Mary Lao did not return till midnight. She was a little surprised to see her husband reading the papers in bed, well past his usual bedtime. She quickly washed up and, hitting the pillow, requested her husband to switch off the light. She was too tired to notice that her husband was unusually silent, and that the folding and tossing aside of the papers was unusually brusque.
At dinner the next evening, Mary Lao caught Gimme making a face and gesturing at the empty birdcage. She gasped and remarked, “The bird is gone.” The looks on both her husband and her son’s faces told her that they had not expected her to take this long to realise it. Shrugging, Mary Lao muttered, “Maybe it’s for the better. The bird was turning you into a bum. Now you can do something useful with your time.” Had Mary Lao been more observant, she might have detected the dark swell of fury in her husband’s silence and the look of apprehension on her son’s face.
The next evening, Mary Lao was preparing dinner in the kitchen when Gimme Lao walked up to her with a weird expression on his face. “Dad has bought a new pet.”
Flustered, Mary Lao wiped her hands dry and went into the living room. Her husband was seated on the sofa removing his socks. There was a 12-inch aquarium tank sitting on the table. The sand was spread and the rocks were in place, but the tank was not filled up with water yet. Mary Lao secretly sighed with relief. A tiny aquarium was manageable.
“When do you intend to buy the fish? You should bring Gimme along and let him pick some,” Mary Lao remarked as she removed the lid to get a better look. The scream that followed was so shrill, Grandma Toh came running from next door to find out what was wrong. She found Mary Lao pallid and trembling and pointing into the aquarium. Looking in, Grandma Toh spotted the tiny, luminous green snake.
“Is that one of your school projects?” Grandma Toh chided Gimme Lao as she replaced the lid to the tank. “You shouldn’t scare your mother like that.”
“Is that what you are trying to do? Scare me?” Mary Lao regained her voice and spit at her husband. “You know I hate snakes!”
Gimme Lao’s father awarded Mary Lao a chilled glance and picked up the papers silently. He behaved as though he had earplugs on and couldn’t hear the tirade that Mary Lao launched. Grandma Toh quickly grabbed Gimme Lao’s hand and dragged him into her house. Children should never be exposed to the quarrels of parents.
Gimme Lao felt miserable. He had wanted to remove the subject of his father’s infatuation so that the man would not stray further and further from his mother’s expectations. Gimme Lao admired his mother. She had risen from the rank of a pharmacy assistant to become a successful insurance sales manageress through sheer perseverance and tenacity. In contrast, his father started off as an insurance clerk and remained status quo. He had snuggled deep into the comfort of mediocrity and refused to take up new challenges in life. Where once Gimme Lao had merely felt sorry for his father, he now began to despise the man. He had never imagined his father would be vindictive enough to buy a pet snake knowing that his mother was terrified of lizards and other crawlies. It was pure malice.
Gimme Lao lost sleep. The more he thought about the matter, the more enraged he became. It was bad enough that his parents were not talking to each other, and that an awkward silence enveloped the house all day. The irony of it was that nobody was paying the pet snake any particular attention. His father dutifully fed it earthworms and crickets, but ignored it otherwise. The glass tank and its silent occupant squatted on the table as a reminder of the ongoing cold war in the house.
It took Gimme Lao several days to garner his courage to do what had to be done. Once again he waited till his father left for the weekly chess game and his mother left for a sales appointment. This time round, the cranes would not be released into the wild as his teacher had suggested. They had to be murdered, left lifeless and bloody so that the emperor would tremble under the horror of the massacre. Releasing the yellow eye finch only served to intensify his father’s longing for it. It would have to be a gruesome death this time.
Gimme Lao did not fancy touching the slimy creature, neither did he want to splatter the glass tank with blood. He thought drowning would be a good idea, but wasn’t sure if snakes could swim. Eventually, the idea came to him. He set the kettle on the gas stove and fired it up. Once the kettle whistled, he grabbed the handle with a cushioning hand towel and gingerly carried it to the living room. Flipping open the feeding hole on the lid, Gimme Lao poured the boiled water into the tank till it was three quarters full. He set down the kettle and watched as the tiny green snake wriggled in silent agony for a few minutes until it was over. And then the lifeless body floated upside down.
