Syafiq Rafid

These are just some of the perspectives of my life I have I chosen to pen down or shoot. If you have any questions, opinions or anything at all, feel free to email me, I like to talk. [email protected]

[syafiqrafid]

I took a trip Malaysia (Melaka) with the family and Farah recently. It wasn’t the greatest of trips (a few problems attributed to a bad driver for hire) but I managed to test out my new Nikon 35ti which took lovely photos. 

The lines are sharp the focus was easy and it held up really well even in the worst lighting conditions. But enough about that.

I know I say this often but it’s really beginning to set in again. Writer’s block yo. Its not easy to get over really. Thats why this thing has been fairly stagnant for awhile. And my writing is becoming more and more personal, I think. Which isn’t really my deal but hey this is all you get alright. I’m trying here. 

I wish I had a reason for all this but i don’t. I’m really enjoying whats left of my holidays, wasting away just playing useless games which really make me happy. Maybe it’s just down time I don’t know, I haven’t been able to read either. We’ll we where I end up in a couple months. 

[syafiqrafid]

I first went to Haw Par Villa when I was five and I never forgot. I went back again and it was almost exactly the same. The little I remember was there. The ten stages of hell with the gruesome figures dismembered covered in fading bright red blood, the old figures from around the world and the oddly lifelike people in the many Chinese anecdotes brought to life (a old and past life). 

I managed to get a roll of Sensia 100 done there and the results are (I feel) phenomenal. The lines and the grimes are more sinister, more real and more enigmatic as ever, more so than the real thing. Photography (the act of taking something for yourself from reality) still amazes me sometimes. 

I want more time for photography (film or digital) when my life permits it.

[syafiqrafid]

I don't know if there is value in the photos I take. It's a little scary because I spend a lot and put quite a bit of myself into these photos. I've read books about photography and I sense the drain the writers talk about when dealing with the subject but I didn't think, after shooting for quite awhile, it would be this tiring. So now these questions asking why begin to pop up when I try to organise my photos. I see patterns, specific shapes and figures that I photograph over and over again.

I've been looking for something I think. A reason, a purpose or perhaps a way or image that would tell me, 'hey, look you've got it.' I want to call it representation of the world around me but that seems a little too trite. I just know I take photos with a fervent desperation (similar to a teenager who has lost his handphone) and it's tiring. Maybe I just want to communicate something but again I'm not sure. It sometimes feels like an addiction, I feel terrible when I see something I want to photograph and I don't have my camera. I'll stand there for awhile looking at a HDB flat or a corridor or just people on the street in a form of regret I find hard to describe. It lies between injustice and sadness. So I thought about not bringing my camera out. Giving myself a break, cold turkey maybe. I'll probably only last a week.

Before that I think I'll indulge myself in a little sorry telling: 'When you walk through NTU, from Nanyang auditorium towards Lee Wee Nam library in the morning about eight, you see see these lovely lines. They probably don't look like much in these photos but they really made me appreciate this physical world, architecture, architects, the plants, the trees, the people walking by, the life I have among so many other things. I feel grateful. Maybe that's what I'm trying to communicate in my photos. The fact that I'm grateful that I can appreciate these things.' 

[syafiqrafid]

Curating

I've taken so many photos since I started that I can't remember when or why these photos exist. It helps me, however, remember where I was. I have taken for granted how photos allow you to catalog your self, your physicality of being which is easy to forget.

They turn into signposts when you try to look trace back your route. Markers littered in places but out of time. Sometimes I feel like a ghost looking back on my own past life.

And when the time comes to come home you would have forgotten how to go back the same way you came. Stranded you find a new road back home but you always end up again at the same place, memory wise. Photography has been phenomenal for me but I have to admit curating can be very draining.

[syafiqrafid]

Cosina CX-1, Kodak Elite Chrome 200

Race Course Road, Singapore, Sunday 3rd September 2015, 10:30 pm

As usual, I find myself in Little India with my family, Farah and my camera. This collection has a certain sense of loss personally because the camera that I used here I have lost. I was very fond of this camera and looking at these photos feels like looking through the eyes of a forgone friend. 

This roll of expired role of Kodak Elite Chrome though gives very interesting blue green overtones and in low light or artificial light we get these hauntingly stark images. The lane we walked past had a makeshift market of sorts selling vegetables to the local indian foreign workers who live in the area. 

While the wares they had looked local, I can only imagine what dishes these staples were destined to be. Within that there is a divide, and in that divide I find in myself a hunger to know more, to see more, to learn of these people. Yet the photos that came (in their bright palates) make sure that I know that sometimes, no matter how well you think you know your country (no mater how much you want to know), that there will be certain spaces where you will never be part of, that you will never truly know. Which should be acceptable to us because this inability to completely familiar (to be completely in control) is essential to remind us that we will always need to be open, need to be accepting, to remain willing to take in. 

[syafiqrafid]

We are always forgetting how things are.

I remember when 

life was different 

when age hadn’t any real 

Impact

and time moved so slow

That we thought

we didn’t have any

I remember when 

things were different. 

People always say that here

Change is constant 

but I don’t know if they’re just saying it 

because it’s easy to say 

or if they really

truly 

know the meaning of the phrase

[syafiqrafid]

Melbourne, Winter, 2015, Velvia 50, Zenit 122.

The weather was brilliant after the heat of Singapore. I was there for four days. It felt like a dream because of how little I thought about myself there, how little I was aware, generally. It was nice to get away.

[syafiqrafid]

Bahasa

Mat Som was a graphic novel by the prolific Malaysian cartoonist Lat that spoke about the pains of growing up, the duties of a son and the harshness of living in a city, when compared a rural childhood home. It was a critique on the Malaysian way of evolution, a country’s need to grow and expand eclipsing the lives of its citizens. It showcased poets, and artists and the general zeitgeist of the 80’s with flashbacks to the 70s and 60s. It consisted of images from both the private and the public, from politics to what it means to love. It was a dense piece of work, proving that Lat was not just a simple cartoon satirist, but an individual who could capture whole cities with his humor, wit, and artistic ability.

