Standing around at the Singapore Writers Festival venues meant that I kept seeing suggestions of book titles on banners and shelves. One of these suggested that a read of 'A View of Stars: Stories of Love' (2020), an anthology co-edited by Anitha Devi Pillai and Felix Cheong. Borrowed a digital copy from NLB.
There're 17 authors featured in this anthology. Their 17 short stories are split into four themes of: Bygone Years, Personal Space, MIND's eye and Modern Love. I love how there're little author's notes after each story to explain their inspiration for writing it.
Co-Editor Anitha Devi Pillai's 'An Unusual Arrangement' opened the anthology. It was a fictionalised account of her grandmother's and uncles' emigration route to Singapore. It was 1924. Chellamma was married on her twelfth birthday to Krishnan, a 21-year-old man who returned from Singapore. They had never even met prior to the wedding day. Before Chellamma was 16, she already had three children with Krishnan. They seemed happy. However, a few years later, Krishnan missed Singapore and left Kerala to return to the small island. Then it was 1942 and Singapore was on the brink of Japanese Occupation. Chellamma and her children and her two brothers left Kerala, and got on what might have been the last ship out of Madras to Singapore. The story ended with,
Next to her, Gopalan too tumbled to the ground, and as he did, frantically stretched out his hand to her. Chellamma saw Devagi yell out and Krishnan falling on her. But she could not hear the screams. All she could hear was a sharp ringing in her ears that would not stop and that she would never forget in her lifetime.
The Japanese had dropped a bomb on Keppel Harbour — merely a stone's throw away from where her family stood.
Co-Editor Felix Cheong's story is titled 'How I Met Your Mother'. Heh. He said that this was the story of how his parents met in their youth in the 1960s. Written in first person narrative, Peter, John and Freddy were a 'trio' of teenagers who hung out together. At that age of 19, John already spied a girl he liked, she was Ah Ting. She lives in the same kampung as he does, consisting of thirty of forty households. John thought he had no chance with Ah Ting when he saw her getting into a blue Volkswagen and assumed some rich man's son was courting her. Then egged on by Freddy who insisted that they all took Mandarin classes to help him 'chases' a girl he likes but "she only speaks Chinese", John was stunned to see that Ah Ting was enrolled in the same Chinese class. I laughed. This was hilarious. Hahahaha. I read the story to some retro old Cantonese/Chinese song in my head.
The snigger from Freddy and Peter, when it was obvious my jaw couldn't drop any further, gave the game up.
"We didn't take your cigarettes for free, you know," Peter said in a hushed voice as the teacher, who looked as formidable as the Great Wall of China, came in. "We told you we had a plan!"
"What?" I said, barely able to pick up his whisper.
Ah Ting must have heard the commotion. She turned and smiled, ever so gently.
And for the first time, I smiled back. In that flash, I was Patrick Tse, as the music inside my head began.
I like all 17 stories. In this personal form, I decided not to judge the merit of the writing. The writing is like... telling a story. The lines are made up of someone's memories or an amalgamation of memories, and they're all fine in terms of plot and structure. Many are tales of romantic love, which always wrought deep emotions. It's just a matter of whether a story appeals to my personal preferences. There're two others that I rather enjoyed, and both are from the theme Personal Space.
(1) Linda Collins wrote a love story that could doubles up as a creepy Seventh Month ghostly tale. The last paragraph killed me. In 'Altair and Vega over Ghim Moh', Ellie and her boyfriend of six months Robert live together in Ghim Moh estate. She's wrestling with the relationship and whether to tell him about her newly discovered pregnancy. She also introduced the going-ons in her neighborhood, and some neighbors, notably Flip-Flop Man who's all alone after his wife Mabel had passed away. They all went downstairs to the basketball court to watch the getai set-up and performances.
"Our Ah Niu and Mabel were a love match like in the old story. He was a cook and she was from a good family who disapproved of him, and kicked her out when she stuck by him. So the two of them lived here among us for a long time, till death parted them."
On the seat next to Flip-Flop Man are two red roses reserved for Mabel. He turns to Ellie and smiles, then leans towards her and whispers, "My wife is very glad that you are keeping the child."
(2) Through 'The Sun, The Moon and Soup at Iftar', Nuraliah Norasid writes about the complexities of navigating relationships, what more interracial and inter-faith couples, married or otherwise. The author said, "This story is inspired by a memory of my own partner boiling herbal soup for me (complete with whole cloves of garlic!) during the last lap of my doctoral journey. It is meant to end on a sense of homecoming in a space where one's identity and beliefs find harmony with a new set of realities."
Sara is at the crossroads with her husband Gary. It's Ramadan and Gary doesn't seem to observe the fasting. She's feeling all alone and unsupported. More than that, their hobbies have diverged and they don't do much together anymore.
It had been a combination of the little things that culminated in that moment in a relationship and she wondered why she had seen the signs and not acted on them. She had friends who ended relationships and engagements just because their partners prayed differently or prayed not often enough. "In the beginning, you always think that you will be okay with it. But the little things add up," one of them told her when asked why.
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