On a Fruit Salad

do i love my country: we have so many different races, so many different cultures, so many different gods, traditions, customs, the chinese 7th month ge tai, malay weddings in the void deck, thaipusam indian parades of devotion, we have got mosques, temples, churches together, sometimes on the same street, we have lots of different food, laksa, po piah, nasi lemak, chicken rice, roti prata, peranakan, so many different flavours, our language, singlish, a mixture of many dialects, a dilution of our colonial masters' tongue

and you've got this blend of race and religion, the hindus with their ramayana, the chinese; sun wukong and journey to the west, the christians tell of tales from the gospel. the chinese have shamans who enter trances, the malays picked up islam and fast, and pray to an unseen god. you have this harmony between the races, different languages, different dialects within these languages, and then you have the gods of these religions, and devotees, in harmony as well,

somewhere, something went wrong, poor judgement?

it's this poor judgement, that's led to us citizens to become critiquing folk who don't know what they're criticising, who don't know and choose not to find out, and continue laughing and profiling the other races, it's this same poor judgement that's allowing violence for the sake of violence, criticism for the sake of criticism, protestation for the sake of protestation, it's this same poor judgement that's breeding elitism, capitalism, and a selfish pragmatism in parenting, and children, to study for As and certs, slow down, to see how vibrant a country we have become,

while backpacking, we met an austrian couple, i told them about singapore, singapore is like a fruit salad, i tell them, with all these races, languages and religions different cubes of fruit, and our flavour must be taken as a whole, salad, to eat a piece of fruit off the salad and say, this is how the salad tastes is wrong, we must eat every piece of fruit and say, this is how a fruit salad tastes like, that's how unique we are, a fruit salad, a mixture of different flavours.

what would i defend? this rojakness of a country, this identity that is many. or the unconscious hostility everyone harbours as they eye another as competition on the bell curve.

do i love my country?

why, i might be in love with the notion of falling in love.