As a child (and now still), I had access to Lat’s various works. My father was a fan of cartoons and Sunday newspaper comic strips, so we had a substantial collection of books from artist such as Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts by Charles Schulz and Foxtrot by Bill Amend. Lat, however, dominated our little cartoon library. An avid reader at a young age, books had always been a fixture in my bedroom (one I shared with two of my brothers) and these comic books were part of that assembly and of my years as a child and as an adolescent.

Living in Singapore, growing up in the 90s meant that the environment around me was (and still is) constantly changing. There are flat upgrading schemes, the building of amenities (fitness corners, study corners; anything to turn our void decks to spaces of utility, as if we are at odds with the emptiness of our home spaces), the expansion of public train lines and bus terminals. It was also the time where they began phasing out the use of sand in children’s playgrounds, replacing it with colorful rubber foam patterned with shapes ducks, cats and frogs. As one might imagine the world was loud, dusty and often (as I am walking home from school, or accompanying my mother on errands) we find access to places we frequent, paths we take restricted. In Singapore, the physicality of space is transient, and one must be accustomed to it, take it in one’s stride, lest living becomes cumbersome.

This put me at odds with the childhood that Lat presented in books like The Kampung Boy, Lat’s Lot and of course Mat Som. In these books (most of them autobiographical in nature), childhood was the Kampung, villages in Malaysia (similar to the villages my parents and grandparents grew up in, here in Singapore). Childhood was cold well water for showers, opening windows at the crack of dawn, playing games with friends using sticks and stones. There was a certain sense of serenity (of permanence) that, even as a child, I knew was missing in the life I had.

Impressionable and naive, I felt alienated by his images of what a child should be (should have), even if I had thoroughly enjoyed Lat’s caricatures. At the very same time, I was struggling to pass my Malay Language exams in school (a problem that I attribute to my inherent Dyslexia, a combination of unbearable and overbearing Malay Cikgus, the government privileging English over the various Mother Tongues and my juvenile laziness). Thus, it was a combination of circumstances that led me to, while not wholly abandon, neglect a language that was one of the very few ties I had left to the cultural heritage from which I had hailed (or at least the one that most of my family members spoke, only my grandfathers knew Tamil). This neglect however, came with a price that compounded the estrangement I already had, leaving me more adrift, away from my native language.

My PSLE results (the Primary School Leaving Examinations, our first great academic hurdle and introduction to the paper chase that is government sanction schooling) weren’t very good, meaning I went to a ‘neighborhood’ secondary school. I still resent that description, as if the other ‘non-neighborhood’ (SEP schools or Autonomous schools, Private Schools and International schools) schools existed on some foreign land. They might as well have, considering the vast difference in academic experience, social and economic background and general experience of living.

Being a public school, those four crucial years, between the ages of 12 and 16, were tumultuous (as tumultuous as any individual would recount their teenage years). The school, situated in Tampines (an estate quite well known to be popular with the local Malay minority) had a large Malay speaking population. Thus, my neglect began to bear bitter fruit. I could not articulate myself the way my peers required me to. Even the colloquial version used outside of class, proved to be a problem.

I could express myself best in English, which meant I stood out. When you don't com- municate on the same level as the majority (or your racial sect), I learn, things don't go easy. I didn't fit in most of the time. I was still part of the eventual clique but there was a barrier between my peers and I. This however taught me many things, like whom my friends were, to stick to what I believed in, and to stand up for myself. I don’t look back hating my formative years, but I don't look back on them fondly either. Well, maybe sometimes, when I am being honest with myself.

Now, an adult more discerning, more educated, more mature, I find a distinct lack within myself when I think about the languages that I speak. I speak Malay still, howev- er only at very indeterminate times with people who share this tongue, and even then some (those are better versed in this voice and are honest) tell me that my Bahasa bears the quality of being awkward or ‘Kaku’.

My barber, a man who is the same age as me, was one if these people. He goes by the name of Art and has taken to calling me Mat Som. His reason being the fact that we had shared the connection of having read Mat Som which seems to be a rare phenomenon. ‘Your English good, but your Malay, rabak man’ he often cajoles me when I try to talk shop with him in the little that I know. It began simply enough, at the comment regard- ing my Malay, I had told him I had wanted to reclaim what was left of my native language, and began telling him about starting with Lat. He then immediately asked me if I had read Mat Som. ‘That book best gile, its about KL but also about some many other things.’ All this while he works with an electric razor to tame my curly locks. Like that, we had become friends. A lot of the time he tolerates my feeble attempts at Malay, (most of the time he helps me find words that I cannot bring to light) as we talk about politics, movies, books and general barbershop fare.

I tell him about Akeem Jahat, a local rapper who has (in my opinion) managed to utilize Malay exceptionally well in his grimy, subversive but marvelously catchy Hip-Hop and Rap songs about his neighborhood, Singapore, growing up and the issues one faces in daily life. I would call him (aware of my own incapacity to label people) a Mat Rep, which is local vernacular for Malay boys who might seem uncouth. Akeem however, embraces this stereotype, turning what might have been a crude Malay dialect (one spoken by Malay youth today) into something that punches above its own weight, in true Hip-Hop style. Unsurprisingly my barber (a man with his finger on the pulse of local pop culture, both mainstream and underground) has already heard of him, and like me, is a consummate fan. Inevitably, we began quoting to each other lines from our favorite songs; ‘Hari-hari, Hari-jadi, Jadi, Jadi-jadi’ and ‘Realiti mengejar mimpi. Nenek pesan selalu ingat jangan sampai lupa diri.’ My favorite though, was a stanza from one of his better-known songs, LVL 22s:

Takmo sandiwara kalau takut mandi darah, See I got so used to winning, sampai dah tak boleh kalah, Dorang cakap gua betul eventho gua salah, O my competition baring terlentang bawah tanah, Call me watchu wanna considered atas sombong, Mama ajar gua jangan belajar cakap bohong,

He is one of the reasons I have faith in this second generation of rappers. Joe Flizzow, Sheik Heikal have nothing to worry about when it comes to carrying the torch that is Southeast Asian (or at least Malay) Hip-Hop. Akeem became one of the reasons why I wanted again, to find my native semantic roots.

