Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  Some in the hurrying crowds paused for a short while to titter; the majority continued to hurry on, just in case there were secret surveillance cameras to provide indisputable proof of guilt by association.

  The principal called Miss Seetoh to his office. The gravity of what he was going to say forced him into a few awkward preliminary pleasantries which were pure inanities, making Maria look down in embarrassment.

  ‘Mrs Tan, your choice of Cameron Highlands for your honeymoon was a good one. My cousin is going away on a vacation with her husband, and I recommended – ’ His smile was at odds with the deepening frown on his forehead as he came to the business at hand, ‘Mrs Tan, it has come to my attention –’

  Maria thought, ‘I see Teresa Pang has been at work again.’

  ‘Mrs Tan,’ said the principal, trying to tone down the reproach in his voice, ‘you know that we are in the midst of a national campaign to stamp out Singlish, and you are encouraging its use. That, as I’m sure you’ll understand, is not acceptable.’

  It must have been the play submitted by the two new students in her creative writing class. They were from the Commerce class that had never shown any interest in literature, much less creative composition, but from the start Maria had been impressed by their eagerness to participate fully in all the class activities, as also by their perfect compatibility as a working pair, always sitting next to each other, conscientiously making notes, whispering in urgent consultation, finally passing up their work as a joint effort, signed by both, in an artistic intertwining of initials, like royal monograms. Whether a short story, a play or a poem, their combined work showed a level of maturity and creativity that must have been the result of the unusual combination of intimacy and discipline.

  They were two fifteen-year-olds named Mark Wong and Loo Yen Ping, a shy, soft-voiced couple who looked very much alike in their slenderness, pale skin, neatness and quiet demeanour. They stood out in an educational setting that discouraged any pairing among the boys and girls for two reasons: it was a serious distraction to studies, and it could lead to immoral behaviour. Mark and Yen Ping, always getting good grades for their class work as well as for their exemplary behaviour of politeness to their teachers, courtesy to their schoolmates and decorum towards each other, had effectively removed both causes for censure. Indeed, they did not at all fit the picture of the actively dating teenager who was much cause for parental alarm, for they had never been seen even to hold hands, in or outside the school.

  Maria thought with some amusement that their image was more in keeping with that of babes in the woods, hardly out of childhood, clinging to each other in a large, unfriendly world, or that of those ideologically united, intense young couples of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, wearing the asexual drab uniforms.

  ‘Miss Seetoh,’ whispered Maggie with a chuckle, ‘do you think they ever kiss each other? I think they don’t know how. Somebody must teach them!’

  Maria thought of herself and Kuldeep Singh, vibrant with animal energy, sipping soda on high stools, and wondered about this unusual, over-achieving pair in her creative writing class.

  They had confided their dreams to her: Mark wanted to go abroad to do a course in media, despite his mother’s ambition for him to do business administration; Yen Ping wanted to be a writer, but would be a teacher first to support her parents. Between them was an unspoken bond of deep regard, understanding and trust that could have no place for the crude experimentation of teenage passion.

  Maria once saw them sitting on the steps of a school staircase, Mark helping Yen Ping to re-plait her hair, both going about the operation with the same earnestness as when they sat in the school library doing research for an assignment or comparing notes in the creative writing class. It was a picture of young romance that was both amusing and touching. As Mark handed Yen Ping her hair-clip, they noticed Miss Seetoh’s presence. She hurried away, looking down, suppressing a smile at the surprising manifestations of young love. She remembered two of her classmates from Secondary Three, aged fifteen, completely nondescript, completely forgettable, who, she later learnt, were forced to leave school and get married at sixteen when the girl got pregnant.

  Mrs Neo said, ‘I say it is not all healthy, their not mixing with others. Brother Philip, being the Moral Education teacher, should counsel them.’

  Teresa Pang said, ‘Why don’t you speak to Maria Seetoh about them? She seems to be encouraging them a lot.’

