It rains a lot in Singapore. That is when it is not one hot still day after the other, the sun doing things to your head and making you tired. It is a different kind of sun to Australia and India, probably due to the equator. But when it rains it is a little cooler, the roads are wet, the trees drip, the three or four species that line roads leave fallen, bedraggled flowers and for a moment it can seem a magical island. But Singapore is not a place of romance. It is a pragmatic city and this feature asserts itself always.
I have been in an out of Singapore the past few months so my impressions of the city are fleeting. I know few people and none are local, merely old friends. But I have time on my hands, time to flaneur. The city is compact, obviously well run and in a constant process of change as most cities are. The new is everywhere and the old lurks in corners. There is no moral position about this, all history is the new and shiny getting old. And people come here to gawk precisely at this. The new, the convenient, the malls at every corner. The promise of affluence and comfort. But if you respond to the dusty and the worn as I do - and there is no moral position about this, it after all is its own aesthetic - then you have to search fairly hard for it in this city-state.
The old culture, if there is an old culture for a city largely made of immigrants, has its own aesthetic. It remains as a tourist attraction and is perhaps part of a domestic life not visible to the ordinary traveller. This of course is not restricted to Singapore and if labelled is Straits culture. It is most visible in the few remaining old houses in candy colours with creamy white moulding of flowers and animals influenced by the Victorians but without the heavy, florid features of the era. The colours are echoed elsewhere in old costumes (rarely worn) and the little sweets in packets that are ubiquitous. It is a pity that it hasn't flowed into the city's modern life as visibly as say in India.
Of course the predominant culture of the city is Chinese and there are signs of this everywhere, albeit in a muted way, from shops with names harking back to a different era (Beach Road, Steamboat) to tiny shrines to local festivals. There are Chinese bookshops, advertisements for Chinese dramas. Food courts that offer specific meals like Hainanese chicken. The rush for all things Hong Kong. And some old parts, the laneways are neat even where narrow and pleasantly stacked with pot plants and the odd small red shrine.
But it isn't for this local culture or the tiny places that nurture a indie culture that people come here. And to be fair this is a small city and all this may be found elsewhere in the region. Rather it is the urban marvel that is Singapore. And so the normal tourist pit stops, Sentosa, Gardens by the Bay, Orchard Road, the River Safari, the Night Safari. And despite the city's wealth this is not always about the loud and flashy. Rather there are things here that are surprisingly modest, the genius and pleasure seems to lie in its planning. With all this, there is something lacking, something a little airless about the city. Once in awhile you feel a stir. As when you encounter a place that is not the man-made green of the city and is all damp green and steam and insects of the genuinely tropical. But this is rare.
As a friend put it, everything is consumed, little made. He was talking about art and this is true. There are bookshops and neatly curated and maintained museums around. There is a small community of writers and artists perhaps for those interested. But there is no great Singapore novel or film or art. Like everything else, it is pleasant but not the kind that grabs your imagination and you want to devour instantly. And surprisingly here it is not entirely modern. The second hand bookshops stock old classics and Archie comics and everywhere middlebrow 80s music follows you around (not dissimilar to Goa but more on that later). Still language and proximity makes a difference and it is not uncommon to see translated works, especially from Japan, in the bookstores.
Now and then in some far flung suburb still coming into being and filled with the not so well-to-do or newly arrived immigrants, you can sense how cities are made. And those reliable barometers of a city's life - its taxi drivers - provide glimpses into marginal lives. The commutes, the search for cheap produce, the muted lament for a disappearing age if your driver is old. On a holiday, the stations swarm with the underclass, often immigrant, that keeps the city going. Yet the sense of a sprawling city is absent even though in some ways Singapore is like a model city of a urbanised future.
Food is everywhere in Singapore. For all purposes it is the city's main source of pleasure. And it rarely disappoints. When I start dissecting this preoccupation (my go to for this is Pria Viswalingam's documentary Decadence though in keeping with our times he too ate his way through a few countries:)) I hear my cousin's voice saying oh so Didion and I stop.
What now and where. I shall wait for 2014 and decide.