We then got to talking about older Malay music, which naturally led to P.Ramlee. A giant in the 60s and 70s, he had made films, which he directed, starred in, wrote the script for, arranged the music and also sang. The man was a reservoir of talent that captured Malaysia and Singapore in his own way. Films like Bujang Lapok series, Do Re Mi, Tiga Madu and Anaku Sazali created a Malay mythos that still persists now today. My late paternal grandfather had been a great fan of his films and had a collection of VCDs in his room, which he would play. Every Aidilfitri celebration, when the family was gathered, we would watch these old movies with him, laugh at the same parts year after year and the jokes never got old. Now that my grandfather has passed, we still carry on the tradition, singing along with Ramlee, Sudin and Aziz. In later conver- sation with a friend, I lamented the way P.Ramlee’s last few living days had been (a man abandoned and alone). I realize that while my Malay was terrible, I still had many facets that I could tap into; connect with to obtain a semblance of belonging. Ties to a past that I had, in this specific language.

Upon deciding to write about my qualms about Bahasa (about myself and my roots), I thought it appropriate to reread Mat Som. Unfortunately, in the mess of texts, papers and general stationary that was my desk and book shelf (and in the mess that can only be generated when three brothers share a room) I could not find my copy (or rather my father’s copy) of the graphic novel. Severely disheartened, I consoled myself by reading what I had left of Lat’s work.

Digging through my shelves I see a collection of Malay books (guides to peribahasa, collections of model essays at the secondary level and of course a Kamus) and among them a book of Poems by Abdul Ghani Hamid. He was prolific local writer who wrote plays, novels and also painted, inspired by the rural-ness of Singapore in the 50s through to the 70s. He was celebrated as one of the more iconic writers from the era. He had passed away some years ago. I happened to be his grandnephew, and as a result had four or five of his books. I regret that, even now, I find it hard to connect with his work. He wrote in Malay, and unlike Lat’s simple Bahasa, his was filled with expression and intricacies that I could not get at (or perhaps I simply had not tried, not given enough to his texts).

The disappearance of Mat Som was perhaps something that I had needed. It was a crutch that tied me to a childish notion that something such as language could be so easy to rediscovered. I am now still trying to connect with, to what has been so conve- niently placed before me, for me. I regret not having paid intention in class when I was younger, I regret not caring more about this language that I am only now trying to salvage. I regret not being able to connect with my granduncle. Nevertheless, even now, I believe I still have time.

Pulang

By Abdul Gahni Hamid

Ku melangkah lorong sepi lengang sana sini lopak mengotor sepanjang jalan suara katak melaung gembira memekak telinga melonjak ria dalam air bermandi suka.

Mencurahlah lagi hujan membasah guruh petir bagai membelah lari semua penghuni di jalan hanya aku saja berjalan pulang.

Biarlah hujan mencerut tulang biarlah petir menghancur badan biarkanlah apa juga tiba bencana aku mesti terus pulang juga.

Ikrarku bukan untuk dipuja-puja tak perlu dibeli setinggi-tinggi harga aku pulang dipanggil jeritan derita dengan harapan lekas aku tiba.

Tiap kata – ku tetap kotakan tiap janji – ku mesti tunaikan

1955

[syafiqrafid]

As I grow older I find more peace, more beauty in mosques. I’ve taken some photos of Masjid Sultan at Bugis, Bussorah Street, one of the older ones we have in Singapore. I had just completed my Maghrib prayers and decided (since i had my camera) to take some photos. It’s facade was half covered in tarpaulin, in midst of some much needed refurbishing for her peeling walls. Nonetheless, I still find calm, the kind that only exist in places of worship. 

You need not be muslim to enter a mosque. You need not be religious to appreciate the architecture of a place of worship, and the peace that it emits. I am lucky to live in a country whose landscape is adorned with temples, synagogues, churches, monasteries and mosques (and rather fittingly, our government is staunchly secular).    

[syafiqrafid]

Thaipusam

I think it was close to two in the morning when we set off in my father’s car towards Prinsep Street to try to catch the Thaipusam procession from Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple (along Serangoon Road) to Thendayuthapani Temple on Tank Road. Shing Kwan and I had wanted to take photographs of this year's Thaipussam, it being an event we had witnessed when we were younger and had sat on our father’s shoulders. From that bygone vantage point one could see the devotees carrying heavy jugs of milk on their heads (Paalkudams), tongues pierced. Others would be burdened by fearsome Kavadis whose needles would pierce the skin on their shoulders and sides; others would tow small Rathams (chariots) whose reigns would be hooked onto the skin of their backs. It was (and still is) a sight to behold to a small child, an image that would leave a mark. Together (with this mutual memory) we had wanted to see again one of the many images of our childhood, and capture what we could in still life.

By the time we had arrived to the second temple (a journey's completion), everything had ended. What was left were only reeking dumpsters (filled to the brim) and the police trying to disperse the remaining stragglers. Unsurprised (even if a little disappointed) we then decided to have supper along Desker Road at a coffee house I knew that was, still open. While ordering Na’an, Dahl and some excellent chicken Tandoori, we happened upon a group of photographers who had been at the festival. They had on their forehead vermillion Bindis, and them being ethnically Chinese, I made a guess that they had participated in the Hindu procession, and decided to say hello. (Later conversations and further reading would tell me that the red marking on their foreheads was to accentuate the Sixth Chakra, the seat of ‘Concealed Wisdom’. Whether this carried weight with the group, or perhaps it was just a symbol of their welcomed participation, I do not know.)

