Today I collected another child's swimming certificate for him,
and passed it to his mum.
I'm Indian. She's Chinese.
Our eyes met, our lips smiled beneath the masks we wear. A nod of thanks and we went our separate ways.
In these strange times I wonder,
would every good deed that I dovalidate a race ?
Might every misdeed I do
incriminate a whole race?
I am tired of explaining
when another kindly neighbour
tells me sympathetically,
that it's hard to go back to India now.
I don't go back to India.
I go to India
and come back to Singapore.
Singapore is my back,
my home.
I've said this before
but it must not have registered,
the one or two things we say now
cannot undo preconceived notions built over years.
So I smile and nod,
and think of the marks I may have made on people
about Indians,
like one or two people
can speak for a race.
When one is a minority
perhaps there is no other choice.
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