Miss Seetoh in the World (16 page)

The principal of St Peter’s Secondary
School, upon receiving official notice from the Ministry of Education,
immediately called a staff meeting to work on a plan of action with clear
objectives and time frames to replace Singlish with proper, grammatical English
in both the writing and speech of students.

He had a video recording of TPK’s TV
appearance, played out on a big screen in the auditorium during the school
assembly, in which the prime minister, looking as severe as when he had warned
Singaporeans of the danger of not marrying and producing children, warned them
that if their standard of English continued to deteriorate, business with the
international English-speaking community would suffer. The prime minister
referred to official letters and memos in the civil service which failed to
convey their meaning because they failed to observe the basic rules of English
usage. He made no mention of Singlish, but it was understood that this was the
real culprit, being a low form of spoken English with liberal admixtures of the
local languages, that was utterly incomprehensible to the foreign visitor and
tourist. Hence Singlish became the single target of an intensive nationwide
campaign called ‘Use Proper English’ launched immediately after the prime
minister’s TV appearance.

As the campaign against Singlish
intensified, so did V.K. Pandy’s perverse use of it. At one parliamentary
sitting, he asked his questions in loud, deliberate Singlish, lacing it with
low marketplace Malay and Hokkien colloquialisms, making everyone squirm and
prompting the Speaker to warn him against levity and disrespect. Throughout,
TPK looked away angrily, outraged by the presence of the untidy, loud-mouthed
Indian with the ever-present whiff of alcohol clinging to his clothes in the
august precincts of Parliament House, surely an intolerable insult to the
dignity of government.

V.K. Pandy was a politician by default,
elected by the people at precisely a time when there was public anger with what
was perceived as an overweening arrogance of the leaders.

In a noisy rally just days before the
election, V.K. Pandy had warned of even greater arrogance and disregard of the
people’s feelings, attracting large noisy crowds. Furiously punching the air
with his fists, to wild roars of approval from the crowd, he asked again and
again, ‘Why do they treat us like children? Why do they treat us as if we don’t
have minds of our own? You know why, dear fellow Singaporeans? Because we
apparently don’t have minds of our own! We have become a nation of fools and
idiots! They say, ‘Don’t have so many children’ and then they say, ‘Don’t you
dare have more than two children!’ and we say, ‘Yes, yes, we obey.’ I say, wake
up, wake up before it’s too late!’

He had been elected on a wave of
anti-government sentiment that would have voted in an illiterate trishaw
peddler, a circus clown, a monkey. In a post-election TV appearance, TPK, livid
with rage, vowed that if Singaporeans chose to vote irrationally, they would
have to learn a lesson or two about social responsibility.

By and large, the leadership was not unduly
worried about the people’s choice of V.K. Pandy over their more academically
and professionally qualified, and certainly more competent, hard-working
candidate. It would only be a matter of time before these unthinking people
woke up to their mistake and saw the man’s sloppiness and utter incompetence as
a leader, before they realised that under him, their constituency was getting
dirtier, poorer, more disorderly as others were getting cleaner and more
prosperous; they would surely then kick him out as hastily as they had voted him
in. A newspaper editorial had referred to him as a thorn in the side of the
body politic.

It was by some kind of tacit, civilised
consensus among the society’s wags that no joke about politicians should
include their families. Occasionally, in the circuits of private sharing, a
riddle would surface: what did the great TPK and the wretched V.K. Pandy have
in common that neither would admit? Answer: a sickly, superstitious wife. Both
Mrs TPK and Mrs Pandy, it was whispered, sought help from a variety of traditional
supernatural sources, with or without the knowledge of their avowedly rational
husbands. Indeed, went the rumour, in their desperation they once crossed over
into each other’s territory: Mrs TPK seeking help from a famed Hindu priest,
and Mrs Pandy drinking blessed temple water brought to her by a Chinese friend.