  Maggie had disliked them from the start, less for their standing out as a couple, than for the good comments from Miss Seetoh on their creative writing assignments, which her own efforts never earned. Unable to reveal the secret of her major role in the hunt for Miss Seetoh’s diamond ring that dark night in a forest, she contented herself with spreading the general information that only she knew Miss Seetoh’s secret life.

  She was not about to let her favourite teacher forget her contribution that night, for ever so often, she would whisper to Maria, ‘Miss Seetoh, I hear Ah Boy’s brother bought a scooter. Where got the money? I think he and Ah Boy found the ring and sold it,’ and ‘Miss Seetoh, you think maybe the ring still there? Shall we do another search?’

  Feeling her position as favourite slipping, she directed her anger at the upstarts, writing a savagely satirical story about a couple who pretended to be one for the purpose of hiding their true sexual orientation, he being gay and she lesbian.

  Miss Seetoh, with much matter-of-fact casualness said, ‘Maggie, that was an interesting story. If you clean up the spelling and grammar, I could use part of it as an example of vivid narrative.’

  From the start, Maria had had some misgivings about the extensive use of Singlish in the short play submitted by Mark and Yen Ping, being constantly reminded of its infamy in the campaign posters put up in the school. It was precisely this use that made the dialogue in the play come alive, resonating with the rhythms of everyday Singaporean speech in the home, the shops, the workplace; indeed, she had never come across a play or short story that carried such an authentic local flavour. The more she thought about it, the more she realised that the couple had real talent, discovering the dramatic value of Singlish before even she, a qualified literature teacher, did.

  The story of the play was even more intriguing. It was about a young couple whose families disapproved of their relationship and tried to end it. Maria knew that Mark’s mother, a divorcee and a sophisticated, widely travelled business woman, disapproved of her son’s relationship with Yen Ping whose parents sold soft drinks in a food centre, and wondered if their play, with its overtones of a Romeo and Juliet tragedy, came dangerously close to open rebellion. Maria had wanted a contribution from her creative writing class for a school concert, and thought the best hope came from this talented duo, publicly so shy and deferential, but privately, in their little world of intense intimate understanding and sharing, amazingly innovative and daring.

  ‘Oh no, oh no, Miss Seetoh,’ cried Yen Ping, blushing furiously, her eyes wide with horror.

  ‘This play’s only for you, not even for the rest of the class,’ said Mark. ‘Miss Seetoh, you can use it anonymously in class, as an example of a point you want to make. But not for a school concert,’ adding shyly, ‘if you like it, Miss Seetoh, that’s enough for us.’

  Thus had Maria used it in class as an example of the literary value of the much maligned Singlish, and thus probably had Maggie gone to tell Miss Teresa Pang who then went to tell the principal.

  ‘Mrs Tan,’ said the principal, ‘will you give me the undertaking that in future you will not allow the use of Singlish among the students?’

  It would have been the most futile of exercises to explain to him the role that the localised variety could play in local writing, for it had now taken its place, together with laziness, complacency, racial intolerance and a low birth rate, as the enemies of economic survival and progress.

  Maria said ‘Yes’ dispiritedly and the principal was emboldened enough to administer a sharp pinc
h to the vanity of his best English language teacher who could also be the most difficult, by saying with a casual laugh, ‘Mrs Tan, all those grammar mistakes in vivid pictures that you have on your classroom walls. I find it difficult to believe that as a strict English language teacher, you can tolerate, even encourage Singlish!’ He waited for a response, ready to turn the compliment he regularly paid this teacher for achieving good examination results into another sly deflation of her ego.

  But Miss Seetoh said nothing. It would have entailed just too much energy and patience to explain, much less to justify, the use of Singlish to this most conscientious of civil servants. For him, the linguistic villain stood irredeemably condemned, first because denounced by the great TPK, and second because embraced by the opponent, V.K. Pandy.

  It was only to Brother Philip that Maria could show that brilliant play by Mark and Yen Ping. ‘I read it again last night,’ she confided, not mentioning that she had to get up from the bed very quietly so as not to wake her husband, and slip into the spare bedroom to give the script the full attention it deserved, ‘and I think it’s a real pity that such a clever little play can never be staged because the dialogue’s in Singlish.’

  Brother Philip said with a smile, ‘They’re unusual, aren’t they? Commerce students who have a love of literature and theatre. Fortunately, there’s you to keep their talent alive.’

  He had been long enough in Singapore to have picked up Singlish, with its plethora of easily identifiable interjections, inflections and hybridised innovations, which he sometimes used to amuse his students. ‘Aiyoh! Why you all so bodoh, ah? Or you got no moral values, is it? I give up, lah!’ In the atmosphere generated by the aggressive national campaign to eradicate its use, it would be unwise even to use it for light-hearted exchanges.

  He and Maria had hilarious tales to share, in private, about the inevitable excesses when a whole nation was galvanised into instant action by the great TPK’s warnings. The newspapers ran guides for Singaporeans eager to improve their English, by pairing each expression in Singlish with its proper, standard British counterpart, duly checked with the British Council, helpfully indicating each error with a large cross and its correct form with a large tick. TV presenters, in the mistaken notion that if Singlish pronunciation was bad, then foreign pronunciation must be good, accordingly read the news with exaggerated American or British accents. All over the island, schools took the battle against Singlish even into the canteen and playground during recess.

  Meeta and Winnie became language vigilantes, moving among their students at Palm Secondary School to listen to them and impose fines of five cents per Singlish expression. Meeta said in confidence to Maria, ‘Winnie – and a whole lot of others. All making grammatical mistakes right in front of their students without realising it. I had to pull her aside and quietly point out her errors.’

  The fear was that students from English-speaking homes might notice the mistakes, report them to their parents who would write irate letters to the newspapers about badly trained teachers being the source of all the trouble. One mother had written a letter that was both a complaint about a teacher and a compliment to her young son, aged six: the teacher had told her students to close the tap, and her little boy had gone up and said politely, ‘Miss, the correct expression is ‘Turn off the tap’.’

  Thirteen

  She was so glad that Brother Philip’s call had come when her husband was not yet home. He had called her on impulse, he said; their discussion that morning of the effectiveness of Singlish in Mark and Yen Ping’s play had suddenly given him a thought which he now posed to her as a challenge: would she collaborate with him in the writing of a play (the moral message, incumbent upon him as the moral education teacher, would be incidental only) in which the monologuist was someone like herself who was familiar with the whole continuum of English language varieties, from formal and literary to colloquial and low marketplace, sliding in and out of each variety with ease, as the situation required. Brother Philip got more and more excited as he elaborated on his idea.

  He said, ‘I can already see you, Maria, speaking in correct formal English to a team of visiting inspectors from the Ministry of Education, then sliding down to a less formal form with your students, then to pure Singlish as you whisper some urgent instructions to the school gardener Ah Boy who can be very slow-witted, and then back again to standard English as you once more face the principal and the inspectors. Can you see what a hilarious play it will be? Just right to make the concert a lively event!’ The normally soft-spoken, urbane Moral Education teacher was displaying the refreshing enthusiasm of a schoolboy about to work on a pet project.

  It was difficult to keep the thrill out of her voice even as she said No. No, the principal would never approve of such a play. She left unsaid the fearful thought: a collaboration with him, necessitating hours spent together, including on the phone, most likely in the evenings when her husband would be home, would be an utter impossibility. She looked at the clock: at least ten minutes before he was expected home, a precious stolen ten minutes of happy, spontaneous chat. She told Brother Philip about her small, secret collection of stories that a local publisher said he might consider publishing.

