Snorkelling At Sentosa

I’ve got to stop whining about Singapore. For one thing, everyone does it. The expats do it, the PRs do it, the Singaporeans themselves do it. And it’s always the same thing. The lack of personal freedom. The ban on chewing gum. It’s so small. There’s nothing to do.

I’m an expat. I’m from a country where you have personal freedom, you can bring in as much chewing gum as you like, is huge and there’s a lot to do. Nevertheless I wouldn’t trade a day of living in Bombay for one in Singapore.

Let’s imagine that day. Let’s say I was a working professional in Bombay. I’d have a decrepit flat in Bandra. (For which I’d have to pay a prohibitive 12-months security deposit). I wake up in the morning to muggy weather and open the curtains to let in the fresh smell of exhaust and sea-breeze. I make myself a cup of third-world Nescafe. Which tastes crap. (Just because the label says Nescafe, it doesn’t mean it’s the same as the Nescafe in the first world. There’s a world of difference. Go to an imported goods store anywhere in India and you’ll see that imported versions of the same brand are marked up.) Then I rush to work, skipping breakfast, because it takes upwards of an hour to get there. I pay 20 bucks and sit in a smelly cab that smells faintly of urine, listen to the unwashed Bihari cab driver pass lewd comments about schoolgirls crossing the road. An armless beggar passes by while I see stray dogs baying at each other in their frequent territorial wars. I get off at Bandra station. This is beggar-fest. Anyone with an ounce of compassion is bound to be disturbed by scenes of human beings wasting away to skin and bone, scavenging among blackened piles of garbage. It’s gut-wrenching to watch. People in Bombay are blind to this. It’s not that they’re cruel. Just conditioning I guess. A sweaty crowd bundles you into your train. Inside the train I can smell coconut oil, Pond’s Dreamflower talcum powder, armpits and invariably, Vicks Vaporub. After half an hour of doing a slow grind with an old man next to me, I get off. My expensive aftershave now smells different. My face is oily and I feel a bit sticky so I feel an enormous sense of relief when I step into the air-conditioned office. We’re supposed to go to the client’s office for a presentation at noon which means I have to see if studio’s got my stuff ready. What stuff? The artists are out having a fag. A nervous one hour passes. I plead and make piss-ant threats (which I won’t act upon) and finally get the work out. I spend 45 minutes in the taxi explaining my ads to the suit who keeps interrupting the conversation by talking loudly into his cell-phone headset to his wife, son and some irate supplier who hasn’t received his money. We reach the client’s tacky, faux-gothic, depressing, granite monstrosity of an office building. The waiting area has far too many fluorescent lamps which makes you feel like you’re waiting for post-mortem results. The meeting was at 12.30. We’re kept waiting for 45 minutes. I’m hungry. I haven’t had breakfast. I’m irritable as hell. Jabba the Hut then joins us. He tells us he was just getting a bite to eat. I still look pissed off because I don’t like being made to wait. The slimy account man, however, is at his servile best, talking nonsense strategy which Jabba nods to, without understanding. ‘Chalo, kaam dekhte hain’. I go through the motions, the rehearsed speech. He tells me it should be more ‘youth-oriented’. He wants me to use words like ‘funda’ and ‘gyaan’ to put more ‘masti’ into it. I’m thinking, who the fuck uses words like that? Mentally-challenged Kirori Mal College crowd or irritating Delhi kids. I’m too hungry and annoyed to argue. I say ‘yes’ to everything. Saying ‘no’ just means I have to do an extra round of work and my boss comes down next week and says ‘yes’ to whatever the client wants. Fuck him, the bastard. I lunch at some greasy place around the corner where there is a lot of clanging going on. I’ve got a headache. On the way back I see some 500,000 ugly billboards telling me to drink coke at 5 rupees, watch Kkusum on Star Plus, wear Dollar underwear and how Garnier Fructis’ colour-lock helps me look like a natural redhead. I try not to read but you can’t miss it. You look out and it’s screaming at you. At the office I meet various forms of the scum-of-the-earth. Somebody’s playing music which is a decade too late on their iPod and singing along. I suppress the urge to snip the wire off. “Do you think this should be one sentence or two sentences?” Two? I psyche myself up to having an argument with my boss. If there’s one thing I will never do, it’s fucking Hinglish. You can write in Hindi. Or write in English. How can you mutilate two separate languages which have their own syntax and rhythm by cobbling them together? There’s no beauty, no grace in it. They should leave fusion to semi-perveous rocks in the earth’s sub-strata. The CD takes the job off me and gives it to someone who is willing and able to write Hinglish. I’ll go far in this place. I have the cigarette I swore this morning I wouldn’t smoke. Lukewarm tea to go with it. But at least the samosas are good. I waste the rest of the day googling stupid shit on the internet and catching up on football news. Suit tells me we have to work over the weekend. I tell him to fuck off. Half an hour later my boss tells me the same thing. I whine for a bit but concede. What am I going to do on a weekend in Bombay anyway? Sure there’s a lot to do in India as compared to Singapore. You can scale the Himalayas. You can go snorkelling in Goa and enjoy Rajput hospitality at Pushkar. How many people actually get to live that life on weekends? The most they do is watch movies at some plasticky Multiplex and eat Subway sandwiches.

And you can chew all the goddamn chewing gum you want.

Amsterdam, or Rio de Janeiro, or Zanzibar may be different. Maybe you can go snorkelling on the weekends in Rio, if that’s what you want. But if you were the snorkelling sort, you’d figure some way to get your fix of adventure no matter which country you are in, wouldn’t you?

Even if it is on a fake tropical beach on Sentosa with radio monitors and CCTV attached to the pier.