Not satisfied with his championing of
Singlish in Parliament, V.K. Pandy stood on a box in Middleton Square and
delivered an hour’s oration, deliberately in pure Singlish, on why it should
not be abolished in favour of standard English.

‘What is this? Singlish our natural
Singapore language. Otherwise how can Indian man speak to Malay taxi driver;
how can salesgirl speak to one another? We all not University professors, you
know, we all not educated in Oxford, we are simple working people! Why bring
back Queen’s English, I ask you? We still have colonial mentality or what? Our
Singapore how can call itself independent sovereign nation when still want to
speak language of colonial master? Where got any pride? Any national identity?
Still want to lick boot of foreign master, eh?’

Some in the hurrying crowds paused for a
short while to titter; the majority continued to hurry on, just in case there
were secret surveillance cameras to provide indisputable proof of guilt by
association.

The principal called Miss Seetoh to his
office. The gravity of what he was going to say forced him into a few awkward
preliminary pleasantries which were pure inanities, making Maria look down in
embarrassment.

‘Mrs Tan, your choice of Cameron Highlands for
your honeymoon was a good one. My cousin is going away on a vacation with her
husband, and I recommended – ’ His smile was at odds with the deepening frown
on his forehead as he came to the business at hand, ‘Mrs Tan, it has come to my
attention –’

Maria thought, ‘I see Teresa Pang has been
at work again.’

‘Mrs Tan,’ said the principal, trying to
tone down the reproach in his voice, ‘you know that we are in the midst of a
national campaign to stamp out Singlish, and you are encouraging its use. That,
as I’m sure you’ll understand, is not acceptable.’

It must have been the play submitted by the
two new students in her creative writing class. They were from the Commerce
class that had never shown any interest in literature, much less creative
composition, but from the start Maria had been impressed by their eagerness to
participate fully in all the class activities, as also by their perfect
compatibility as a working pair, always sitting next to each other,
conscientiously making notes, whispering in urgent consultation, finally
passing up their work as a joint effort, signed by both, in an artistic
intertwining of initials, like royal monograms. Whether a short story, a play
or a poem, their combined work showed a level of maturity and creativity that
must have been the result of the unusual combination of intimacy and
discipline.

They were two fifteen-year-olds named Mark
Wong and Loo Yen Ping, a shy, soft-voiced couple who looked very much alike in
their slenderness, pale skin, neatness and quiet demeanour. They stood out in
an educational setting that discouraged any pairing among the boys and girls
for two reasons: it was a serious distraction to studies, and it could lead to
immoral behaviour. Mark and Yen Ping, always getting good grades for their class
work as well as for their exemplary behaviour of politeness to their teachers,
courtesy to their schoolmates and decorum towards each other, had effectively
removed both causes for censure. Indeed, they did not at all fit the picture of
the actively dating teenager who was much cause for parental alarm, for they
had never been seen even to hold hands, in or outside the school.

Maria thought with some amusement that their
image was more in keeping with that of babes in the woods, hardly out of
childhood, clinging to each other in a large, unfriendly world, or that of
those ideologically united, intense young couples of Mao’s Cultural Revolution,
wearing the asexual drab uniforms.

‘Miss Seetoh,’ whispered Maggie with a
chuckle, ‘do you think they ever kiss each other? I think they don’t know how.
Somebody must teach them!’

Maria thought of herself and Kuldeep Singh,
vibrant with animal energy, sipping soda on high stools, and wondered about
this unusual, over-achieving pair in her creative writing class.

They had confided their dreams to her: Mark
wanted to go abroad to do a course in media, despite his mother’s ambition for
him to do business administration; Yen Ping wanted to be a writer, but would be
a teacher first to support her parents. Between them was an unspoken bond of
deep regard, understanding and trust that could have no place for the crude
experimentation of teenage passion.

