Yes and No.

Yes, if you go by the official face of Singapore, of the men—and women—in white, especially on formal occasions when they maintain a stern forbidding appearance, modeled on the austere, no-nonsense mien of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, who has no time for light-hearted wit and banter. Even at social functions and private parties where ministers have been invited in their private capacities, I have noticed that they don’t seem able to completely cast off their serious, earnest demeanour, as if afraid of letting down their guard and revealing official information that might later give rise to rumours that Singaporeans seem so fond of.

No, if you go by the unofficial, informal face of Singapore society which, like every society in the world, loves laughter, especially of the satirical kind that takes a dig at officialdom. Countless are the jokes circulating in the coffee-shops, cafes and clubs, at cocktail and dinner parties, indeed wherever Singaporeans meet to chat and relax.

There are the jokes that are not at all original, being localized versions of well-known ones, for instance those about the late American President Lyndon Johnson who was well known for his Messianic image of himself. So the president is one day driving his car in the capacity of a private citizen, when he ignores the traffic lights, and is stopped by a very conscientious traffic cop. When the man comes near enough to recognise the president, he steps back in horror and gasps, ‘Oh my God!’ and Johnson says sternly, ‘That’s right, my boy, and don’t you forget it!’ On another occasion the president is shopping for a suitable burial plot for himself. He finds one that he likes and asks for the price. ‘Five thousand dollars,’ he is told. ‘What!’ is his response. ‘When I’m going to use it for only three days?’

Because of Lee Kuan Yew’s immense stature and near-god status in Singapore, inspiring great awe and fear (especially the fear of being sued and reduced to bankruptcy) these jokes, needing only a change of name, are cheerfully circulated about him.

I had the temerity to end a political speech I gave some years ago, with a humorous poem on precisely this aspect of Mr Lee’s status. It was based on a well-known pronouncement made by Mr Lee to emphasize his total commitment to the well-being of Singapore: he said that even if dead and inside his coffin, should he hear of any threat to Singapore’s security, he would get up at once and solve it. My speech was published in a local newspaper which however left out the poem. With a delicious sense of mischief, I present it here:

*The coffin was enormous
To match the god-like status,
For both in life and death,
He was a true colossus.

Someone who, with the opposition,
Was clearly in cahoots,
Whispered, ‘Ah, a new dawn!
No more defamation suits.’

At which the corpse sprang right up,
‘Who said that?’ it roared,
‘He’s defaming my good name,
So get our lawyers on board!’*

Singaporeans take special delight in showing that the brilliant economic achievements of the leaders are not exactly matched by social finesse. There is this well-known joke about Minister Wong Kan Seng: he attends a formal dinner somewhere in Europe where his host says to him ‘Bon appetit!’ and he replies, ‘Wong Kan Seng.’ An aide whispers to him that he should have responded with the same expression of table etiquette. So he takes the first opportunity to say to his host, ‘Bon appetit!’ and the host responds by saying, ‘Wong Kan Seng.’ It is a joke that unfailingly provokes laughter, probably in the good-natured Mr Wong himself.

The Singaporean sense of humour gets a boost from the special form of Chinese names which are, with very few exceptions, monosyllabic—Tan, Lee, Goh, Chin, Pang, Wu, Wong—thus lending themselves easily to the pun. This may be the lowest form of humour, but Singaporeans have a field day punning on the names of the Chinese ministers and members of parliament. Mr Wong Kan Seng’s name seems to be an easy target for any joke or riddle related to any subject connected to singing or talentime contests, for it allows for the punchline: ‘Wong can’t sing!’

Singaporeans were rather astonished when Mr Lee Kuan Yew publicly made known that his first choice of successor was not Goh Chok Tong who was then Prime Minister, but Dr Tony Tan, a cabinet minister. Beyond the discomfiture felt on behalf of the popular Mr Goh, the revelation has provided the opportunity for an ingenious use of the pun for hilarious effect. So, goes the joke, there was a period when Mr Lee was unsure about whom to choose. A group of anxious PAP officials approached him to find out his decision. He waved them away impatiently and said, ‘Go, go!’ Now if he had been less impatient and had moreover spoken in Hokkien, saying, ‘Tan, Tan’, which means ‘Wait, wait,’ the succession line would have been completely different.

