A Monologue

I’ve always wondered why people feel the need to do something on the MRT. They read the newspapers, surf the internet on their smartphones, pretend to sleep… Why isn’t anyone who isn’t really asleep content to simply be on the train? Don’t they see – for a short time between, say, Ang Mo Kio and Yio Chu Kang they can finally relax and do nothing with their minds while their bodies hurtle forward towards dissolution at 80km/h.

It’s a terrible irony that the dim cage-like carriage is my site of freedom. But it is. And because I do nothing on the train, I know that it was between Newton and Bishan on a friday evening that I became acquainted with the left shoulder of a complete stranger.

Now, I didn’t turn my head of my own accord! It was this auntie, shuffling in next to me to stand nearer the priority seat, no doubt, whose shopping shoved me so my body twisted – like this – and my neck bent – like so – and I was suddenly trying my best not to read over the shoulder of this girl.

What was she like? In my unnatural position it was hard to be sure. She had shoulder-length hair, that much I was certain of, interspersed with brown streaks of old dye jobs. I counted 5 strands of silver. No glasses – contacts? – thin black hairband trying to hide itself and failing. She must have been pale, because her neck was, and her hands as well – at least her left one was as it held up her novel – her fingernails shiny and soft looking. I think she was wearing white, but shit, it’s ridiculous not being sure of that after one counts her white hairs!

But I really only noticed all these things because I failed – I did read over her shoulder – I stole a paragraph or two. Then I had to get off at Toa Payoh and was never able to find out any more about her. What she looked like for starters. What she did for a living. It’s equally a fallacy to judge a cover by its book, but that was all I had.

I googled, Amazon-ed, kindled, read the whole thing from digital cover to digital cover, memorized lengthy passages. Like the one I read on the train.

(recites, smiling)

“What will we do with him? Beauty, when you grow to be a man, eh, what will we do with you? . . . sure as anything you’ll leave us when you’re a man, and who’ll we ‘ave then, eh cruel? Sons and daughters why do we bring them into the world?” She was laughing. “Because, because” she said laughing and then lay smiling and then yawned.

(stops)

I’ve always wondered why people feel the need to do something while on the MRT, even when it is packed to overflowing and only space you have you must contort yourself to fit into. Well, I got my answer that day. Just because, just because, just because… Isn’t that a terrible irony?