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.