Sumiko Tan
June 29, 2010
(To increase the font size of this essay – hold down the Ctrl key and keep pressing +) As some of you may already know Singapore’s famous Bo lang aih (most well known spinster) Auntie Sumiko is planning to tie the knot with “Hurricane.” (well like Katrina I hope you get a good hosing down while you float happily away in a wake of tin cans. Just make sure you have the deluxe package in your insurance coverage).
For me and I suspect many as well – this historical event presages an end of an era – yes, in some strange and unexpected way, I will certainly rue the passing of Auntie Sumiko singlehood status as she walks down the aisle in white.
Not only because through the years – I have grown so accustomed (like getting so used to second hand smoke, you’re probably already addicted to nicotine) to her endless whining about unrequited love, remembrance of things past and what could have been but we shall never ever know yada yada yada yada yada (coming to think of it pleeeeeeeeeze take her away Hurricane…do mankind a big favor and save us all from perpetual bitching…just kidding).
But seriously what Singapore (though I suspect the lost to the Smithsonian and IMH will be far greater) will lose is not only a sobriquet caricature of the archetypal single professional girl who is looking for love in Urbana Singapore – in a rare of moment of epiphany, it occurred to me (well the idea landed on my toast when I read that Sumiko is going to get married – I also nearly puked on my cat) maybe our lost is far greater, immeasurable even –it’s no exaggeration to say the passing Sumiko’s singlehood status may well represent the end of the greatest 20th century depiction of the constant struggle of a single woman as she tries to make peace with the crushing expectation of the ”world” in Singapore - it would seem the answer does not reside in Sex and the City after all - Could it be….Granted it’s a stretch and you really have to be so opened that your brains are spilling out, it lies somewhere right before us – somewhere closer, in this disassembled collection of disheveled hopes and dreams called, the life and times of Sumiko Tan?
Well that’s not for me to answer. Besides that’s as far as I am prepared to pry into the life of another. As the reader, this is entirely yours to fathom out. Besides some things should remain enduring mysteries, like big foot? Did the aliens build the pyramids? And of course how did Sumiko get hitched considering her vintage?
All I know is through the years Sumiko’s marital status has certainly supplied no end of cannon fodder to the brotherhood press for endless jibes, banter and barbed repartees. Yes, we were after all the ones who once christened the SPH as a veritable symbol of spinsterhood, the sisters of perpetual hesitation – where in this cloistered enclave when mother superior Sumiko cheerily intones, “I’ve missed the boat!” All her charges would exclaim, “well done old girl, our aim must be improving.” And the list goes on and on.
In some curious way – I am happy the tale of the single professional girl who is looking for love finally took an unexpected turn. And who can blame her. Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces in their lives – it’s a primal pull, as old as the hills – the great human need to seek out wholeness, completeness and understanding . And who is to say what’s best and who’s right?
My gut feel tells me, she may have done the right thing - I am reminded some times, you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness wherever and whoever you may find it in, and not give two shit about what the world thinks – better still fuck the world off in one clean line.
My experience tells me – we get no more than three or four such chances in a life time to break cleanly out of the groove, and if we let them go, it’s darn hard to be kind to ourselves.
Travel well old girl and thanks for all the fish
On behalf of the all the readers in Ekunaba, PBK, SLF1 to 13 (3 additional new lines will be opening by the end of this month), The Strangelanders, Dotseng and the Confederation.
Darkness 2010