It was only then that Gimme Lao started shaking. What had he done? His father would kill him! Even his mother might not condone this hideous act of murder. The snake had no place in his family, but did it deserve to die such a painful death?
Gimme Lao got out of the house and fled down the stairs to the Subramaniams. Omala and her cousins were playing five stones, or kallangal, as it was called in Tamil. For the next two hours, Gimme Lao sat unmoving and watched unseeing as the other children took turns throwing and picking the five stones in their various permutations. Eventually, Sabitha had to show Gimme Lao out the door so that the family could turn in for bed.
Back in the house, his father was reading the papers and his mother was taking a shower. The glass tank containing the dead snake was gone. Gimme Lao had no idea which of the two arrived home first to discover the gruesome murder, but neither of them questioned him about it. Soon, the lights were switched off and the family retired to bed. It was as though nothing extraordinary had happened.
Gimme Lao never did uncover the truth: that his father was the one who arrived at the scene of murder, recovered from the shock and disposed of the snake and the tank. He did not know that his father’s shock was quickly replaced by relief. The man had been stressed out by the cold war with his wife, but did not know how to end it. He was secretly glad that his wife took it upon herself to drown the snake. The quiet disposal of the tank was him signalling that he was ready to step down from the stalemate.
Mary Lao was similarly relieved that her husband finally backed down from his stubborn stance and got rid of that wretched snake. After the lights were off, she felt his hand on her waist under the blanket. She made it easy for him to remove her pyjamas, and the two engaged in conjugal intimacy that had been missing for days. The next morning, both of them woke up in extraordinarily good spirits.
Gimme Lao too felt relieved that he was able to share his dark secret with Omala. No one could break the bond between him and his buddy. He was especially thrilled when both of them were streamed into the same class in year six. The principal gathered all the Primary 6 students and impressed upon them that it was a very important year.
“Not only are all of you sitting for the PSLE, or Primary School Leaving Examination, by the end of the year, you are also targeting the inaugural bilingual programme. Only the best students who score in the top eight percentile in PSLE can get into the prestigious programme, offered by a mere handful of elite schools in Singapore. And it is my ambition to usher more students than any other primary school into the top eight percentile, or TEP for short. I want all of you to make the school proud.”
Inspired, Gimme Lao and Omala made a pact to study hard so that they could both make it into the TEP cohort. When Mary Lao arranged for a tuition teacher to brush up on Gimme Lao’s examination subjects, Gimme Lao insisted Omala attend the tuition sessions too. Mary Lao was secretly amazed by the exceptionally strong bond the two children had managed to foster. When both scored brilliantly for the PSLE, she had no objections to their selecting the TEP programme in the same secondary school. In her mind, she could see Gimme and Omala growing old and sharing memories as lifelong friends.
But she was wrong. Gimme Lao and Omala turned hostile before they graduated from secondary school. It had to do with Mr Hasim Hassan, who taught them literature in Secondary
3. It was a love and hate affair. Omala was so infatuated she wanted to marry him. Gimme Lao on the other hand felt like murdering him.
No one who had crossed paths with him could possibly ignore Mr Hasim Hassan. The smooth demeanour and calm temperament one would expect from a literature teacher, much like the grace and finesse of musical notes one would expect out of a violin, were totally absent in him. Instead, Mr Hasim Hassan was as loud and brutal as a bandstand. When he was passionate, his voice boomed low like a drum base. When he flew into a rage, his voice screeched like a runaway cymbal. And when he had an opinion or a stance to defend, he went on a rampage with his drumsticks and drowned out everybody else with his forcefulness.