Unrepeatable and unprintable, of course, are the Singaporean jokes that pun on hapless names like ‘Kok’,'Tuck’, ‘Fatt’.

It is said that the exuberant street humour of Singaporeans is a kind of compensation for the dourness at the top. Whatever the reason, it is something they are unlikely to—indeed, must never—lose.

Alright. I admit I was getting a little bored. Always the same prayers. Always the same words. I must have heard them zillions of times. You may be exasperating, but at least you provoke reactions other than a yawning expectation.

Wow, I still can’t believe it. Tell you what, God, now that I’m here, could I—

I can see you are getting one of your bright ideas. Alright, what is it.

God, I was thinking of how I was getting nowhere with appealing to all those omni powers of yours, so here’s something else that may strike the right note with you.

What.

God, I know you don’t particularly care for the scientists, especially the physicists who’re trying to find out what happened at the Big Bang, that first moment of creation that’s already been accounted for in the Book of Genesis. But there’s one theory of theirs that I’m particularly excited about, that may at last solve all the problems in the world.

What.

It’s the quantum physicist’s Theory of Parallel Universes, God.

What has that to do with anything, for God’s sake.

Hey, God, are you allowed to take your own name in vain? Ha! Ha! Just a little humorous aside. Now, according to the Theory of Parallel Universes which is very weird indeed, but then, everybody listens when these physicists speak because of the marvelous things they’ve given the world through their discoveries, such as the laser, TV, X-ray, electron microscope, nuclear power, etc etc. Well, according to this bizarre theory, every time a person does something, based on a decision that is just one of many possible decisions, say, my deciding to go to the supermarket instead of to the library or the park or my friend’s house, etc all these alternatives actually take place too, but in different universes which are completely sealed off from each other, completely impenetrable, so that all I am aware of, in my universe, is that I am in the supermarket. And the same goes for all the other me’s in their respective universes, one in the library, another in the park, etc, all cut off from each other. These are parallel universes because they contain parallel, or alternative happenings, people, objects, etc., and also because, like parallel lines, they will never meet. Now isn’t it amazing, God, that right now, while I’m talking to you, I could be talking to an extra-terrestrial, a Neanderthal, the Devil himself in a parallel universe!

Leave that arch enemy out. What are you trying to say.

The theory, if it is right—and it must be right, coming from those brilliant minds—means that there is a parallel universe where the angels never rebelled so that there was no heavenly battle resulting in these rebels being cast into hell and losing their angelic appearance for those dreadful horns and cloven feet, where Adam and Eve never committed that awful sin of eating the forbidden apple because there was no devil to tempt them disguised as a snake, where there was no Original Sin to be passed down the generations, causing human beings to be wicked and make each other miserable, where—

There is no such parallel universe. Your physicists are talking nonsense.

That’s right, God! Suppose for once you show that you can beat them at their own game. So, according to them, there is such a sinless, happy universe somewhere out there, that knows no evil and misery, only that it can never be reached or contacted. Here’s how you outdo those damn scientists, God. You show that this parallel universe can be reached, you grab it and make it replace the wretched one we have! You can do it in seven days, or less. It would be Creation 2, or Genesis Redivivus. Wiping the cosmic slate clean and starting all over again. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? After all, you are God, you can do anything—

Alright, we don’t want to go through all that again. That too can be boring, you know.

Alright, God. That’s the last thing I want to do—bore you. Because I simply have to keep open whatever line of communication I have with you. You won’t hear about parallel universes anymore from me. Promise. But wait, God, there is this strange theory called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that just might—

Alright, enough. You know, I’m beginning to be sorry I sent for you. But it was the fault of that angel who has taken it upon himself to relay to Me every ‘Our Father’ that is said in every church every day in every continent in the world. I have been bored for the last one hundred years. I will have to put an end to that self-appointed job.

Hey, God, I’ve got an idea. Why waste all that angelic energy and enthusiasm? Why not re-channel it so that he relays to you instead every cry for help after a natural disaster, every cry for food from hungry children, every plea from Filipinos for Imelda Marcos to release the stolen millions to help those living on the garbage dumps… God, are you still there?