In the awkward conversation that followed, (after introductions of course) I had asked them how (or rather why) they had decided to photograph the procession. The group had seemed guarded about their motives but mentioned that they were in the midst of shooting a documentary about the different festivals and processions in Singapore. I explained we had wanted get pictures of the participants ourselves but we were too late. They had advised for us to try again next year, citing that it was not something to be missed. ‘What was your favorite part? Of the festival.’ The question was met with them exchange looks with one another, as if urging each other to answer. They were each trying not to answer. Eventually one of the four said: ‘it was very endearing to see these people, the devotees ah, all carrying kavadis. You must be there to experience one.’ I pushed the question further, to see what the others thought: ‘it was interesting lah. I felt very moved while I was there. I think it was the atmosphere of the whole thing that was the best.’ I could get little else out of them, so I moved on unsure if they lacked the ability to articulate their feelings (which were present despite their quiet demeanor) or they had just felt uncomfortable to. After taking some photos of them, I left them to their table feeling slightly unsatisfied, as if they had kept something from me. Perhaps it was their aversion towards eye contact, perhaps it was the fact they had a full day of shooting and they were tired, nonetheless after they left, we discussed the inhospitability of some of our fellow citizens (which in hindsight seemed rather unfair).

The days after Thaipussam however proved to be something of a spectacle for Singapore (with regards specifically to the yearly Hindu procession). There were arrests made of some of the participants of the festival by the police force on the grounds of unruly behavior and a contestable gazetted law, which resulted in tremendous public uproar.  The local Internet exploded with articles, memes and other web content about the Thaipusam arrests. Local netizens began posting accounts of physical violence, others recount the action being the other way round. Many of them were just happy to argue on the internet, anonymity being one of the pleasures of the world wide web. The thing about the law and policing in Singapore is that often police officers affect arrests first to keep the peace and protect the public from harm. As a former police officer (I had spent my national service in the Singapore Police Force as an Inspector), I have met and been friends with a many a number of excellent officers who have had the best intentions and the safety of citizens at heart first. There is also (as with the case with all things in life) a second side to the coin. I cannot speak for the whole of SPF and I know that there are some who will abuse the power that has been thrust on to them.

I cannot pretend to be proficient with the laws that govern our country, but I am sure that the problem does not lie with the law enforcers we have here. There are general laws and gazetted orders, The Penal Code and Criminal Law, multitudes and layers of these statutes and charters. Our system is complicated and very hard to change and/or understand (as with the laws of most sovereign nations). That said, some (personal) research has shed some light, and has caught in its thin rays information and the floating dust that may speak more about our nation. Within the laws of public assembly, processions and permits, there is one that forbids that playing of musical instruments and singing during large foot processions. Further reading traced it back to the racial riots that have littered national history. One has to question the ban when one thinks to other religious and or cultural processions in Singapore such as playing Kompang during the a Malay wedding, or the chanting of Buddhist monks during a funeral in which bells are also rung. One can also think of Chingay, though that may fall outside of anything religious (or even cultural).  A few days later, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a statement urging calm within citizens (offline and online). They had made it clear that investigations were still underway and that law is being upheld, and if not, made flexible:

‘The ban on musical instruments applies to all religious foot processions.  However, musical instruments have been allowed at events that do not involve foot processions including at social, cultural and community events.  These include drums for Chinese lion dances, kompangs at Malay events, and Nathaswaram and Thavil for Hindu community events such as Pongal.  Musical instruments have also been permitted at events that might involve a limited foot procession in a certain locality, but are primarily cultural and community events, such as the Chingay Parade and the St Patrick’s Day Parade.  The scale, duration, and nature of these events are very different from Thaipusam, and they pose smaller law and order risks.’

The arrests made during the Thaipusam Procession may or may not have been lawful but they have ignited another conversation amongst Singaporeans about the state of our nation, just as the Little India riots have. There is a growing underbelly of rage and anger with the way minorities and foreigners are being treated here and something will come to a head, sooner or later. In conversation with a professor (one that understood the hate and anger that shadow the marginalized, the oppressed like an unwanted haze) I had confessed that I had feelings that I cannot articulate with respect to the local racial state.

I believe it is a common thing, this inability to speak about or for certain peoples and places because one is afraid to not be able to properly represent (or at the very least reflect) their struggles. That feeling is often compounded when I recount my mixed heritage, being a mix of equal parts Indian and Malay. In myself I feel the double consciousness that W.E.B. Dubois spoke of in one of his many essays about race in America. I am aware of my race, I am aware of the problems we face. I am also aware of how people perceive me and the colour of my skin (the curl in my hair, the bridge of my nose and the slant of my eye) and how I react to that.

‘It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.’

My professor explained to me that I had a duty to these feelings, not only for myself, but also for everyone else who feels this way. For those without voices, for those who do not have fists to put up in the air, those who could not read and could not write. For those who feel Singaporean but are still discriminated, for those exploited everyday, I should choose to write, to be part of the conversation.

After my we finished our dishes of Pakistani food and after we washed our hands clean, we found a middle aged Chinese man cleaning up after us. We had a pleasant conversation with him about his work, his life, Singapore and what had led him here. He made me believe that everyone (anyone) can call Singapore home, as long as they treated it as their home. Our exchange kindled in me warmth that I knew was connected to the fact that what we have here is something worthwhile, if only we take the time to look and appreciate. At the very same time it was something that needed protecting despite the issues we face everyday.

to Jong, John or Zhong

The first thing we spoke about was the weather

around 3 am on a Tuesday night

that was what was on your mind

after four months

on my (or our) foreign soil

I felt embarrassed

as you talked about the heat

so hot you had to sleep till 4 before

you went outside

to work cleaning tables at

a Pakistani restaurant I like

Your English was remarkable

after living in Ireland for 7 years

where you developed a taste for authentic Guinness

to the point where you could taste

the foreignness in our version

You had to continue work

so out of courtesy (and assumption)

we excused ourselves

to pay the bill and leave

Even now I still think about your son

in the Chinese military

and your former wife

That you left them

to see the world, and talk to strangers

experience intemperate weather

and unfairness.