The first time that Gimme Lao and Omala witnessed Mr Hasim Hassan’s fury was right after the Kishore concert incident. Kishore was one of India’s most respected sitar maestros. Coming from a family of musicians that traced its pedigree back to the court musicians of the Mughals, Kishore electrified the audience when he reinterpreted classical ragas and dispensed with the traditional accompaniment of the tanpura drone. Working closely with famous sitar-maker Hiren Roy, he studied and improved on the instrument. Shortly after independence, Kishore became one of the first Indian musicians to be invited to perform in England, in a concert to showcase the subcontinent’s musical heritage. Prior to 1980, the Singapore National Day Concert working committee had twice invited Kishore to fly in to perform, but Kishore had politely declined. This time round, the India International Trade Fair Organisation was negotiating for better access rights to the busiest port in the region and a Kishore concert materialised as part of the package.
In the weeks leading up to the concert, Mr Hasim Hassan could barely contain his excitement. He shamelessly pilfered 20 minutes of the classes he taught and instead of discussing the guilt that hounded Lady Macbeth as she sleepwalked and tried desperately to wash off invisible bloodstains, he brought along his private cassette tape and played a segment of Kishore’s sitar performance. He told the students that Shakespeare was great but he was dead and could wait. Kishore on the other hand was a living legend and Mr Hasim Hassan himself could barely bear the agony of the wait.
The Kishore concert did not materialise.
According to the news, when Kishore arrived at the Singapore International Airport at Paya Lebar, the welcoming party ushered him to a VIP customs clearance lane that had been set aside for him. Kishore, ever humble and virtuous, declined the special treatment and insisted on joining the main queue. When his turn came, Kishore was puzzled by the accusatory look on the customs officer’s face. Without a word, the man pointed to a poster on the wall, which simply read ‘Singapore Customs and Immigration reserves the right to bar male visitors with long hair and unkempt manes from entering the country’.
Kishore, whose mane cascaded down his back halfway to his waistline, stood stunned while the welcoming party blushed furiously and tried to negotiate with the customs officer. The man stood his ground steadfastly. This rule had been in place for close to 10 years. Even Jimmy Page and his band Led Zeppelin had to cancel their concert because they refused to crop their long hair. Why should it be any different for Kishore?
When Mr Hasim Hassan learned about the circumstances under which Kishore was turned away at the customs, he blew his top. He completely ignored the syllabus of the day and ranted for the entire duration of the class. It was bad enough that the government ran a campaign to discriminate against males with long hair and made it legal for customs officers to impound their passports and refuse them exit until their hair was cropped. But to be so arrogant as to insist on dictating the behavioural code to foreigners? That was pushing it too far!
After 30 minutes of Mr Hasim Hassan’s ranting, Gimme Lao could no longer bear it. He raised his hand for permission to speak and firmly reminded Mr Hasim Hassan that there was a poster prominently displayed at the school cafeteria reiterating that ‘Males with long hair will be attended to last’. It was a widely accepted governmental policy. Why should foreigners visiting the country not be asked to abide by it? Singapore carried a death penalty for drug traffickers. Should foreigners be exempted from the rule then?
Mr Hasim Hassan’s eyes lit up at Gimme Lao’s opining. It was obvious to the class that he loved a challenge.
“Why do you think the government imposes the death penalty on drug trafficking, Gimme?”
“Because it is the duty of the government to protect the people. Drugs are bad for our health. Drug addiction destroys lives and families.”
“Very good, Gimme. Now my next question: do you not agree that alcohol and cigarettes are bad for our health too? And that drunken violence and secondhand smoke harms the family? Why do you think the government does not impose a ban on these?”
Gimme Lao hesitated a little before putting up a defence, “Because the impact of drug addiction is a hundred times worse.”
“Good point.” Mr Hasim Hassan raised his brows and turned to the rest of the class. “Gimme brought up a very important word. Impact. Drug addiction reduces a person to a useless member of society. He will not be able to hold a job, and he may even resort to vices or crime to fund his addiction. Mass drug addiction can cripple a society. The government cannot allow that. Do we all agree with the argument so far?”
No one in the class objected.