But she wouldn’t let thoughts like these spoil this special occasion—well, special because he had remained in the commitment, despite the many pressures. Like the incredible amount of time he had to put into his writing, cooped up in his study: the novel he was currently completing, would have taken almost as long as the three years of their engagement. Like the distractions of those attractive young editors and agents of the publishing world he was always meeting.

She was putting the finishing touches to the flowers and the candles on the dinner table when he came in. ‘Hey, Sweetie Pie,’ he said. She smiled, for the endearments always signaled a wonderfully convivial, even romantic evening which was getting to be a rare entry in the diary she had been keeping since they got engaged and she had agreed to their living together. He had given her the diary to mark the event. ‘For you to record all that happens in our lives together,’ he had said, then corrected himself. ‘Life, singular. For from today, dearest heart, we are one. He was in the mood to wax lyrical, quoting lines of poetry.

She recorded with loving detail the loving words he said, the occasional poem he wrote for her. Also the heartaches, always beginning with, ‘Dear Diary, my only confidante..’, a continuation of a girlhood habit.

‘Hey, what’s with the candles and flowers?’ he said, giving her a kiss.
‘Have you forgotten what day it is?’ she said demurely.
‘What day—hey, Sweetheart, I can’t stay for dinner. I’ll have to go out again, as soon as I have a shower.’ He did a merry waltz to their bedroom, whistling a happy tune.
‘But—’, she began, then stopped. It was no use. He never gave her the chance to finish a protest, a disagreement, a denial. In her diary she had written, ‘Dear Diary, today I’m going to overwhelm you with a dirty word’, and she crammed a hundred ‘but’s’, in her neat handwriting, on the pretty pink sheet of scented paper.

He popped his head round the bedroom door to say, ‘Sorry I forgot to tell you, Sweetie. He’s a publisher. Young, but bright, innovative, full of ideas, not like the old dullards I’ve been dealing with.’ She heard him singing in the shower. He emerged in a towel, holding two shirts, one in each hand. ‘Which?’ he said. She desultorily pointed to the one in his left hand. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Perfect choice. Always knew I could trust my sweetie’s taste.’ He gave her a playful slap on her behind, and returned to the room.

She thought dolefully, stroking the engagement ring on her finger, ‘If only.’ She meant, ‘If only I had the guts to take Mother’s advice and pin him down to a real promise.’ She had tried once but instead of the reassuringly concrete details of date, church ceremony, guest list, wedding budget, etc. that would have been such sweet music to her ears, he had only offered those exasperating generalities: ‘Sure, we’ll get married eventually—Mr and Mrs Ronnie Tay Teck Whye—what’s the hurry,’ pinching her cheek with a boisterous, ‘Grrr, grrr.’

Her mother had said then, as she had been saying for the greater part of the three years of the engagement, ‘He’s making use of you. How many times have you done his research for him, gone to the library, written business letters, made countless phone calls, done endless copy editing. Why, he’s getting all these services for free—’ She could have added, ‘And sex, too.’ The remonstrances always ended with the caustic reminder, ‘ You aren’t young anymore, you know!’ It was just amazing how her mother had learnt so much, just by asking seemingly innocuous questions, just by observing her moods.

In half an hour, he was ready to leave for his dinner appointment. ‘Goodnight, Princess, don’t wait up for me, as I expect the meeting to last pretty long,’ he said cheerily, again giving her the friendly backside pat. ‘By the way,’ he said, suddenly remembering something, ‘you’ve got the typescripts all sorted out? I’ll need them in a day or two. I’ve decided on the B ending—you can just forget the A. I think this new guy will favour the more exotic, sexy ending—wham, bang, pow!’

She was aghast. ‘But why didn’t you tell me? It will take a while to sort things out, if you want to change to B. Some chapters will no longer be relevant, or parts of them. I’ll have to go through the whole thing—’

He said, ‘That’s my sweetheart for knowing my stuff so well. You’re my best editor. My gem. Bye, Honey Bunny!’

