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Never in my life—and I make this comment as a resident of Calcutta who is used to crowds and the close proximity of people—have I seen such a homogenized mass of people, marked for all their seeming differences by the same class, job, and condition. I feel obliged to inscribe Sunday evening on Serangoon Road on the borders of my essay as one of the most saddening experiences of my life. As you jostle through the crowds, picking up snatches of conversation in Tamil, Bangla, Sylheti—common talk about family and prospects of going home, bargains in shopping centers, quarrels and bitter regrets—you see men talking their lives out in a state of chaos and cacophony. For once, the sterile image of Singapore is completely shattered. One is left confronting the most profound isolation of the foreign workers that has yet to be addressed adequately in the multicultural discourse of Singapore. |
