The crowds are coming.
The crowds keep coming.
Goonalaan, standing on the raised platform, clutching the microphone in one hand and raising the other high in the air, in munificent act of bestowing blessings, looks magisterially upon the eager upturned faces around him. He begins to speak. A hush falls upon the crowd, and all eyes are riveted on the tall dark man on the stage, a man whose wild shaggy mane of hair blown about his face by the strong evening breezes, whose protuberant belly straining against the tightness of his cotton shirt down the front part of which run streaks of fresh ceray juice, all compel attention.
Goonalaan begins to speak. “Oh Singaporeans, Singaporeans, now is time for you all to change. Change, change before it is too late, I tell you! This people in this country got a God, that people in that country got a God, they pray, they worship their God, they do good, holy things, but what is Singaporeans’ God? I will tell you. It’s money, money, money, money. That is the Singaporeans’ God!”
The crowds roar their approval. By now, more people have arrived, and the piece of vacant land, approved by the authorities as the site for the pre-election campaign rallies, is filled to overflowing.
“Here is the Singaporeans’ God!” shrieks Goonalaan, holding up high above his head for all to see, a $50 note. There is another roar of delight from the crowd.
“We Singaporeans, we get more and more and more materialistic!” Goonalaan continues, his whole countenance aflame with righteous wrath. “We only think of money. When Singaporean, born, marry, make love, even die, can only think of money. Got money in their eyes, got money flow out of their ears, I tell you! EEEE! ” The shriek of dismay is not connected with the evil propensity of Singaporeans that is being declaimed, it is caused by a sudden gust of wind whipping away the $50 note from Goonalaan’s fingers. The note now sails serenely above the heads of the crowds, with Goonalaan’s arms waving in helpless pursuit.
“My money!” gasps Goonalaan. But his distress is short-lived, for a young man in the audience snatches the errant note from the air, bounds up the stage and returns it to Goonalaan who returns it to his shirt pocket.
“Oh, we Singaporeans, we don’t have heart left,” cries Goonalaan, bringing both hands down with a resounding thump upon the upper left side of his chest, “if you cut open Singaporean in operation, sure cannot find any heart! And we don’t have soul left,” Goonalaan continues, now jabbing the left side of his head with a forefinger, with equal force, to indicate that he is totally aware of the respective sites of residence of these two vital organs in the human body. “We only think of getting rich, so the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We enjoy, enjoy all the time, we never got time for the less fortunate. And we pretend, pretend we so good, but all the time we are like the rotten meat, all nice outside but inside got all the filthy worms crawl all over!”
Carried away by this analogy, Goonalaan now proceeds not only to describe the worms but to act out their movements; he wriggles and squirms and at one point actually writhes on stage, in imitation of a deadly snake. Nobody is quite sure at what point the comparison of Singaporeans to worms has been expanded to venomous reptiles, but the crowd loves it and applauds wildly.
Springing up from the stage, Goonalaan screeches, “If you want to save our beloved country from evil, vote me! Vote me, Goonalaan, as your Member of Parliament! As Member of Parliament, I am promising that I will working very, very hard to change Singapore! I will change all people to be the good people with heart and soul, not the materialistic people only thinking of making money and very selfish towards others. I WILL CHANGE SINGAPORE!”
Here the crowd roars its loudest. Somebody begins to shout “GOON-AH-LAAN” and the cry is taken up by the others –
Three cheers for
GOON-AH-LAAN!
GOON-AH-LAAN!
GOON-AH-LAAN!
Deeply gratified, Goonalaan pauses to take a deep breath, then resumes the haranguing.
“Look around you,” he cries, raising both arms high up in the air and effecting a graceful, semicircular sweep. “Everywhere in Singapore got tall buildings, big hotels, our hotel tallest in the world, our airport the best in the world, our big, big department shops full of expensive things London, Paris, New York, all got the goods in our department stores, ourMRT, our thousand thousand cars, our thousand ships and planes, our high-rise housing estate, condominiums ... ” The long list leaves Goonalaan quite breathless; he pauses, then raising his voice to a shrill falsetto that reverberates in the night air, over the heads of the mesmerised thousands listening to him, he cries out, “But what use of all this? What use, I ask you? Got one war only – BANG! – everything destroyed. You think our Singapore ships, guns, better than Russian guns? Or got one earthquake only – WHAM! – all big beautiful buildings will crashing down, all big big heap of rubbish. We build and build, this building taller than that building, this building tallest of all – every year competition – everyone want tallest, tallest buildings in the world – and you know what will happen? All will make Singapore to sink. Singapore such a small, little island only, cannot even see in the map of the world. You think can carry all the heavy, heavy tall buildings? Sure to sink one day. So one minute got Singapore, next minute, people ask, where Singapore? Where all the rich Singaporeans?”
The crowd, apparently undismayed by such a horrendous vision of their future, continues to cheer loudly.
“So you see all this money, money and affluent society and materialistic, no use at all,” cries Goonalaan. He looks around challengingly, then prepares to deliver the coup de grâce. “What I want you to do is this,” he shouts, his eyes glittering, his mane of hair swept back from his face and pushed into an awesome halo of stiff upright strands.
