dry grass singing

tunnel vision

There is something about being on MRT trains that changes Singaporeans from the busy, go-getting rat-racers they usually are, into passive, apathetic passengers who seem content to just settle in the first tiny spot they find in the first carriage they step into, staring glassily into the mid-distance. There probably isn't much else to do on a train, and given that most train journeys are relatively short, there isn't very much impetus for people to move to find a more comfortable spot, even if they are standing uncomfortably in a crowded carriage next to a relatively emptier one.

Only sheer fatigue can propel a person out of this unthinking stasis, forcing her to weave her way down through the carriages in seach of a seat on which to rest her tired body. Exhausted, she finds herself pushing past groups of people who stand rooted in their individual little untidy spots, faces set blankly against the curious gaze of strangers. They make no attempt to give way to this strange anomaly of movement, too tired be polite, walking grimly down the corridor towards the front of the train.

Upon reaching the front carriage, she sees to her disappointment that the empty seats she had glimpsed from the previous carriage have been cordoned off for the train operator. Slumped against a corner, she looks up at the dark panel of glass at the end of the carriage, and is suddenly aware of an other, different world outside the plastic orange airconditioned one in which she and the other passengers are ensconced. This other world is dark, grey, all hard lines and precisely-engineered curves - a self-contained world that admits no light except the pale yellow of the train's headlights and the ghostly blue of the subway lamps. Yet it is almost impossible to imagine ghosts in this subterranean place - ghosts need history, need a storied past, live on the murmured echoes of human voices; and this place has no past, no stories, only concrete walls and the rush of cold wind as the train hurtles past.

In his radioplay-turned-novel "Neverwhere", Neil Gaiman creates an entire parallel city called 'London Below', located in the bowels of the London Underground, peopled by earls who hold court at Earl's Court Station, and medieval monks in black hooded robes at Blackfriar's Station. And travelling on the noisy, clanking London Tube, with its stations strewn with torn magazines and discarded drink cans and inhabited by families of furry grey mice, it is easy to picture such a quirkily alternative world. The Tube is large - it contains multitudes. Not so with the MRT in Singapore. Perhaps Romance and Efficiency simply don't make good bedfellows. Perhaps people simply do not feel enough about the MRT for it to accumulate a real history of its own - history being an amorphous concept that incorporates the subjective as well as the objective, feelings and reactions as well as people, places and events. In London, the Tube is responsible for raising the blood pressures of countless commuters who have to put up with broken promises in the form of delays, breakdowns, and strikes almost as a matter of course. In Singapore, by contrast, the MRT delivers exactly what it promises, and thus most people never even give it a second thought.

It is probably too easy to draw a parallel between the onward rush of an MRT train and our nation's relentless push towards progress. MRT trains are designed to move in both directions, and depending on the direction in which you are facing, the train can be said to be moving either forward or backward. To the foolishly sentimental who think that a sense of history is integral to a nation's identity, who are always looking backwards to a past of crumbling shophouses, leaking zinc roofs in shabby kampongs, and squat red-brick libraries, our progress may seem like regress. Yet, all one really has to do is to stand at the right end of the train, and to look through that narrow pane of darkened glass into the tunnelled world outside, to know that there is only one way to go. And there is no looking back.

posted by eothen @ 6:29 PM