his stance changes, his feet tightening to a v-shape with me in the centre. I feel the crowd streaming past slow down, eyes darting in our direction to view the forthcoming spectacle. I breathe in the electric atmosphere, the policeman’s threatening stance, and decide to run. I speed past the McDonald’s, the NTUC Fairprice, the Mr Bean kiosk, past the tiny grass field near the taxi stand and across the road into the HDB blocks, hoping that my quick feet will save me from arrest. I hide in the pillars of the void deck. A forest of pillars, white on white on white, filling my vision. Behind me, the throng of Singaporeans, typical consumerist shallow soulless Singaporeans, fall into the gaping maw of the Toa Payoh MRT station.
I run past a playground, silent and imposing. Its black button eyes staring out from the joints of the kid-friendly jacob’s ladder. I catch a flash of blue among the pillars to my left, and look straight at the unmistakable shape of the policeman, feet apart, arms akimbo, blue peaked cap sitting atop a face, eyes, nose and mouth focussing directly at my poor self. Panicking, I backpedal towards the playground, and the policeman almost starts to float towards me, moving behind pillars only to teleport even closer. His face and stance never changing.
And then I begin to fear that he has called reinforcements. It is the Singapore police force after all. I hear birds chirping, leaves rustling, and then an unmistakable thump from behind, deep and dull as fate and international trade. I make a break for it, racing deeper into the jungle of HDB flats, only realising mid-stride that the thump was of nothing sinister, but merely a mango felled from a tree, crushed by gravity onto hard concrete.
I push myself past the flats, across Lorong 3, and then further on into the estate till I hit Braddell station, trip over a bamboo cane held by a blind man selling tissue papers, and roll down three flights of stairs.
Boring, uncultured Singaporeans hop over me. They ask me if I need any help.
Hah! What do they expect me to say? Yes?
I do need help, but not from physical injury. No, you Singaporean, I need help for my damaged soul! It bleeds and cries out in an expanse of whitewashed homogeneity, where the smallest speck of grey, black or, dare I say it, red is scrubbed over, first by policy, then by law, courts in league with the government, and finally by a formless characterless society, features filed away by a merciless education system, distinguished by its blandness.
I pick myself up and limp towards the gantries, ignoring the pain throbbing in my hip, radiating across my torso and up my spine. I use the pain to fuel my passage past the gantries, and into the train, safe from the police behind me, but not from the cameras that track my every move, the data monitoring servers scrubbing every communique from my phone, and the all-seeing eye of the citizenry, trained from young to pick out the exceptional from the crowd, absorb their identifying features, their actions, and report, report, report and complain to the authorities and the Internet for public vilification. Show trials as self immolation. Do they not recognise that they are the source of their unhappiness? Do they not understand what they do, what they are capable of, what they have done in the name of stability and pragmatism?