Where is the Love?

Dear readers,

85th Post!!

after a week of concerts, work and whatnot, theokwek has finally found time among all the nitty-gritty things to do some writing. Well, in response to the protests that have been appearing on his tagboard, he has - apologetically - followed up with an essay AND a poem. Here's the poem first, then the essay, both focused on the theme of 'LOVE'. Let's hope you read both!

Salut D'Armor,
The Straight Times Editor.


The poem:

The concert-going mom

The tickets flew, the posters grew,

And the hall was slowly filled.

But by every concert-going child,

A loving parent stood.

He is the apple of my eye,

He must watch this one – oh dear!

I’m not sure if there’re tickets left,

I must get one now, for sure!

For except by watching, hearing, learning,

How else can his skill improve?

To get that oh-so-precious seat,

I’ll fight with every tooth!

It doesn’t matter if I’m half-interested,

He’s watching he’s hearing he’s learning.

I’ll gladly breach the end of the world –

For the sake of his little violin!

The child he settles in his seat,

Exhilarated but unaware!

They all say ignorance is bliss…

He’s happy, she’s happy, and it all turns out

Fair.

The essay:

Where is the Love?

I sat, astounded, the freshly-brewed beef stew slipping subconsciously over the edge of my spoon as I listened with fascinated intent to his thesis of Singapore, the government, and the world at large.

He was small in build, back badly bent, spectacles large and heavy, and carried an almost indiscernible navy-blue cloth bag that thudded gently and lovingly against his black-clothed frame. Almost fifty, but not quite, his thin hair mocked the care he put into combing and gelling it, and exposed the smooth scalp underneath, and those eyes, whose image was reflected and refracted multiple times within the mammoth glass walls that shielded them, revealed an odd childlike quality, dancing with sparks as he spoke. A regular visitor to our church, he always sat in the same dusty corner, listening silently, and stayed even after collecting his lunch – be it a bowl of porridge, a plate of noodles, depending on what the ladies of the church had cooked – and insisting on ‘more veggies and no beef’. He would linger around the church, flitting like a shadow among the time-worn walls, sometimes catching a nap on the back pews of the sunlit sanctuary, or watching children play their endless games in the car-park below.

To some, myself included, he was ‘just there’, taken for granted, but missed if absent.

Today, though, he turned up at our door.

It turned out that Dad had offered him a lift home, but he’d arrived early to catch the car, conveniently in time for dinner.

“Would you like some beef stew?”

Dad’s face portrayed no noticeable surprise at the unexpected guest, merely beaming a smile to him and unlocking our oak door in a clean motion, waving him in.

My jaw must have dropped, but I shut it immediately as Mom ladled her latest recipe – and her first attempt at the new, three-day-old pressure cooker that sat, still steaming, on the kitchen counter – into a bowl and placed it in front of the hungry gentleman.

Hungry he certainly was, it was impossible to tell when his last meal was as he dug into his food, at first hesitantly, but gradually warming up to the task and devouring his dinner.

Bowels filled, he began to talk.

“You got hear of Catherine Lim?”

“Yes, she’s my classmate’s mother”, Dad replied, before doing justice to a slice of apple.

“You know ah, recently, just two days ago only, she wrote a letter to the Straits Times, criticized the Singapore Government you know?”

We nodded in assent, waiting, hearing.

“She brought up two things you know. The first one, she say, Singapore everything is about PAP. Any fool can tell you. Singapore is run only by the Party. Everywhere is the Party’s image.”

An unsynchronized chorus of “mmhmm”s spread around the dinner table. Wind curled in from the open window. Rain started falling. Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter.

“The second thing ah, is you know what or not. She say, between the Party and the people, there is no love. She say, the Party is about politics only. No love. But I ask you. What do you think? Politics decides our lives what. Without politics we cannot eat. You want love for what. I’m not interested in love!”

I almost dropped the potatoes.

Those last five words set me thinking: was our nation really that love-less? Our modern culture is such that love – or a warped form of it, in any case – is emphasized beyond words. Music of today speaks of love. Art speaks of love. Literature is filled with pages and pages of love. Science speaks daily of ‘bringing progress as a gesture of love’. Even Mathematics, that somber subject, has been called the language of… you guessed it. Love.

My mind zipped back to the song that our English teacher played for us in class today – Where Is The Love? by Black Eyed Peas. It had something to do with the topic we were covering – racism and discrimination, as part of our literature text To Kill A Mockingbird. Personally, I’d felt that the song didn’t mean much musically – the verse was pure rap and the chorus comprised of a descending chord progression and little else. But, what struck me while listening to the song and watching the video that came with it, were a number of questions.

In our modern and fast-paced world, is there space for love? Is there a humble charity that exists between fellow men, a kind of understanding and appreciation for each other? What about in religion? In the arts? In the never-ending pursuit of knowledge and lifelong learning? Do we, as humans, have time for the most basic of emotions, or have we outgrown – can we even outgrow – that God-given bond that kept us together as a species in the first place?

I looked back around me. It was a cool evening. The rain still fell in steady rhythm outside. Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter.

The dining table was still warm from the steam of the stew and rice. Pleasant conversation flew around, in bits and pieces and in random snippets. How was work today? How was your meeting? Do you have tai-chi class later? And what do you think of Catherine Lim? There were smiles around. Pleasant smiles. Friendly smiles. Loving smiles.

You asked, where is the love?

Here.