  His call, inducing a very happy mood in her, soon induced a clever idea of her own. It had all the promise of sparkling mischief, inspired by a recollection of something she had once read which had amused her greatly. A writer who could not spell, simply got round the problem by writing a story that was written by a writer who could not spell, thereby legitimating all the spelling mistakes in the story, indeed investing them with a kind of lunatic brilliance.

  She would write a short story entirely in Singlish. It would be in the form of a monologue by an uneducated taxi driver who had learnt English by listening to it as it was used in the streets. The monologue would alternate between complaint and exultation, as the taxi driver talked gloomily about the tedium of his job on the one hand, and eagerly about how easy it was to overcharge the tourists, on the other.

  It was based on a real conversation with a taxi driver many years before, and his speech, loud and friendly, came back in every vividness of detail: ‘Aiyah! What to do, must work hard in Singapore – pay this, pay that – our government very money-face, I tell you! Lucky got tourists, easy to charge them more – the Japanese with their yen, don’t know how to convert to Sing dollars – one day – aiyoh – gave me fifty dollars –’

  She smiled as she recollected her encounter with the shrewdly loquacious cabby, dressed in a T-shirt bearing the proud logo ‘Come to Singapore – Paradise on Earth!’ who apparently made it a point to talk incessantly with his passengers to size them up. Her mind throbbed to the sound of his voice, to the robustness and earthiness of the local idiom that would never go away, despite the official strictures, because, unlike these, it grew from the ground, spontaneously and effortlessly and thus became part of the people’s sense of themselves.

  As the story shaped in her mind, her excitement was too great not to be shared. Her husband was on the sofa reading the day’s newspaper and she was seated beside him; he always liked her to be by his side as soon as he returned home from work. Her physical presence was not enough; if she had a faraway look in her eyes, he pulled her back into full attentiveness to him.

  ‘What are you thinking of?’ he said, and she turned to him and said, her eyes sparkling, ‘I’ve just got an idea for a wonderful story; it’s going to be written entirely in Singlish, it’s about a taxi-driver –’

  He looked at her and said with a puzzled frown, ‘You mean you’re not aware of the campaign? I’m surprised, you being an English language teacher –’ From that day on, he took his place with the principal, with her colleagues at St Peter’s except Brother Philip, with Meeta and Winnie, with all civil servants, with all publishers who would be afraid to publish anything if it contained a single item of Singlish, all ranged in a formidable phalanx of disapproval, facing her as she stood defiantly on the other side
of a wide chasm, ranged with V.K. Pandy and the student pair Mark Wong and Loo Yen Ping. ‘You snob, you think you’re so clever,’ they shouted at her, and she shouted back, ‘You herd!’

  The story in her head cried out to be written. She listened for her husband’s snores; they came soon enough, and she hurried to the spare bedroom and the small table where she wrote furiously for an hour before she saw him opening the door and standing at the doorway.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said. She said, ‘Oh, just completing some school work.’

  This would be the beginning of a routine of small lies, to calm, placate, avert a reproach, prevent the setting in of one of those bad moods she was beginning to dread.

  ‘You teachers are given free periods precisely to complete your work at school and not have to bring it home, aren’t you? I thought that was the main reason for women going into the teaching profession, so that they would have time for their families.’

  His discontentment with her had already set in; it was beginning to eat into him. Why couldn’t she be like other wives? Why did she steal away from him even in sleep?

  Would she dare? She would. This time she shut herself in the bathroom, sat on the toilet seat, and managed to finish her story before it lost its momentum. ‘What were you doing so long in the toilet?’ he asked. So he was not asleep after all. She chose to say nothing; silence was less wearying than explanation.

  Brother Philip said, returning her the script, ‘Fantastic. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It ought to be published. Why don’t you put together your stories and bring out a book? Try a foreign publisher, if your local one isn’t interested. It will be his loss!’

  To her dying day, she cherished the warmth of the encouragement. She said, suddenly feeling very happy, ‘Thank you. Maybe one day. One never knows.’