The last leg was the longest. Unlike earlier eras, the checkpoint at Johor Baru was a breeze; the counters even had little posters indicating that you should not have to wait more than 30 seconds for your passport to be checked and stamped (in any case, mine took less than ten).
The Woodlands side, however, seem to have been redesigned with the sole purpose of prolonging both the vehicle lines and human queues for as long as bureacratically possible. Inhuman detours and random roadblocks are now traced for all vehicles, while the number of passport counters open seem to demonstrate just how much unused space there is in the massive checkpoint building (which from far looks like a cross between a badly designed fort and an evil transformer city with high towers and jutting concrete arms).
But never mind that. I am back home, from that place which I still call home, for want of a better term. Every return to its increasingly crowded streets jars my senses and offends my being with an atonal counterpoint of development and decay. The roads are filled with brand new SUVs far too large for parking lots designed for more humble cars. There are mansions with towering pillars, even a turret or two, that loom from a corroded and treeless hill that seems to beg for solace from the wind and water that will one day bring these houses tumbling down. Car repair and modification shops abound, along with specialists in mobile telephony and real estate.
In the little mousedeer of a car that I helped to purchase, I drive along rows of ill-designed shopfronts and prefabricated houses on a hill where I once fished and my duck paddled in search of Macrobrachium shrimp. The gibbons, leaf monkeys and boar that haunted this slope are no more, as are the murky pools and wooded terraces through which I ascended on an ancient pair of wheels. Back in the town by the river, I see that patches of mangroves have been cleared for no discernible purpose. Yet another old tree I have known since childhood is missing.
At night, many streets that were once lighted are now blackened with silence and neglect. Even the old newsvendor who used to open for business til 10, now closes at six, rather than face a lonely and desparing dusk. (I should give Ali, who has known me since I was a toddling duck rummaging through comics at his stall some five and twenty years ago, more credit as well; while making small talk over some newspapers, he asked 'So, how many kids do you have?' 'Not yet', was my casual answer. 'Not yet, or don't want? That's what many people in Singapore do, I hear,' he replied, with a twinkle in his eye. I gave him a cheesy duck grin in return, and paid for my newsprint over his little counter adorned with prophylactic packages bearing lurid names and bosomy females.)
The roads are also worn with disrepair, or perhaps the wear and tear brought about by heavier-than-average family cars of late. Of the church I used to grace every Sunday, there is no sign. It has moved to a grand tabernacle a few miles out of town, where the congregation can worship and gather far from the madding crowd. Back then, when my duck was propelled mainly by a pair of thin inner tubes and a cranky set of pedals, I had feared (but never dared expressed, since the building project was a veritable plan of God) the prospect that this exodus to a distant and forbidding plot would impede my ability to abide by the weekly call to fellowship. I guess it doesn't matter now, since it's more than mere geography that sunders our paths these days.
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