Two weeks later, he returned from a meeting, brimming with excitement. ‘Sweetie!’ He exclaimed, lifting her from the ground and giving her an exuberant twirl in the air. ‘The guy likes my novel! Was all praise. Thinks it will sell. In fact, he plans on launching it soon, and taking it to the Frankfurt Book Fair, to take advantage of the new market trend for oriental exotica, as he calls it! We’re going out to celebrate, the whole bunch of us. By the way, darling, you can come along, as some of the guys are bringing their wives and girlfriends.’

‘Thanks,’ she said without much enthusiasm. His phone rang. She heard him say, ‘What? Oh sure, no problem.’ He turned to her and said, ‘By the way, Honey, I made a mistake about the wives and girlfriends. They’re not coming. It’s going to be an only-guys thing. You wouldn’t want to listen to our crude male jokes, eh?’

In two months everything was ready for the book launch. Her mother looked at her and said sharply, ‘Look at you. You’ve lost weight. You look terrible. You’ve been working non-stop for weeks preparing for the event, and for what? Do you think he’ll ever keep his promise of marrying you? You’ll be his fiancée through his next book, and the next, and the next!’ This time, she turned a furious face on her mother and shouted, ‘ I wish you’d just shut up!’

The launch was held in a large hotel. There was the expected large turnout of guests and well-wishers. There were the resplendent posters showing enlarged pictures of his attractive book cover. There were the billboards showing him posed beside stacks of his books. There was the free flow of wine. The centerpiece of the event would be his speech, followed by the book-signing.

He was in his element, as he moved among the guests, laughing, joking, telling them about his book and his plans for sequels. She stayed quietly on the side, waiting for his cue to join him. At one point when he went to the podium to check on the microphone, to make sure that everything was in order for his speech, he saw some of the guests talking to her. He went up to join them and said breezily, ‘By the way, this is my fiancée!’

After his speech, and just before the book-signing, he noticed her getting ready to leave. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked in surprise. She replied, ‘To my mother’s,’ adding, ‘by the way, I’m leaving you.’ She watched his jaw drop, watched the incredulity spread on his face and on to his fingers, paralysing them so that they remained in mid-air, stiffly holding a pen. ‘But… but… what do you mean’, he stammered. Suddenly his face cleared as the truth struck him, together with a brilliant idea. ‘Hey, Sweetheart, I was going to dedicate the book to you. Honest. I’ll give instructions for the dedication in the reprint. And I’ll do a new foreword to acknowledge your wonderful contributions, darling—’

‘Well, it’s not necessary,’ she said, and then had her own brilliant idea. ‘By the way, I’ve already left instructions with your people not to use my name, under any circumstances, in any reprints.’ She would not forget to write in her diary that evening, before starting to pack.’ Dear Diary, I had a wonderful evening. By the way, it’s goodbye. I won’t be needing you anymore.’ And she would leave it behind.

At the individual level, the impact may be most strongly felt in relation to the moral implications of such changes, especially in scientific technology. For one has now to make decisions with little guidance from old value systems that have become obsolete and irrelevant. For instance, the majority of us, if we have to take a stand on the issue of abortion or cloning or euthanasia, are not likely to be guided purely by the Ten Commandments but will be influenced by new knowledge about ourselves regarding our biology and our human nature, and about how these are inextricably tied up with our cultural and social environment.

But so emotionally charged are these issues, so filled with ambiguities, both ethical and legal, so replete with grey areas that form an impossibly long continuum between the white and the black, that making a decision which will stand up to stringent moral scrutiny is almost impossible. For instance, regarding the abortion debate: at what stage in its development is the foetus considered a human being so that aborting it is tantamount to murder? In the event of a stark choice, whom should you save, the mother or the child? Regarding cloning of human stem cells, at what point does the therapeutic purpose which is acceptable, morph into other purposes which are questionable, such as prolonging life, or even outright reprehensible, such as promoting personal vanities?

I confess to a great deal of bewilderment, and am not sure how I would act if presented with these quandaries. But one thing I am sure of: it has to be a two-part decision. The first is based on the unavoidable reality that we all act from self-interest, so that any other starting point for a decision is a false one and doomed to lead nowhere. The second, quickly coming in to moderate the first, is that the self-interest has to take into account other people’s interests, since we all live in a community, so that the final decision is a meshing of both. Thus, for instance, while I support euthanasia and the right to die, I have to be mindful that my decision does not compromise my survivors, leave them with feelings of guilt, or get them into trouble with the law.

