By Nicole Chia

I was digging through my shelves for a suitable book related to Singapore Literature and I managed to unravel a dusty, old book with crumpled pages entitled “Boom” by Jean Tay. Jean Tay is a playwright and wrote this book as a sequel to “Plunge” another play she had written in 1997 about the Asian Economic Crisis. “Boom”, on the other hand, is a play about the property market boom in 2007 which brought emphasis on en-bloc sales in which “a group of owners come together to jointly sell their property, and thus command a higher price than if they were to sell their units individually” (Tay, 2009). Many older buildings fell to this process because the owners wanted to redevelop that particular piece of land and residents had to move out so long as 80% of the estate owners agreed to the en bloc sale.

“Boom” talks of Boon, a property agent who wants to achieve the en bloc sale of their own home and his mother, who stubbornly clings onto that old piece of house as if it is treasure. Jeremiah is a civil servant who has just begun his bond and is commanded by his boss to contact the families of those buried in the cemetery and to settle matters regarding exhumation and cremation. Along the way, he converses with a stubborn and reluctant corpse who has no memory of his family and is unwilling to be cremated. The second plot, which happens simultaneously with the first, can be seen as a parallel to the first, because they both shed light on the issues of relocation and history, and how memories and personal lives are compromised in the age of modernity in a land-scarce Singapore.

This play was an interesting read because it depicted the similarities between en bloc sales and exhumation of corpses. Both involve the relocation of people – whether living or dead, without a care for their feelings. This is seen by how Jeremiah labels the corpse as “just a lump of rotten flesh and bone”. The adjective of “just” denigrate the fact that he was once a human just like him, as if death renders a human completely useless. However, this can be challenged because this corpse believes that his “rotten flesh” is a step closer to divinity as “in [his] decay lies [his] own immortality”. It highlights the reconnection to nature, which is enabled through death, depicting death in a positive light and thus also how despite being dead, he still has ambitions and should not be disregarded. The reason why he is treated hostilely is because Jeremiah would rather be in the “ivory tower, …swivelling around in [his] ergonomic chair, sipping my mocha frappucino”. The metaphor of the “ivory tower” refers to modernity, allowing contemporary infrastructure to be built with upmarket goods like “ergonomic chair” and “mocha frappucino”. It also highlights how this “tower” towers over the cemetery, as if looking down and belittling it. This parallels the fight between Boon and his mother where he does not want to live in that “shit hole” that has his mother’s “tacky souvenir figurines”. He compares his house to a slum only because it is old and full of his mother’s old trinkets. He belittles these objects and disregards how these have been significant in shaping her memories. This is emphasized by how her mother asks her neighbour “How much can they give [her], for a memory like that”. It depicts how memories are priceless because they are important in forming meaning for one’s life and with progress, sacrificing these memories would seem to compromise on the quality of life. Thus, this reinforces the issue of how progress has devalued the worth a human (alive or dead) and shifted its values to focus on affluence and status, not on simplicity of life and importance of a past in creating an identity, represented by the cemetery and the mother’s memories respectively.

In addition, Boon’s father is an important character for the development of Boon’s character as well. Boon remembers his father chaining him to a tree when he enquires about those “ugly red scrawls” on the wall, alluding to their house being attacked by loan sharks. This led to him remembering his mother bringing “magnolia milk and tissue boxes and mopiko cream”. These are all objects to nurse Boon and to console him. Without his father’s strict behaviour and also his failure as a father to provide for the family, Boon would be unable to see his mother in an endearing light. Furthermore, his father is the catalyst in jolting Boon’s memories, which emphasizes the importance of the need for a past because without Boon remembering his father’s faults, he would continue to be an overbearing son that wants to force his mother to give up the house and her memories stored in it.

This play seems to resemble the lecture on “Poetry in the developmental state”, where the texts covered tried to negotiate with the apparent irrelevance of English language poetry in a society undergoing rapid economic development. In a general sense, this play, like most Singapore literature is not popularly accessed, which begs the question of whether it is indeed irrelevant as a tool to inform Singaporeans about the ill-effects of such modern processes and policies. While Edwin Thumboo, Lee Tzu Pheng and Authur Yap discussed in their works how poetry may or may not reflect the true identity of Singapore (is there even a concrete identity of Singapore in the first place?) when Singapore was undergoing early progress and urbanisation, Tay is in an age where things have been modernised already, but the state wishes to push it further to achieve higher economic growth. This would mean the need for more land to develop modern infrastructure suited for businesses and large companies. By writing this play, however, readers can see how Tay reflects on this further modernisation, where she questions the way the state treats her citizen. It seems as if the treatment is homogeneous, meaning her living citizens are perceived as a mass of tools to contribute to society, with no regard for their personal lives, which can be seen by how Tay depicts en bloc sales as almost vicious. This is similar to the exhumation of corpses in the cemeteries – how the civil sector, embodied by Jeremiah, is merciless in having to complete this process. They have to go law-by-law and do not bother to understand or empathize if the families, or the corpses in this play are reluctant to be cremated. The bureaucracy is portrayed as heartless and unsympathetic to the needs of the individuals, only caring for the country’s economic growth. It would seem then that we as young aspirated people, and the state are sacrificing the welfare of our citizens by being heartless.

Furthermore, we are sacrificing Singapore’s history for rapid economic development. One example is the famous “zhup lau chu (10-storey buildings) at Tanglin Halt, built in 1962 and once featured on the back of the 1-dollar note of the Orchid series, were announced as a Singapore En bloc Redevelopment (SERS) Scheme site in August 2008. By late 2013, most of the flats, shops and eateries were emptied” (Remember Singapore, 2013). By demolishing old buildings and turning traditional cemeteries into places with modern infrastructure, we forget these important aspects that made up our ancestors’ memories and in general, our past. Would Singapore then nurture the younger generation as one that is unable to appreciate our past because of the lack of it being accessible and available? Would we also treat our elders’ memories that are so entrenched in the past as something foolish because we feel that they are old-fashioned and are unwilling to progress with the times? The pervasiveness of modernity compromises the memories of the older individuals’ lives as well as Singapore’s history. Tay underscores these conflicts between modernity and tradition as well as the memories of the elders and the aspirations of the young aptly in this play. Coupled with the commonplace use of Singlish that is relatable to most Singaporean readers, Tay is able to engage the readers to reflect on the hidden and detrimental effects of progress in Singapore.

Works Cited:

“Singapore En-Bloc Flats.” Remember Singapore. 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.

Tay, Jean. Boom: A Play. 1st ed. Singapore: Epigram, 2009. Print.