“Alcohol and cigarettes on the other hand, though harmful for the consumer, do not directly harm the society at large. In fact, these commodities are heavily taxed, thus providing a steady stream of income for the government. Make no mistake, boys and girls. The government is mandated to take care of the people’s welfare. But the government is also a living organism primarily concerned with its own interest and survival. It needs its people to function as economic beings. You can smoke and drink and still work and pay taxes, so the government allows it. But if you take drugs and stop contributing, you become useless to the government. That, it will not allow.”
The class was stunned. No other teacher had ever openly critiqued the government.
“Let us now come back to the policy of discriminating against males with long hair. Why do you think the government does that? Enlighten us, Gimme.”
Gimme Lao sat up straight and spoke in a clear voice. He was handpicked to be part of the welcoming team when the Minister of Home Affairs visited the school last month. He recalled very clearly what the minister shared when she toured the school cafeteria and discussed the various campaign posters on display.
“It is a campaign against the decadence of Western influence and hippie culture. Hippies wear their hair long, listen to pop music all day long, smoke cocaine and heroin and engage in wild sex. We do not want that in Singapore.”
The class erupted into paroxysms of giggles. Someone whispered that they didn’t mind the wild sex part.
“And what is it about the hippie culture that is so decadent?” Mr Hasim Hassan raised a single eyebrow at Gimme Lao.
“What I just mentioned.” Gimme Lao frowned. “They don’t work. They just want to have fun.”
“Exactly!” Mr Hasim Hassan clapped his hands together and exclaimed. “They don’t work. They just want to have fun! That is not acceptable to our government. Our government needs all of us to be workhorses. Work 50 out of 52 weeks a year. Work five and a half days out of the seven-day week. You are only valuable if you contribute economically. You are groomed and trained to be workhorses. All these campaign posters you see distributed by the ministries, they work like cookie cutters. Their function is to mentally mould you into the exact shape that the government wants. Do you get it?”
Many in the class squirmed in discomfort. Never had a teacher challenged the authorities in their presence. A handful, Omala among them, bit their lips. They could savour the undercurrent of excitement in their blood as they experienced a paradigm shift. They watched as Mr Hasim Hassan whipped out a cassette tape from his bag, popped it into the player and pressed ‘play’. Sitar music wafted out and enveloped the classroo
m. Mr Hasim Hassan gestured for the class to remain silent and to just enjoy the music.
The recess bell rang as the piece came to an end. Mr Hasim Hassan sighed with great satisfaction and remarked, “This music is a piece of heaven right here on earth. Such a genius as Kishore will not survive in Singapore. His talents will be ignored and the man will be trained to be a workhorse like everybody else. Boys and girls, there are independent spirits among you: of that I am sure. Do not be defeated by the system. Play your own music, even if it is different from the others. Especially if it is different from the others.”
At the school cafeteria, Gimme Lao bought two bowls of laksa and sat waiting for Omala for a full 20 minutes. When she finally arrived, he grumbled irritably, “What took you so long?”
“I went to talk to Mr Hasim Hassan. I asked him out on a date.”
“What?!”
“Kidding!” Omala chuckled. “I asked him if I can meet up with him sometime after school.”
“Whatever for?”
“I want to hear him talk about real life, not books. The Kishore discussion just now was exciting!”
“I thought you enjoyed literature?” Gimme Lao frowned.
“I do!” Omala mumbled as she manoeuvred a spoonful of noodles into her mouth. “I love the riches of Yeats and Shakespeare, but Mr Hasim Hassan is right. These guys are dead and can wait. In the meanwhile, real life is happening outside the school gates. I want to grab that!”
“And he said yes?” The frown never left Gimme Lao’s forehead.
“Yes. Saturday afternoon. He is rehearsing for some experimental stage play at a venue called The Substation, at Armenian Street. He asked me to swing by.”
Gimme Lao felt uneasy about the arrangement. Firstly, he did not trust Mr Hasim Hassan. The man did not play by the rules. Gimme Lao trusted rules. He himself excelled within the framework of rules. He emerged champion in the annual mathematics quiz two years in a row and was recently elected to be chairman of the Students Mathematics Club. He loved that there was no ambiguity about mathematics. All answers could be arrived at through logic and intelligence.
Let's Give It Up for Gimme Lao! Page 10