I have found that this pursuit of one’s own interests combined with an awareness of others’ rights and needs is my best guiding principle in life, because being very practical and pragmatic, it makes the goal achievable. It constitutes virtually my whole moral advisory. I think I was inspired by a special piece of wisdom from the Bible itself: be both the serpent and the dove, it says, that is, have both cunning, in the pursuit of one’s interests, as well as gentleness, in one’s attitude to others. Rabbi Hillel who lived more than two thousand years ago, expressed it best when he said rhetorically: ‘Who will be for me if I am not myself? But if I am only for myself, what am I?’

But even the rabbi’s strong guiding principle cannot deal with the doubts and uncertainties that sometimes arise to make decision-making difficult. So I’ve added one more guiding rule to my moral advisory: If in doubt, make your decision on the side of generosity, kindness and compassion, rather on the side of correctness, propriety, even justice. In other words, give the other party the benefit of the doubt and move on. I have had to put this principle into practice a few times in my life, where money was involved. My comforting thought then was: so what if I had the misfortune of meeting a dishonest person? The money can be earned back!

Actually, even this seeming act of mercy is still a self-serving act, for it gives me the peace of mind that would otherwise be lost.

I have since observed, and written about this sense of exhilaration that both men and women experience when a marriage or a relationship comes to an end, even if they had not wanted the dissolution in the first place. I am thinking of a university mate whose on-off relationship with a boyfriend went on for months, with her trying every ruse to keep him. But when it ended, she came into my room, flopped on the bed and exclaimed, ‘You know, I feel so free!’

I suppose the explanation lies in that most powerful of F words in our emotional lexicon—freedom. The taste of freedom( even if it lasts only for a short while, and loneliness sets in with its fearsome toll) is often expressed through imagery, as if straightforward language is not adequate to express it.

I remember, as I was taking that long walk that night, two compelling images kept coming into my mind, one from a popular ballad, the other from the Bible, both having to do with a huge weight around one’s neck, but used with different cautionary messages. In Coleridge’s poem ‘The Ancient Mariner’, the mariner wantonly and gratuitously kills a huge but friendly albatross and as a result has to wear its dead body around his neck as a form of penance. Only when he achieves full penitence, does it drop into the sea. In one of his sermons, Christ denounces anyone who would scandalize little children, saying that it would be better for him to have a millstone tied round his neck and then to be cast into the sea. But the only symbolic meaning that these two dreaded weights had for me was release and a relaunching into a new phase of life.

The enduring symbol of freedom in the popular imagination continues to be the opening of the cage door and the flight skywards of its once despairing inhabitant, now singing with joy. It is a symbol that resonates with women, probably because of the fragility of the bird on the one hand, and the power of its soaring flight on the other. I once gave a workshop on creative writing to inmates in a women’s prison. Among the titles I gave them to try their hand at short story writing was ‘The Caged Bird Sings/Never Sings’. It proved to be almost the unanimous choice; of the two options in the title, the majority chose the second.

But when I read Sylvia Plath’s novel ‘The Bell Jar’, I realized that there was an even more powerful symbol to capture the sense of helplessness and despair of women permanently trapped in relationships. I wrote a story, using the same title, about a well-educated, career woman who felt guilty about her unhappiness in a marriage that should have been a happy one because it had all the conventional requisites of stability and respectability. But she felt suffocated within her bell jar, and was secretly delighted to go on a career-related seminar in a foreign country. There she met someone she was instantly attracted to. Their brief affair brought her a joy she had never imagined possible. Her lover wanted her to continue to meet him, to make use of every opportunity for them to meet. She thought, quivering with excitement, ‘ At last I can escape my bell jar.’ But almost as quickly as she had agreed to the affair, she ended it, and returned to her family, willingly re-entering the bell jar, a butterfly with wings sadly folded, never to get out again.

The story was the kind of maudlin indulgence that the romantic writer sometimes allows herself. I had no idea that it touched so many raw nerves among my female readers. One of them told me she read the story five times. ‘Why? I asked. She said, ‘The woman in your story reminds me of myself—hating my bell jar, but used to the safety and security it gives me. One day, I just might…’