Floating on a Malayan Breeze by Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh

For instance, I started to think more about the role of Singapore-based revolutionaries, aside from Sun Yat-Sen, who is oft spoken about, in China’s 1911 revolution. I am currently working on a book about the two countries, and Bukit Brown threw up some fresh ideas for stories. First, in terms of history, I learned a lot about Singapore’s connections to China and India. I feel ashamed.Īs a writer, I also drew a lot of inspiration from my visit. Our collective Singaporean identity is suffering, slowly, with each grave exhumed. It seems almost perverse that Singaporeans, myself included, will travel abroad and marvel at historical ruins and temples in places such as China and India, yet can stand by and allow a place of such historical import to be ripped from our soul. A visit to Bukit Brown illustrated the problem to me in a very visceral sense, in a way a thousand articles can never do. When we speak about, say, high population growth or unnecessary destruction and rebuilding, it can sometimes get a bit abstract, the story lost in numbers and details. Many of us decry Singapore’s rush to development, and GDP-maximising policies. Love the crazy characters: polygamists, guerillas, tycoons, benefactors, sometimes one and the same.Īlthough I have read much about the Bukit Brown controversy over the years, it is only after visiting that I have a deep appreciation for what we-as a country, society and culture-are about to lose.

On that Saturday, I learned so much about Singapore’s past.

Only now do I realise how much I have missed. My wife and I went on a lovely tour of Bukit Brown, conducted by Fabian, lawyer-cum-history buff and very proud “Brownie”, on the morning of Saturday, January 25th 2014.īefore then, the last time I had visited Bukit Brown was in Junior College, when classmates and I would go there for a spooky tipple, more focused on whisky than history.

Floating on a Malayan Breeze by Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh