Popagandhi

My brother and I were gossiping about my mum, as we usually do, and we were talking about her insane plans for everything: for holidays, for where she wants to eat, what she wants to do. She sits at the iMac planning holidays for next year, and does so quite earnestly, down to the hotels she will stay in and the buses she will take to go from this hotel to that restaurant. No prizes for guessing where those genes came from. Mum lives in the future, my brother (who, incidentally, is named… Adrian, did you know?) said. She has the habit of coming by to announce, Tuesday we are going out for somebody’s dinner at this place ok, keep it free. (Which Tuesday? We know better to ask now.) Oh, that Tuesday… one and a half months from now, don’t say I didn’t tell you. My brother then said mum travels so fast — in her head — her body has trouble keeping up. Like when she thinks about going to eat bird’s nest at the Bangkok Chinatown, she’s already there even before she gets on that flight (she does). Or when she wants to eat laksa at Kelantan Road, her mind is already there and her body’s only playing catch up when she makes that journey.

I have a different kind of problem, but it’s related. I live in the future too, one that’s unsure if my body is catching up with my head. I can’t say very much more, but one of the ways in which my body is catching up with the places my head’s already been (all over the place), is, at this point, on the cusp of moving itself to the Gulf.

You heard right. The Gulf. I’m moving… to Dubai. Next month. This time. I’m as shocked as you are. But why? You ask. I’ll give you the only answer travel writers will give you: why not, it’s there, if you don’t like it… there is ALWAYS that bus and that border to cross. On a random, mindless day surfing the web as usual, contemplating life and the next six months of it, the idea of going somewhere I had never thought of going popped into my head. I wrote to someone to ask about job prospects, and two seconds later had one. One I liked the sound of, one that more or less involves what I currently do and have been trying to do freelance, but with salary, medical insurance, and the safety of (dare I say it) corporate expenses if and when I do travel for work. More details when I get there, but no, I’m not… selling out. I made sure I firmly established my future bosses and I have a good understanding about the important things in life (namely, preferred choices of German beer, followed by an appreciation of Nepali chai and female bodies), and more importantly an understanding of such things as stipulated working hours, or the lack thereof. It could have been the alcohol and shisha I fed them, but I think my major fears of regular employment — those involving any form of working hours, and any form of routine — is mostly unfounded. Like most people going to Dubai… it’s a short term move and I should be back in this part of the world before anyone misses me, not necessarily in this country but definitely within a 380 km radius, northwards.

Some of my best friends — Tanmay, and Carrie, in the same city; the other people I love — Z and Alp, a budget flight away in good old Istanbul. The love of my life four time zones behind, instead of eight, and a quick Emirates flight away. All of India by my side, including my Bombay.

I think we’ll be okay.

When I get to the Gulf, I want to sing I Am Malayali to every Mallu I meet (especially my boss), and if I ever see Dr Yohan Chacko (who recorded that song), thank him for helping start off the very inexplicable chain of events that’s led to me being meaningfully, and I think happily, employed, in that incredible roundabout way that only happens on the web.

In other news, as a public announcement of sorts. If you run to your nearest bookstore, I have something in the August/India issue of the Asian Geographic, and one more next one or next next, have a short piece in the International Institute for Asian Studies’ Women Warriors edition, and soon my essay, “The Longest Way to Dinner”, will be appearing in a food magazine. It gets better. The whole of the coming week, I can have amazing char siew, amazing chicken wings (end of Jalan Alor), and an amazing girl. I’ll miss them most when I go (along with the family, of course!), but I’m really lucky because they all either move about as quickly and madly as I do (i.e. the girl), or never go anywhere at all (i.e. the char siew, the chicken wings, and the girl).

There are lots of things happening in the background too; the freelance writing and photography I will take on, with all the benefits of a radically different geographical and cultural hub I never envisioned; the empire I am slowly building, and funding with a Gulf salary.

2009, and beyond, with all the big big things in it, and you, seems even brighter and bigger than it did when I first dreamed about 2008 with you in it.

Proof that I’m totally cut out for the desert: how many people can say, I’m in the centrespread of a daily tabloid… on a camel?

‘Impossible is nothing’ is a tagline that suits that country better than Adidas.

I’m in the midst of starting a collection of funny Singapore signs, mostly of the civic-minded type. No shortage of those around. I want to run out to collect pictures of the large banners that say “please overturn your pails” and “please cover your bamboo pole holders when not in use” (complete with step by step pictorial tutorial and text in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil — in that order, and all on a banner). A sampling so far. They just keep outdoing themselves! You’d think they were all in some kind of competition to win the best gratuitous use of the word ‘cum’ (or members of the Cum Conjunctions Club), or.. best Microsoft Office ClipArt/WordArt designer.

