Singapore Swing Read Free

Chinese – which they did, in Macau. Tea was arguably the major item of trade in the late eighteenth century and the struggle for the monopoly of this commodity effectively created Singapore.
    But let’s not jump too far ahead but only a bit further north from the centre to Serangoon Road, where people from the subcontinent communicate in Telegu, Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali and Tamil. As befits the geographical location of Singapore, its third official language is Tamil, whose speakers dominate the south of the Indian cone. This language has given us first and foremost ‘curry’, from the Tamil kari meaning ‘sauce for rice’; ‘pariah’ from paraiyan meaning ‘drummer’, the occupation of members of the lowest caste during festivals in south India; ‘cheroot’ from curuttu (roll); and ‘catamaran’ from kattumaran (tied wood). Tamil is a language with three genders (masculine, feminine and non-human) and an ancient script that doesn’t let you write down the spoken idiom in full unless extra, sacred, Grantha characters are employed. As a result, spoken Tamil and written Tamil have been diverging for centuries, and the older, ancient version is of no use for any English loanwords, like hamburger or computer, because it can’t express them in written form.
    Ah, English at last. We have arrived at the fourth and final official language – the instrument of empire, the unifier of unifiers and the ultimate constant in the narrow, loud alleys of the Babel that was Singapore. Now everyone speaks English: not because they’re educated (they are), not because they want to tap the tourist trade (they do), but because – from my humble taxi driver to The Straits Times newspaper editor – speaking English is a question of survival. Singaporean children must leave school proficient in two languages: one is English and the other is the language of their ethnic group. For the children who fail such exams – the ‘gone cases’ – a study in the dreaded ITE, the Institute of Technical Education, beckons. It’s considered so second rate that its initials are colloquially referred to as ‘It’s The End’.
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    I wake up from my jetlag slumber at some indeterminate evening hour, shower and leave to reconnoitre the area. The hotel receptionist takes my key chirpily. ‘What happened to your arm?’ she asks.
    I glance at my left arm which is hanging in a sling from my shoulder. Clad in just a T-shirt, I can hardly hide it under my coat like I could in wintry London.
    â€˜I have torn two tendons,’ I mumble and decide not to name them explicitly, although I could. ‘I can’t lift it more than this.’ I try to raise my arm – and true to my word it comes up to just below my nipple and stops. ‘See?’
    â€˜How did you do it?’ she goes on.
    Ahem.
    â€˜Long story,’ I reply and see myself out.
    Outside the heat isn’t as oppressive as I had feared. Singapore is unchangingly hot and sticky with temperatures steady and ranging between 23°–35°C. What does change is precipitation with not just one but two monsoon seasons. Even during the so-called dry season, however, the average monthly rainfall is twice or three times that of London. The only difference is that the water comes all down in a pelter rather than over a 24/7 shower like we are used to in England.
    I’m hungry, so I’m in the right place: Chinatown, or rather what has been left of it after continuous redevelopment. There are only two great civilisations the world has borne where dining has been elevated to an art beyond mere bodily satiation: the French and the Chinese. Both cultures eat for the sake of eating, the means of sustenance having become ends in themselves. Their art reflects this: the two great foodie films of all time have been the Chinese Eat Drink Man Woman and the French La Grande Bouffe . In