I had forgotten to ask you

what you liked about Singapore

but considering

the faraway look you had

I doubt I will get

another chance

I am sorry I cannot remember your name

and I am reduced to imperfect pronunciations

out loud

From my memory of your inflected tongue

when I asked for your name (a name)

In my own.

-

Later on, continuing our conversation in a market that had been paved over, leaving only a few benches and two large trees at the intersection of Lembu Road and Desker Road, we marveled at the conversation we just had. We began talking about the issues low wage migrant workers have, he also being a former police officer, knew the plight of these people, often dealing with them during our regular ground patrol duties. While reminiscing about our days (and nights) in blue, my mind wandered to a conversation I had with a Tamil immigrant that I had spoken to a couple of weeks ago.

‘Sorry Saar, how to go block 366?’ I had boarded the bus at the Tampines Bus Interchange, a commute home that I am very used to. I had sat in the seat directly behind him and he had taken the opportunity to ask me for directions. It was a very sunny day and the light was streaming in on to the upper deck of our SBS bus. After giving him directions I asked him for a picture:

He then turned around, resuming his seat. Rather unabashedly, I tapped on his shoulder again to begin a conversation. He hardly smiled but it was obvious that he too wanted to talk as the conversation wore on. I learned that he had a small but very capable command of English (his native tongue being tamil) that allowed us (or at least me) to have a very insightful conversation. He had been in Singapore for six years and tells me he has it better here that he had it in India. ‘Very hard. No job, no money’ he said rather stoically. ‘Then you okay in Singapore, don't miss India? I asked again. To this he just smiled and shook his head in a fashion that I cannot hope to imitate (it did not indicate a yes or a no but rather a resigned sort of acceptance to the way things are).

‘Last time Singapore good, now different’, he continued. I was surprised to hear that he had perceived change at the state of our nation, just as I had in the recent years. Now, thinking about it, I realise it is not very hard to imagine, they are as much Singaporean as any of us (if not more). The history of an immigrant, just one that is more recent. We continued to gripe at the rising price of food and transport, the heat and the congested roads. He asked about the camera I was using (an LC-A+, a film camera) and upon presenting it, I realised the focus setting were way off, which meant the photo of him was out of focus. I asked again for his permission, to take his photo again:

I don't think, I can ever truly forget the intensity of his gaze, nor the conversation we had. We said our goodbyes when my stop came, with a handshake and a silent nod.

A week later, after developing the photos, I realized my carelessness. There was a certain harsh melancholy in his blurry outline. Despite our shared moment, our conversation, there is something within me (within the average Singaporean) that cannot understand the low-wage migrant worker, or perhaps refuses to. I put the photos side by side, a sort of comparison. It almost felt as if I could not get him into focus that I was not meant to, despite my efforts. There is value in the foreign, in new and the different, but I wish I had more connection to this man who I share a home with. I want to understand, and I want the every(local)man to understand. Society to be more inclusive so that they will have a voice, less space for them to be abused. Food that is at basic standard, housing that is low cost and humane, work environments that are safe. Jobs they can be happy at.

Back at the intersection, of open space (of rest) and the conversation, I tell Shing Kwan of what I think is the pain of the unrepresented. Hopefully their suffering will be alleviated soon, along with the anger of the marginalized, the frustration for those with double consciousness. The Thaipusam Arrests, The little India Riots, the 2011 General Elections show that we are a country in transition (now more than ever). What we turn into, in the next few years, is questionable but change however, is certain.

[syafiqrafid]

Rites

I have gone to too many funerals in my short life (as of so far). I feel that to list them, in any order, would be frivolous. They are people that I have known and people that have allowed me a chance to partake in their lives (no matter how small). The past 3 years have seen me visit new cemetery locales. The graveyard has always been the same, the Muslim quarter of the Choa Chu Kang Cemetary, but its always a new section, a new lane, a new number just beside mounds of freshly turned red clay by an excavator caked in the same earth. A machine so large and old, yet hardly out of place. It seems to reflect the enormity of death for those still there to witness it tip red mounds into the grave of a loved one.

The earth is handled by the grave workers whose skin is darker then the red. Faces lined and grizzled by time, sunshine and the humidity. They guide the mourning through Muslim burial rights if they do not know enough. In a manner so practiced they help the living ease the body into the earth, explain where they clay goes (facial cavities), help them out again with a smile and a specific species of kind reassurance I have seen nowhere else.  

I worry for my maternal grandparents, a pair who are, even now, largely inseparable. As the eldest child of their youngest daughter I had spent my early years in their home, spoilt by the permissiveness only a grandparent can show a grandchild. Now when I visit them at my aunt’s home, our conversations repeat. A loop that enquires after my immediate family, rants about either the content of a news segment, the weather and the food we are eating. He smiles when I see them, and my grandmother who had suffered a stroke and is bedridden still turns to look at me. In recent years I have developed the habit of photographing them every time I visit. In his old age perhaps he has understood and formulated his own theories that the photographed subject is often subjected to Barthe’s idea of mortality and the static portrait.  He allows me to photograph them every time I ask but does not smile.

I feel as if I am condemning them to death by writing them in such a context but in recent years I cannot think of them in any other way. I dread the panicked call from my mother like the day an uncle passed. I dread the bathing of the body, I dread the rolls of white cloth, and I dread the perfumes, spices and fragrances for them in between the sheets. My uncles are old and tired; it will fall on my generation, it is our turn to bear them when it comes. My grandfather keeps graduation photos of his children and grandchildren on a section of his wall, just beside his TV set. I long to be there, among them, but mortality knocks on every door.

-

You used to lift tree trunks behind the kampong house,

shirtless, your belt to your belly high

no one else could lift it as high as you

no one to lift except you

Dada, I don't know what to do with these things.