For our numerous international readers: yes, this entire country has a crush on acronyms. ISD is the Internal Security Department, and (Singaporeans may be shocked as well) HIP apparently stands for… Home Improvement Program. Which is what they try to call upgrading these days.

While sleeping one afternoon, as I usually do these days, my bank called to check if I received a new credit card they’d issued me — the one they upgrade all university debit card accounts to when we leave university. She did the customary checks: did I also get the letter with my PIN, have I activated it, et cetera.

Quite stunningly, she decided she would try to ‘interest’ me in a new product.

“We have this insurance plan, only $28 a month…”

“Yes… I’m not…”

“WHEN YOU DIE AH YOU GET TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.“

Though I was in the stupor of sleep, every alarm in my head went off. What kind of sales pitch is this? Before I could say anything to reflect my staunch disinterest, she continued.

“Excuse me may I know what is your preoccupation.”

I guess she meant occupation. I told her a couple of half truths, but was generally truthful in how… I… work as a photographer and journalist in… you know, places like India. Bangladesh. That sort of place lah.

“THEN SORRY AH I CANNOT OFFER YOU THIS INSURANCE SORRY BYE BYE.“

Who said anything about wanting it? You lost a customer starting a sales pitch like that anyway, though I did wonder whether she disqualified me immediately from the program because of how I’m not… employed (yet), in the regular Singaporean understanding of employed, or because I claim to spend most of my time in those countries. Guess I’ll never find out because I was thinking of closing that bank account anyway, and this hasn’t helped at all.

While walking to the Bar and Billards Room to meet my future employers, who were in town for the Asian Publishing Conference, my sandals broke in the corridors of the Raffles Hotel. Hobbling around madly to a casual job interview/meeting, someone working at the hotel noticed my broken sandals and… offered to mend it for me. And mend it he did, with a fairly ingenious contraption (a pin bent into shape to keep the straps of my sandals together). Although I wasn’t a guest of the rooms at the Raffles, it didn’t stop him from carrying out the exceptionally high levels of service one expects from a legendary hotel like that.

A little gesture like that goes a long, long way.

I had the good pleasure to read at ContraDiction again this year. After a two year absence from it (was always abroad every time they came calling), it was a pleasant surprise to see the event play to a packed venue with plenty of talented performers. We do have great talent in the queer community, and there are tons of events at this year’s Indignation. From the introductions and some conversations it seems there are several books in the making from this very young, very prolific group, so that’s plenty to look out for in the Singapore literary space. For the record, I am also working on a book. Fiction.

I read an oldie-but-goodie, the 2006 piece posted here, entitled Why I Am Still A Feminist. Lainie rolled her eyes and drank her chai quietly when she heard the title earlier in the afternoon — she said it was “soooooooooooooo dyke”. I know. New readers of this site probably would have missed it unless you’ve trawled through my sucky archives, it’s worth a look. It felt different reading something I wrote at age 21, but the general message remains.

I’d also written a small piece as a surprise for someone who’d flown in as she says she is my “number one biggezt fan” (though Vicnan protests this isn’t possible). I haven’t written any serious poetry in years so it makes no pretensions towards it — it was first written in a little boat while getting out of the dense interiors of Borneo after an amazing week there, and completed almost entirely in the Notes function of my Nokia N95 while poking at fantastic Basque pintxos at Taktika Berri. Since this was written in (and read out of a mobile phone) it has zero poetic structure. Each stanza was even deliberately vetted to be… Twitter-length. The plan was to surprise the special person in my life with a reading at ContraDiction, but if she could not appear it would fit nicely into five text messages, real time. Through some miracle, the beautiful girl for whom it was written managed to touch down and come speeding from the airport about five seconds before I started on this one. (coughs)

Entalau

1.
What they have in days
are weeks for us. Weeks with you,
mostly apart. Like our Borneo we are jungles, weeds.
Ferocity. Or waters still beneath
and quiet stars.

2.
Sometimes the silence, the jungles, the rivers we don’t know.
It is all wrong, all of it.
We escape five to a boat, and hope.
The winds, the waves, the misery,
Everything. In the unbroken darkness,
in this narrow boat, even if
it is only your fingertips pressed against my own —
you point the way home.

3.
We crash into rocks on the way home,
like it happens everyday. Life is elsewhere;
this morning it’s here, you said. Last night
I leaned back on the boat and you were there
wet hair around my neck.
Crickets. Silence. Stars.
A life form beneath us turning.
The jungle burns
but not as much as how I burn for you.

Notes: Entalau is a longhouse in Sarawak, in Skrang district. This is the first in the series. Others to follow in the series have yet to be written, but their titles have already been decided. #2: Babi Mati, #3: Jamban, #4: Pochor-Pochor #5 Joget Ekonomi. Haha!