“My time hasn’t come,” the young apprentice insisted.
“There, there, it will come,” replies the elder, “It will come.”
Yes, it could well be an intimate scene from “Brokeback Mountain.” But it’s not, the advice is proffered by an even more wizened character, the Padahshan courtesan to a younger seductress who hopes to birth the son of the Sultan from the ancient paramour “The Arabian Nights.”
The exchange is a pithy summary, describing an age when the only preoccupation of a woman was to bear children. Even long after the balmy Arabian nights, when a cup of kopi cost 10 cents and neighbors could always be counted never to mind their own business on the void deck and Singapore was still a third world enclave in a forgotten peninsula – marriage and starting a family was more or less cut and dried a veritable done deal which all married couples aspired towards unfailingly. Read the rest of this entry »
THE INTELLIGENT SINGAPOREAN 