“I ask you to have heart and soul! I ask you to be good, kind, loving people, not selfish, greedy people. Good, kind, loving heart and soul will remain. They remain because they are the things of God. Buildings and hotels, MRT and fighter planes, they all things of man, and they will be destroyed. But things of God remain forever and ever and ever on this earth!”
Here Goonalaan, to stress the importance of his message, raises himself on his toes and spreads out his arms wide. The effort causes the last remaining shirt-button, up to now bravely holding back the protuberant belly from view, to burst and fly off, so that the protuberance is now fully exposed. This confers upon Goonalaan a striking resemblance to those mendicant holy men in the East who are often depicted with great round bellies and strings of beads draped on these rotundities. Goonalaan’s round belly is bare of holy beads, but at this point, an admirer goes on stage and drapes a garland of flowers round his neck.
“Thank you,” says Goonalaan softly.
The crowds are coming.
The crowds keep coming.
Election day arrives. The returns start coming in at the polling centres. Goonalaan watches anxiously. The roars of approval and delight at his rallies are still ringing in his ears. As he pops another pellet of ceray into his mouth and begins to chew slowly, he smiles with quiet self-confidence. The votes are counted and announced.
Goonalaan is not voted in.
Goonalaan is invited to make a statement by the TV crew filming the results for the thousands of Singaporeans staying up through the night in front of their TV. Goonalaan is very calm and composed. But an implacable fire burns in his eyes, and the stiff tangled locks on his head give the aspect of an enraged warrior deity about to hurl a thunderbolt. Goonalaan says menacingly, “Today I know truth about Singaporeans. They say one thing and they do another thing. They not sincere at all. They very selfish and materialistic and get worse and worse. I give them chance to change. It is golden chance, one chance in one million years. But they refuse. They prefer to go on doing their wicked thing. They do not want to listen to my voice. They do not respect my voice. Okay, okay. They think will no longer hear my voice. But you think Goonalaan a coward? You think Goonalaan a weak person with no guts? You think Goonalaan lose election, means that he go away, like a big coward? NO! Goonalaan not that type, Goonalaan is man of principle – believe something is right, will try, try, try to do it. People in Singapore change, insincere, afraid, pretend, give up, but Goonalaan never give up!”
Here Goonalaan pauses, gathering energy for the climax.
“I will tell you what I going to do!” booms Goonalaan with ominous power: ‘You see this,’ pointing to a somewhat unruly stubble on his chin, the effect of some shaveless days. “You see this beard? Well, I not going to shave or wash my beard until Singaporeans become less materialistic! Even 100 years, I will not shave or wash. My beard will always be there, to tell Singaporeans what they really like, very evil and selfish people. People now no need to read newspaper article or magazine to know about Singaporeans, only look at beard and will know the truth! You don’t want to hear my voice, now you have to watch my beard!” And here Goonalaan, to emphasize the new and portentous function of that bodily feature, gives it three forceful tugs.
The picture of Goonalaan then fades from the screen.
Singaporeans talk of nothing but Goonalaan’s beard the next day, and the next.
At first there is only amusement.
Goonalaan positions himself in the centre of Singapore’s busiest shopping area. He spreads a newspaper carefully on the ground outside a large departmental store, sits cross-legged on it, closes his eyes and remains totally still. He is oblivious of the hurrying shoppers around him. But they are not oblivious of his presence. They are certainly not oblivious of his beard. In less than a week, it has sprouted ten centimetres! It is a bushy beard of a strange variety of hues. It is a beard that compels the attention of every Singaporean because it has been set up as the Singaporean’s moral barometer. It is the collective social conscience of Singapore.
At first, the shoppers look upon the beard and giggle. They are amused by the multiplicity of colours – white, black, brown, grey, russet, rust, blonde, even a greenish hue that some of the shoppers speculate to be the effect of a lifelong vegetarian diet.
“Do you think the multi-colours reflect our multi-racial society?” whispers a woman shopper, giggling a little. Her companion who has been gazing at the luxuriant growth with increasing interest, suddenly gives a little shriek.
“An insect!” she gasps, “I saw an insect jump in the beard just now. I think it’s a flea, maybe a louse.”
The crowds who come to look at Goonalaan’s beard are not only shoppers but include those who have heard strange stories about the growth of that feature and want to see it with their own eyes.
The beard grows and grows.
The vermin in the beard increase in number, till they are very visible, and can be distinctly seen crawling, hopping, jumping from one segment of beard to another, in search of more congenial spots for mating and breeding.
The shopping centres blare with national songs about happy, caring Singaporeans who will put the interests of others above their own. The sight of Goonalaan’s beard – unruly and overrun by competitive vermin – has the effect of muting the fervour of these songs, so that after a while, they are not sung anymore. Singaporeans, suddenly confronted by their own rampant selfishness in the proliferating lushness of Goonalaan’s beard, slink past him, yet throw a furtive backward glance at that compelling beard.