Old pictures on the wall, these shoe polish stains on my hands,

your old thin cotton singlets. They still smell of you. The same musty smell

when you bounced me on your knee.

I will try to keep the deep lines

from getting any deeper

for you Dear Dada ji,

and for everyone else I see

when I look in the mirror

-

At 25 I have now acknowledge that I have grown accustomed to (perhaps knowledgeable is a better word) Muslim funerals, its customs and rites. This addition (experience) that I now have helps me understand the tremors of the (my) heart. My father’s serious manner, perhaps why he used to smoke heavily and only drank coffee. It is this downward feeling that is reminiscent of childhood dread that was strong and common. One that envelopes the child that had forgotten to finish homework in primary school, the child who had gotten lost in a shopping mall, the child who had disappointed a parent. As an adult this plunging bloomed afresh at a death, a funeral. Unlike in the formative years, this deep puncture persists throughout and after the burial. The feeling blunts over time but it creates a restlessness that lingers, a perfume of mortality that one must acknowledge to carry on. It is a rite towards being an adult. One has to bury ones own to fully appreciate the end of innocence; it is the price we pay for a childhood experienced.

I had spoken to my friends about their experiences, in terms of funerals to learn more. Unlike Muslim funerals, other cultures and religions seem to take their time with their dead. I’ve always reasoned that we buried our dead without lingering, because they have left for the longer more permanent hereafter and that memory is the only honor they needed besides the prayers of their respective family members, from sons and daughters. In the Hindu tradition, like the Buddhist, family members and friends come to pay respects before they are finally cremated after a term and fairly elaborate rites. It’s often hierarchical, in terms of who performs these rites, usually falling on to the eldest son of the deceased.

The poetics of cremation however is not lost on me. Ash, and dust are the bridges between our physical forms and the earth from which we would have sprung. One becomes the transient object in between. In Islam, as with most religions of the Book, we are buried (I assume to retain the design of our one omniscient god). In Hinduism, after their various rites, the eldest son would wade with the urn on his shoulder into a river or sea until the water came up to his neck to scatter the ashes. He carries a knife in his dhoti to prevent spirits from pulling him in, along. In other conversations, I learnt that after cremation, Buddhist urns are placed in temples where families of the deceased would visit. Couples, in old age I assume, would reserve places (the notion of reservations strikes me as reflective of a Singaporean trait) in these temples so as to be set beside one another indefinitely.

Death is common part for me at during my still fresh adulthood. I dare say that my generation (one that is carrying on from the already distant past) comes after the post-war generation the baby boomers, and after Gen-X. We (Millennials as they call us) are a significantly smaller generation compared to our parents and as a result, now experience more death. The passing of an old and beloved relative has almost become a very common sentiment at an already young age. At a recent performance by a pair of local musicians, [.Gif], they performed a song (listed below) and I was moved to write about death and its hold over us.

-

Box Burning

i will not celebrate your passing nor euphemize my eulogy you're gone. you're gone and i can't see a better place where you will be that's not with me. through casket glass i stare and dare not wonder how you are still flesh each curl and lash in perfect order, yet no longer filled. you are still fresh inside my mind, secret chuckle, crinkled eye, crooked toes on creaking stairs in the dead of the night. i will be there as you descend, with two teaspoons of vanilla ice cream one to ease the bitter pills the other 'cause you'll ask for another anyway. paper gold paper home paper temple we burn and turn over embers remembering your fervor for life and love and strength in strife it feels surreal to watch you wheeled into the fire admire the flames that drink the drops hot off my cheek. you always made a silly sniff that made me giggle when you kissed my forehead and i really wish i learnt the habit sooner 'cause it's time and from tonight- i cannot smell you back.

Lyrics by Weish

-

[syafiqrafid]

Sungei Road/Change Alley

In Boey Kim Cheng’s Between Stations, an excellent text that uncovers Singapore through his very sincere travel writing, there is an essay that discusses and describes Change Alley, a market place that is now the heart of the bustling Singaporean commercial and business district. He writes of how the sights, sounds and smells had created an image of Singapore that is now long past, whose shops and owners have been scattered and, at loss in the rapid urban development she has gone through in past twenty years, have disappeared. 

‘Running between Collyer Quay and Raffles Place, it was a bustling bazaar, a walkway crammed with stalls peddling a heterogeneous range of wares and goods. The roof consisted of zinc sheets nailed to wooden struts, boosted by tarpaulins in places where the metal leaks; a shallow drain running through the thoroughfare served to keep it walkable. ‘ (129)

I had never experienced Shenton Way, or Tanjong Pajar or Raffles Place as anything besides the skyscrapers that we now see today. Large art pieces that litter their open atriums, the restraint of the Singapore River, these things, these images of the now local first world, is Change Alley for me. In discussion with Farah (my significant other, the person that keeps me interested in the world around me) about the essay, she mentioned that she could not imagine the way Change Alley must’ve been. Despite the skill of the author, she had found more connection with his writing about Kolkata or the towns in Nepal as compared to when he wrote about what Singapore used to be. I couldn't argue with her, I felt the same way. The local past seems more foreign to me than the foreign present. Perhaps the temporal space (especially in retrospection) is harder to traverse as compared to physical gaps of measurable distances. 

That said there is a certain memory that persists where imagination fails. Looking for a second-hand film camera to feed my ever-burgeoning interest in photography I had ventured into the slowly shrinking paths of the Sungei Road Thieves Market. One of the few places left in Singapore where hawking is still permitted. However one must only be selling used goods to set up shop without a fee.

