Passing On

I attended the funeral of an old teacher today. I was 17 when she taught me History. I would hesitate to say she was an inspirational teacher, but I do remember her as a very kind one.

I had expected to see some old classmates, but there were none. In a way I'm relieved because it would have made the day a more poignant one - to see others who had sat in class with me, trying to scribble notes, now standing beside me as I paid my respects. Having teachers pass on is a little like having parents pass on I think. It reminds us we are no longer who we were once - students, teenagers, a whole lifetime of living ahead of us.

The funeral also made me realise something I never thought about as a teenager - that my teachers too had other selves. They were mothers and fathers, they became grandparents; they cooked, shopped, baked, exercised, played games, did a million other things that we students did not see and did not ask about. I did not know my teachers as individuals. When I shook her son's hand all I could say was "Your mother was my teacher." I hope he understood.

I would like to think my students know me differently. I hope they know there are many things I care about. I hope they know I loved teaching them. I hope they will have stories about me to tell my children and my grandchildren.

Incensed

I was planning to blog about what's been happening this month but I am so incensed by a recent news report that I cannot write about anything else.

Three days ago there was a report on the increasing intolerance among neighbours living cheek by jowl in the HDB apartments here in Singapore, and how a number of them are too quick to seek mediation from the Community Mediation Centre instead of talking through issues.

What incensed me, and a number of netizens, is the case highlighted in the report of how newly-arrived citizens from China demanded that their Indian neighbours stop cooking curry and stop eating curry because they couldn't stand the smell of the dish. The Mediation Centre negotiated an agreement that the Indian family would only cook their curry dishes when the Chinese family was not at home. In return, the Indian family asked that the Chinese neighbours at least give their curry dish a try.

I don't know what incenses me more - that the Chinese neighbours had the temerity to ask of people of another culture not to eat food that is traditionally theirs; that the mediator actually thought this was a successfully mediated case worthy of quoting in the national newspaper; that this case was even considered worthy of mediation instead of the Chinese neighbours being told to learn how to live in multi-cultural Singapore; or that the Indian family actually offered the solution of offering to adjust their cooking schedule to suit the intolerance of their neighbours.

I am reminded of something my brother-in-law said when J interviewed him: "Generally, we Indians are a contented lot". Contented, non-confrontational, pushovers.