There is a seminar organised by the National Cultural Association in which the topic is “Towards a Caring Society in the Nineties.” But the seminar on the caring society never gets off ground because the image of Goonalaan’s beard indicating the contrary invariably looms large in each speaker’s mind. Precisely at the point when the speaker is extolling the virtues of Singaporeans or expressing a hope for the emergence of those virtues in the nineties, the picture of the beard makes its mental appearance. The speaker then sits down, having lost his trend of thinking and looks sheepish and confused.
In a debate organised by the National University on the question of whether there is a national identity, the chairperson, in a preliminary laying down of rules for the debaters, states emphatically that any reference to Goonalaan’s beard will not be accepted as a valid debating point. One of the debaters for the motion, to illustrate his point about there being already in existence a national identity, holds up high over his head for all to see a poster of a group of Singaporeans from all walks of life in smiling camaraderie with one another. His opponent leaps up from his seat, cries, “Not true!” and then in defiance of the chairperson’s earlier warning, whips out an enlarged picture of Goonalaan’s beard, bristling with contentious vermin, and cries, ‘And this is the incontrovertible proof!’
Groups of people continue to cluster around Goonalaan, sitting cross-legged on the ground, and study his beard with a mixture of fascination and timidity. Not all of them are Singaporeans. One is a foreign journalist who now peers at Goonalaan’s beard with intense interest and joy and says he will write an article on it immediately. He takes careful note of the rate of growth of the beard (by now it has grown beyond the navel), the diversity of colours, the texture, the shape. He records the population density of vermin (number of visible vermin per square inch of beard). Most of all, he is interested in the socio-cultural milieu of this vermin population. He records, with increasing enthusiasm, the dynamics of competition among the vermin in the restricted space of the albeit lush beard. He notices in particular a group of young rapidly climbing vermin; from the deepest recesses of Goonalaan’s beard, they scramble out for the bits of food and scab resting on the surface of the beard, often climbing over the heads of older vermin.
The choicest bits are in that part of the beard closest to Goonalaan’s mouth, and the vermin compete with great ferocity for the space there, the competition often breaking out in open hostility among the different colonies. Some colonies have grown inordinately fat; their round little bodies are replete with food, but that does not prevent them from making nests in the beard for the hoarding of extra food.
The journalist excitedly records every detail, and quickly despatches his article to his editors.
And through all this, Goonalaan sits tranquilly on his piece of newspaper, his eyes closed, his features composed. The Chief for Promotion of Tourism is very upset not because Goonalaan’s beard (by now reaching to his knees and so filled with vermin that a continuous low humming sound is heard from it) keeps tourists away but because, on the contrary, it attracts very large crowds of these tourists.
“I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing up the Haw Par Villa,’ wails the Chief, ‘and hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore the Imperial Jade House and my staff and I spent months cracking our heads about how to bring back the delights of Bugis Street for the tourists, down to the last detail of the potholes and the outdoor lavatory with the cement roof, and what do we have? Tourists who ask only to see Goonalaan’s beard!”
It is true that large numbers of tourists in their sunhats and sunglasses come to gape at Goonalaan’s beard, and are mesmerised by its eloquent power.
“Real Rolex watches, madam, we Singaporeans very honest, we never cheat,” says the young tout, opening his jacket to reveal a row of gleaming gold watches to the lady tourist who tries to get past him.
“Never cheat? Go look at Goonalaan’s beard,” snaps the lady and walks away in a huff.
“65 per cent more Singaporeans think less of money now than they did three years ago,” says a survey commissioned by The Straits Times.
“Yeah?” says a letter to the newspaper the next day. “Your survey may say so, but Goonalaan’s beard does not. Statistics can be manipulated, but not beards.”
The Society of Concerned Singaporeans thinks that something should be done about the situation; if allowed to go on, the image that the world will have of Singaporeans will be damaged beyond repair. Furthermore, the national self image has never been poorer, the national self-confidence never lower. Already, the more sensitive Singaporeans are suffering from severe guilt and becoming very defensive and aggressive whenever the subject of beards or hair or vermin or dirt, comes up.
There is a great deal of discussion about the problem, but so far no solution has been found. Each ministry wants to push the problem to the other. The Ministry for Moral Development which everyone thinks ought to be dealing with the matter is arguing that the problem properly belongs to the Ministry for Tourism which in turn thinks that, in view of Goonalaan’s beard being a likely source for the spread of vermin-caused diseases, the problem should be handled by the Ministry of Health. All agree with some degree of resentment that it is an intractable problem and one that requires very careful handling.
The only suggestion which has met with any degree of concurrence is that a special seat be created in Parliament for Goonalaan, the condition being that he must shave off his beard or at least give it a thorough cleaning up. It is also suggested that as a Member of Parliament, Goonalaan’s special responsibility be restricted solely to the nurturing of clean beards in the Republic, since he has so conclusively proved a positive relationship between dirty beards and immoral behaviour. In this way, the activities of this very troublesome individual can be curtailed; indeed, the activities may in effect be no more than routine checks on hairdressers and barbers to ensure proper shaving and cleaning of beards and moustaches; and no more than occasional campaigns against hirsutism. With Goonalaan as ‘Minister for Tonsorial Affairs’, a title which he will no doubt be very happy to append to his name, the very vexatious problem of Goonalaan’s beard will be satisfactorily solved at last.