In certain ways this quality makes Sungei Road, an evolution of what Change Alley used to represent. The stores that line the lanes at the flea market are makeshift. Mats and sheets of plastic are laid out and broken home appliances, old shoes and forlorn toys (among many other used necessities) are piled on to them in a haphazard fashion. There are only a handful of consistent purveyors, the rest are elderly citizens, hoping to make a few dollars of what they have found at home or were given. As a result the market changes and moves with the light of day. The morning crowd does not see what the visitors in the evening see. The landscape changes constantly, people pack up their wares and leave and anothers takes up the spot again hopeful, selling similar things. The only constant here seems to be the age of these hopefuls, lined and tan. The elderly, some of the men bare bodied, laze and doze (yet some how ever watchful of their wares), make idle conversation in dialects that the country has forgotten. There is a large part of the market that has been turned into the project office of the soon to be built MRT station to further furnish the up and coming downtown line, and ever present reminder that this bazaar's end is looming, blocking the sun.

Like Change Alley, Sungei Road is a historic place. It was the former home of the British governors when they first arrived here with Raffles. It was home to the famous Sungei Road Laksa, which still carries weight among local food enthusiasts. It was the place where dreams had come true for many individuals, forming some of Singapore’s more famous rags-to-riches success stories. Like Change Alley it has been sentenced to be paved over and made new. To be made to adapt to the increasing population and the public transport system that is strained under it’s weight. Like Change Alley, its inhabitants will be scattered, lost and forgotten. The difference however (and why it is it’s successor) is that Sungei Road reflects accurately, the Singaporean attitude towards its past. - I turn in my hands A gold plated ring Someone said could be cleaned ‘ini masih bagus duaploh ringgit’

Dusty faces of wrists watches With cracked leather straps Sit beside radios With battery contacts that no longer work

Everyone looks the same except the old lady selling dirty action figures and old MacDonald happy meal toys Five for two dollars

I stare at an elderly man Examining a box of screws and rust wondering what he had to fix

There was a stack of old photos on sale of a family trip to the zoo but there were only pictures of animals in their pens and nothing else

I cannot stop returning To this place my father called a rubbish heap. -

Items that had once held prominence in the household (typewriters, heirloom paintings, sturdy film cameras) now are sat beside obsolete chargers and outdated hand phones. Shoppers (comprising mostly of the elderly, low wage foreign workers and the odd adventurous student) glean through these relics and take what they can salvage back home, to use or to talk about. I had visited the market three times in the span of two weeks. During my first visit, during the first hour everything seemed like piles of refuse. After a while my eyes were attuned to the afternoon sunlight and the grime on goods I began so see, and began to sift. The first trip yielded a 1972 Ricoh 500G Rangefinder in fairly good condition (which I would later misplace). The second visit, a packet of post cards from the Singapore Arts Museum from the eighties. The third, nothing but the realisation that some goods don't sell, and that their place seemed as permanent as the resigned manner of some of the elder purveyors. At seven, as the light wanes, the market closes and the folk pack what they have left.

[syafiqrafid]

I was telling Farah that every time you take a photo on film it is an act of faith. Ever since digital photography (I have only thought about photos consciously in digital, I am only just starting to dabble in film), we have taken for granted the instant gratification it provides. With that I continue my journey with some film in hand. 

There is something in the tension that exists between lens, light and film that i cannot understand or write about adequately. There exists a softness in film that i enjoy that does not happen in digital. 

[syafiqrafid]

Shore Photography

Changi Beach, Minutes Past Six

-

I keep taking photos of you

over and over

I walk in circles

stop to think, then click

Sitting on a bank

a ledge before it broke to sand

before the sand broke to water

and the sea crashed.

Eyes far away,  

and sometimes at me

I kept looking down at the rivulets

in the sand

every time you moved.

The sun set behind you

so I could feel you

your outline, turn

I do not know you, I know not of you.

like the wind on water and the waves

that lap at my feet

your gaze is harsh, sharp

both ways

Changi Beach, Minutes Past Six

-

Couples and families

People fishing

Children

A cat or two

I don't know what I had imagined

I can no longer recall what I saw

besides the color

of the sky

or the pattern

on the child’s blouse

I can no longer recall

what I had hoped for

though

I know I had hoped

(for the photos)

The act of remembering,

Images,

Is sometimes infinite

Hope for something forgotten

changes shape and

carries on  

I had hoped

for these to mean more than what they are

similar to how people hope

to be more

Changi Beach, Minutes Past Six

-

Later

alone with these photographs, I wonder

if I had taken them

[syafiqrafid]

Mannequins

I flew with my mother to Jakarta today. It was a shopping trip for her, I was there as a son, in case she needed me in any of the capacities I was capable of fulfilling. I had brought my camera in hopes of gleaning something from thistrip for myself. Perhaps capture the cityscape, or the world that was the capital of the Malay Archipelago. The first day passed and the time I spent in Jakarta so far has been in a wholesale hub for Muslimah clothing.

Yet, in the mess of hijabs, long dresses and blouses, the touts and calls and the allure of very intricate Batik (I am a newly confessed enthusiast of these beautiful printed fabrics), an opportunity was presented to further my study in photography.

Inanely bored waiting for my mother to finish choosing, haggling and paying for her wares I noticed a pair of eyes.

They arrested me for a while as I stared unabashed at the cracked face staring back at me. The lacklustre skin, the uneven eyebrows, the trail one can follow where it was dragged or mishandled across. I was very tempted to call her ‘she’ but that would only deepen the feeling of intrusion that I still feel now, looking at the painted plastic. Against my better judgment (and perhaps my conscience) I took a photo. I did not know why I had but, as an afterthought, perhaps it was my way of putting off dealing with my feelings.

The problem was that now, I saw these cracked faces all around me. Every stall, every cubicle we entered in the basement market had these faces that challenged me not to tell a story, not to give them pronouns.

I became an intruder, no matter where I turned, to the secret suffering of an army of mannequin heads. I felt the oppressor in the lives of these inanimate objects, guilt to the pain they had suffered in the hands of my more clumsy (or uncaring) brethren.

I looked at my mother who was sitting on a small stool haggling with the stall keeper in fluent Bahasa, (something she inherited dealing with various domestic helpers that I have always struggled to emulate) wondering if she knew the panic I was in.

