Station
Today I was at an MRT platform in Simei, on the way home. The train arrived and I squeezed in to a spot facing the platform, which was beginning to fill up again. Through the window I could see the large marble bench that just moments ago I stood infront, unnoticing.
For there on the bench was a man, entirely middle-aged, bespectacled, slightly fat, side-parted hair. Absolutely forgettable Singaporean face. He had in his arms a woman, one hand over her shoulder and the other clutching her waist. She sat with her back towards me so I never saw what she looked like, but she seemed around his age.
The man was crying. His eyes were closed and his mouth open in that strange laughing expression people have when they cry for real. A stream of tears glistened his cheeks; he did nothing to wipe or conceal them. He squeezed the woman tightly, allowing his body to be wracked by sobs. The emotion was so raw that I could not tell pain from relief. At that point in time the train began to pull away, but I kept them both in my sight until they were dots in the crowd, eventually lost to distance.
This is a city where we pride ourselves on self-restraint, namely by pushing unnamed emotions away. We are commended for being stoic soldiers, for not making a scene. I like to think that he cried with no regard to anywone watching him not because of some unimaginable loss or death, which was probably the reason.
But that he cried because through all these years of the pencil-pushing job, the CPF-paid flat, the child on PSLE, the rising GST and transport fees, the competitive wedding dinners, the bewilderingly loathsome CNY's - through all these unmarked years of what we've come to define as life - here in his arms was a woman he had lost sight of a long time ago, and that this was a woman he has finally found, again.
For there on the bench was a man, entirely middle-aged, bespectacled, slightly fat, side-parted hair. Absolutely forgettable Singaporean face. He had in his arms a woman, one hand over her shoulder and the other clutching her waist. She sat with her back towards me so I never saw what she looked like, but she seemed around his age.
The man was crying. His eyes were closed and his mouth open in that strange laughing expression people have when they cry for real. A stream of tears glistened his cheeks; he did nothing to wipe or conceal them. He squeezed the woman tightly, allowing his body to be wracked by sobs. The emotion was so raw that I could not tell pain from relief. At that point in time the train began to pull away, but I kept them both in my sight until they were dots in the crowd, eventually lost to distance.
This is a city where we pride ourselves on self-restraint, namely by pushing unnamed emotions away. We are commended for being stoic soldiers, for not making a scene. I like to think that he cried with no regard to anywone watching him not because of some unimaginable loss or death, which was probably the reason.
But that he cried because through all these years of the pencil-pushing job, the CPF-paid flat, the child on PSLE, the rising GST and transport fees, the competitive wedding dinners, the bewilderingly loathsome CNY's - through all these unmarked years of what we've come to define as life - here in his arms was a woman he had lost sight of a long time ago, and that this was a woman he has finally found, again.