Common Spaces #2: the MRT

"In New York, you've got Donald Trump, Woody Allen, a crack addict and a regular Joe, and they're all on the same subway car.”

- Ethan Hawkes -

The same can be said for Singapore’ MRT (minus the crack addict maybe). If the HDB flat is Singapore’s quintessential private space, the MRT is probably its most public space where all sorts of people congregate. What happens and how people interact with each other in that space therefore betray a lot about the nature of Singapore’ society; perhaps that’s why many authors are drawn to the MRT as a subject of study.

Why do you not look at each other’s

Faces? Is the scenery that arresting,

One housing estate giving birth

To yet another copy?

Or the advertisements, read and re-read,

As if behind a slogan’s promise lay

Hidden promises? Answer me:

Is that consciousness rising in you,

Dissolving your fatigue like a plastic sheet

Warping in heat, or is that simply

Sleep, draining away from you

Down to your soles, to the invisible tracks

Where the dew is drying? Where electricity

Is what pushes you to the borders

Of your own loneliness, against

The vulgar loneliness of crowds.

- ‘The City Remembers’ Alfian Sa’at –

Rather than the interaction between people, it’s the lack of interaction that plays centrepiece in this poem. It’s interesting to see how in this aggressively communal space, where people are even pushed against each other, the sense of personal space, lethargy and apathy is more apparent than ever. People seem to be engrossed in their own personal bubble of hope and anxiety for the future as the train zips forward. Everyone seems lonely and lifeless.

This key theme of loneliness echoes in other pieces about the MRT as well. For example:

You stand clear of the doors, note the stops, hijack

a seat by pretending like everyone else, to be dozing.

The train takes long slow breaths. A young woman

next to you, riding the locomotion of sleep,

allows her hair to fall in curlicues of black

on your shoulder, in whiffs of fresh shampoo,

air-conditioning, skipped lunches and loneliness.

…

If the train crashed now,

names would have no meaning. Instead you'd notice

this red dress, that purple shirt, a bra-strap out of place

before the screams, barked orders, tears, and later

cameras. Still, you might be spared the terror,

the unenviable questions. You could ride on

through the quiet tunnels, to where the night sky

is absolute, dream dark and free of stars.

- “Following a train of thought on the MRT” by Alvin Pang -

From the speaker’s viewpoint as a passenger, every other passenger on the train seems like a disembodied entity that only amount to the dress, shirt or underwear they are wearing. The loneliness and seclusion here took to another level: morbid thought about freedom from life. Perhaps this reflects a common Singaporean concern, where space and resources is constrained, where people of all backgrounds are pushed against one another to compete for space. Maybe it's just expected that crammed together like sardines, they would want to escape to emptiness, and to bar others from entering by building walls around themselves.