Yet at the very same time I was in some sort of perverse glee, taking photos of dilapidated plastic hijab models. I felt a certain freedom taking photos of faces that had no lives behind them, no lives besides the ones I had imagined for them; besides the ones I gave them. Dragged across the floor, gagged and bound, thrown away forgotten and picked up again, a wig ripped from it’s roots. Some of the expressions they wore defied reason but begged meaning.

In the heat that only a South East Asian market can give you, looking at and being looked at by these faces, I am reminded of a poem by Sylvia Plath: 

The Munich Mannequins

 -

Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.

Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb

 Where the yew trees blow like hydras,

The tree of life and the tree of life

 Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose.

The blood flood is the flood of love,

The absolute sacrifice.

It means: no more idols but me,

 Me and you.

So, in their sulfur loveliness, in their smiles

 These mannequins lean tonight

In Munich, morgue between Paris and Rome,

 Naked and bald in their furs,

Orange lollies on silver sticks,

 Intolerable, without minds.

The snow drops its pieces of darkness,

 Nobody’s about. In the hotels

Hands will be opening doors and setting

 Down shoes for a polish of carbon

Into which broad toes will go tomorrow.

 O the domesticity of these windows,

The baby lace, the green-leaved confectionery,

 The thick Germans slumbering in their bottomless Stolz.

And the black phones on hooks

 Glittering

Glittering and digesting

Voicelessness. The snow has no voice

-

In the poem I saw what Plath had seen, travelling through the snowy German city, but in a mirror (or rather through the lens of a camera). A story to place behind the faces that confronted and demanded something of myself. I saw Plath’s inability to escape, like the inability of the inanimate female faces, created, appropriated. Yet this is just one narrative out of the many. One possibility out of the body of narrative memory that I have, that wouldn't have mattered if these models did not have facial features.

My reverie was broken by a call. A young man carrying a tray of assorted drinks and juices turned the corner, touting and dripping. I let him pass, distracted by my current state of my mind. An hour or two later, following my mother (arms and a backpack full of her things and feeling rather uncomfortable in the crowded humid space) I saw him again sitting down, the tray on his lap, still dripping. I enquired on the various juices he had and purchased some Soursop juice, which was refreshing. I toyed with the idea of asking him if I could take his photo, a portrait of a young Indonesian man. I stole a sidelong glance at him, sitting. I saw him playing with his pierced tongue, tattoos on his forearms, a grin as he spoke to a child of a shopkeeper. I thought about my lack of proficiency in Bahasa, and I watched him get up and walk away, into an elevator.

Back in the hotel room I looked through the photos I had taken. Portrait after portrait of plastic mannequins. As I scrolled through them, the narrative each one held became more obvious and elaborate. As I continued each story became more private.

 Photography for me has always been a tool to capture and immortalise a mortal reality. Proof that a structure had stood there, that an event had taken place, that the sun had shone at such an angle the lines of the apartment building in which I lived looked like home. I had never given much thought to portrait photography (because I fear capturing the private), until after I took photos of my grandfather and a close relative that is suffering from Parkinson's. I (without a doubt) captured private moments, in which I have access and permission to, but no right. I have no right to create narratives from photos, even if the subjects (models, plastic or not) demand it. (The act of my uncle smiling is not my doing but I chose the frame in which he looked towards his grandson). The young Indonesian man, for whom I created a private narrative, is not deserving of any. Yet, at the very end of it all, I have no power not to. Reality and frames are a fickle thing.

Like the lines of my home, everything is a creation, a fabrication of meaning. Like the painted faces of the models, like the young man’s tattoos. Perhaps this episode involving these mannequins is a precursor or the start of my journey to realise that the photograph is not reality captured, rather it is reality fabricated.

[syafiqrafid]

A Desert of Endless Searching

I recently visited Abu Dahbi for reasons that are important but too hard to put into words. Perhaps when one day when I find these lost words I will pen them down. Like everyone else I always find myself in a desperate search. 

At Abu Dahbi we visited the sand dunes, the desert, on the outskirts of the city. I was in awe. I don't get to experience so much space in Singapore and I felt so minute standing and looking out to where the horizon hit the sands. 

It was just after sunset. The view was sublime and I had to steady myself for fear of falling off the sand dunes. I find it very hard to put into words what I felt in those few hours. I could've been a giant lording over everything, but again I felt so small. It was the first time I could actually feel scale.

Dunia

-

Its ridiculous really when you finally sit down

to think about it

its hilarious almost.

At least that was what I thought when I was on top

of everything

on a sand dune, with sand so fine it would hiss through the

slats between my rough fingers

  I turned to someone,

but they were all on the far side, or

sliding down on their bums, their hands in the air

screaming and singing

that the sun had set and it was about

to get cold

  I didn't care

I didn't care because when the sun set it was gorgeous

the sky was blue yellow orange and purple

All at the same time

I wasn’t going to move

I didn't care I wanted to stay there till I froze and I they had to search for me

buried

In the sand

  Lost 

I thought about the land

I thought about the sky

I thought about the sea

I let my mind empty

I let my head wander

free in the dunes that stretched and stretched

  But I felt a tug,

when I was thinking about how infinite

this world was

  Because it wasn’t

it wasn't my heart told me no

No,

so I looked inside and

I found everyone else looking back

and You, you of course you

reflecting endlessly

in the iridescent shine of my eyes 

[syafiqrafid]

Again I find myself fascinated by the HDB flats that populate Singapore. They are the homes that are monuments, and monuments that forever try to reach up to some unattainable height which I can never understand. Maybe someone understood at one point, maybe it was about necessity and maybe it still is. I however find that thought unsatisfying. 

I appreciate the lines they tote, the angles at which they turn and shape themselves. I am very much in love with their colours, their arches and our greenery. Maybe I yearn for them to mean more, but for now I am at peace with what they offer, and what we have made them.

Yes, I understand that these are part of our mundane. These are things we see everyday. However I implore you to perhaps look up once in a while, so perhaps, if you are like me, you can marvel at the shapes that line our skies.