Vacation Postcard 1

I have been here in Singapore for about 5 days now. First impressions, this city/country defies all expectations and it is amazing how it has risen over all its neighbours overcoming its dearth of natural resources and becoming the region’s powerhouse. Yes, Singapore is sure to surprise every first time visitor – its immaculate roads, efficient public transport systems, the culture, the museums, the nightlife, the gardens and the restaurants. On the one hand you have the crowded streets of Chinatown and Little India, adorned with traditional fortune tellers, temple worshippers and shopping malls such as Mustafa. At the same time you also have the upmarket shopping streets such as Orchard Road and places where you can buy electronic items at half the price they would be back home. It is a perfect blend of modernity and the traditional and everything in Singapore seems to run like a well-oiled machine. Are there no problems whatsoever? I don’t think so – I am sure there are issues, but for someone just visiting the country, they are all well camouflaged.

Much more than its various efficient systems, what struck me about Singapore is how it strives to be/become a conscience-driven society. Yes, this is true – the country and its people are driven by a sense of right conduct. There seems to be no extra effort made in order to do so. It seems innate, an inherent facet of the country and its people. This is evident in the way the people conduct themselves in the public places, in the way a taxi driver returns 10 cents to you when the taxi charges amount to 9 dollars and 90 cents, in the way everybody seems to treat one another with respect and courteousness, in the various articles written in its only government-controlled newspaper, The Straits Times, in just about everything. Sometimes it seems to border on the extremes, especially when you consider Nguyen Tuong Van's fate. Yet when you consider only its day to day bindings, Singapore does seem like an idyllic world.

And it was in this world that I was lost when I logged on to the net today, the last leg of my vacation, to check out what has been happening in good old India. And that is when I read about Manjunathan. I was too shocked to even react for a few seconds. No, I don't know Manjunathan personally. Yet somehow it seemed such a personal loss. And to me the loss was that of much more than just one life - in Manjunathan's death I saw the death of hope and optimism for the future, of values and ideals, of ethics and morals. It is easy to get cynical, I know, when you are in a country like Singapore. But this is a lot more than that. I thought about what the country was coming round to? All this while I have been defending my country to Indians, who having made a comfortable life for themselves in this alien land, harboured detrimental ideas about their own country; in India, they opined, nothing really works. And when I read about what happens to people like Manjunathan or Satyendra Dubey, I wonder if I was living in some kind of a time-warp. Am I unable to fathom that we have fallen to abysmal depths? What did Satyendra Dubey or Manjunathan do, other than perform their job? Did they deserve to die, their lives snuffed out at such an young age? How can I even suggest that an Indian who believes that life outside of the country is much better is wrong, when in our own country there is no value for an honest life? How can one even think of raising kids with ideals and beliefs such as honesty, truthfulness, courage, character and uprightness? In fact, how can one even imagine having kids in such a society, where principles and morals are strangled and throttled everyday? Yes, I am being cynical, for I see a dark, bleak world around me. I remember a father who berated his eldest daughter when she said that the country's public administrative system sucked. His opinion, if you believe the system sucks, join it and try and change it from within. Didn't Satyendra Dubey and Manjunathan do precisely that? And if that father (or any parent) knew this was the fate that would befall his kid would he have even encouraged the kid to join the system? In fact, would any parent even want the kids to continue living in this country? I don't really think so.