Reminisce

Remember, there's always light at the end.

They say that a child's formative years are between the age of 1-6. I don't know if it is a universal truth but I can say that it is true for me. Between the ages of 1-6 I shuttled between a semi detached house and a 1 room HDB flat before eventually moving to a foreign country. All this shuttling happened because my parents were too busy building a career. And so from a young age, I unwittingly realised that "Home" like "Nation" is a flexible categorisation rather than an absolute term. And of all my "homes" between the age of 1-6, my favourite home was my 1 room home. I remember running down the dark windowless corridor, through a metal gate and into a room bursting with warmth and light.

As I grew older, this "home" was gradually shelved further and further back, to a point where I was afraid I might lose it completely. And it is this insecurity that made me seek out these images. As I walked up and down the estate, there was a certain sense of excitement, almost akin to the feeling that I got wandering the back alleys of Cairo or Istanbul. That feeling was a strange feeling to have in my own country. And it made me realise how detached I've grown. This estate is sombeody's everyday but for me it was an excursion. What I saw was not shocking but foreign. Its like seeing the Eiffel tower in Paris even though you've seen images of it everywhere before. When I was younger, my 1 room flat was bright, airy and spacious. But now as I walked through the corridors, it seems as if the flats have shrunk. Living rooms and daily household routines have spilled out into the common areas. Having life spilling out into the common areas allowed me to peek through the windowless corridors and gated doors. I realised that there were whole families living in a space that is perhaps just slightly bigger than my bedroom. This dispelled the misconception I was labouring under, that 1 room flats had become the domain of either the aged, vagrants or drug addicts.

This walkabout did not last long and I left feeling disturbed and somewhat disgusted. I felt disgusted, driving off in a car that could easily pay for one of these flats, of my bag of camera and lenses that might be half the anual household income, of actually allowing myself to become so detached. And so I ask myself what am I going to do about this feeling. The long and short of it all is that i'll probably end up doing nothing. But what is this feeling that I'm speaking of? Is it a feeling that I should do something to help the less well off? Is it a feeling that I should not have allowed myself to become so detached from my society? Am I exhibiting a certain sense of haughtiness when I classify people living in 1 room flats as less well of and in need? But then clearly the old people that I saw could do with a softer golden years? No? I was told by a friend that maybe it is good enough that we just think about these things. But I wonder if that compounds my guilt, because I am aware of it and yet I do nothing. In such situations, it appears that mens rea is enough to find culpability and I am guilty as charged.