Maria once saw them sitting on the steps of
a school staircase, Mark helping Yen Ping to re-plait her hair, both going about
the operation with the same earnestness as when they sat in the school library
doing research for an assignment or comparing notes in the creative writing
class. It was a picture of young romance that was both amusing and touching. As
Mark handed Yen Ping her hair-clip, they noticed Miss Seetoh’s presence. She
hurried away, looking down, suppressing a smile at the surprising
manifestations of young love. She remembered two of her classmates from
Secondary Three, aged fifteen, completely nondescript, completely forgettable,
who, she later learnt, were forced to leave school and get married at sixteen
when the girl got pregnant.

Mrs Neo said, ‘I say it is not all healthy,
their not mixing with others. Brother Philip, being the Moral Education
teacher, should counsel them.’

Teresa Pang said, ‘Why don’t you speak to
Maria Seetoh about them? She seems to be encouraging them a lot.’

Maggie had disliked them from the start,
less for their standing out as a couple, than for the good comments from Miss
Seetoh on their creative writing assignments, which her own efforts never
earned. Unable to reveal the secret of her major role in the hunt for Miss
Seetoh’s diamond ring that dark night in a forest, she contented herself with
spreading the general information that only she knew Miss Seetoh’s secret life.

She was not about to let her favourite
teacher forget her contribution that night, for ever so often, she would
whisper to Maria, ‘Miss Seetoh, I hear Ah Boy’s brother bought a scooter. Where
got the money? I think he and Ah Boy found the ring and sold it,’ and ‘Miss
Seetoh, you think maybe the ring still there? Shall we do another search?’

Feeling her position as favourite slipping,
she directed her anger at the upstarts, writing a savagely satirical story about
a couple who pretended to be one for the purpose of hiding their true sexual
orientation, he being gay and she lesbian.

Miss Seetoh, with much matter-of-fact
casualness said, ‘Maggie, that was an interesting story. If you clean up the
spelling and grammar, I could use part of it as an example of vivid narrative.’

From the start, Maria had had some
misgivings about the extensive use of Singlish in the short play submitted by
Mark and Yen Ping, being constantly reminded of its infamy in the campaign
posters put up in the school. It was precisely this use that made the dialogue
in the play come alive, resonating with the rhythms of everyday Singaporean
speech in the home, the shops, the workplace; indeed, she had never come across
a play or short story that carried such an authentic local flavour. The more
she thought about it, the more she realised that the couple had real talent,
discovering the dramatic value of Singlish before even she, a qualified
literature teacher, did.

The story of the play was even more
intriguing. It was about a young couple whose families disapproved of their
relationship and tried to end it. Maria knew that Mark’s mother, a divorcee and
a sophisticated, widely travelled business woman, disapproved of her son’s
relationship with Yen Ping whose parents sold soft drinks in a food centre, and
wondered if their play, with its overtones of a Romeo and Juliet tragedy, came
dangerously close to open rebellion. Maria had wanted a contribution from her
creative writing class for a school concert, and thought the best hope came
from this talented duo, publicly so shy and deferential, but privately, in
their little world of intense intimate understanding and sharing, amazingly
innovative and daring.

‘Oh no, oh no, Miss Seetoh,’ cried Yen Ping,
blushing furiously, her eyes wide with horror.

‘This play’s only for you, not even for the
rest of the class,’ said Mark. ‘Miss Seetoh, you can use it anonymously in
class, as an example of a point you want to make. But not for a school
concert,’ adding shyly, ‘if you like it, Miss Seetoh, that’s enough for us.’

Thus had Maria used it in class as an
example of the literary value of the much maligned Singlish, and thus probably
had Maggie gone to tell Miss Teresa Pang who then went to tell the principal.

‘Mrs Tan,’ said the principal, ‘will you
give me the undertaking that in future you will not allow the use of Singlish
among the students?’

It would have been the most futile of
exercises to explain to him the role that the localised variety could play in
local writing, for it had now taken its place, together with laziness,
complacency, racial intolerance and a low birth rate, as the enemies of
economic survival and progress.