an australian professor who had gone out to the padang to observe the queue made a comparison later i would not have thought of. it's like the stations of the cross, he said. you gather, you move one step at a time in an orderly way from site to site along a designated route, at each place you stop and there is a landmark, a monument, which brings collective reflection. the geography of mourning is the geography of his singapore, city hall, the padang, the barrage, the esplanade, the financial district, the arts house, the singapore river, you walk the landmark of his achievements: cultural, social, economic, political. at the end you look upon the place he lay.
darren soh, an architecture photographer whose works i've come to admire more and more these months, has a small facebook series documenting the road to parliament house.
for a less stylised, annotated set of photos the young photographer mindy tan hosts a more extensive collection with personal commentary on each photo. highly recommended for singaporeans overseas.
likewise here, a photonarrative by derrick koh, a dear and accomplished classmate and friend, of his personal journey to parliament house and on the sunday of the state funeral.(past leaders, by the way, have their lying-in-state at the istana; he had wanted his at parliament house. it was where he lived and breathed, 58 years as a legislator.)
whatever i thought singapore would be after lky, this is not what i expected. i think he himself would have thought he was more feared than loved, but the groundswell of emotion and national feeling tells a different story. and we do come out of it so well, so very, very well. ordinary singaporeans, wheelchaired folks, small children, the very old, school students, calm, orderly, a step forward at a time. i tune in to the live feed of the lying-in-state at 3am, 4am, 5am and the people are shuffling past, for 96 continuous hours the stream has never ceased -- even as queue times rose from 5 then to 8 to 9, 10 hours. stubborn, patient and sentimental and yet never hysterical, never overemotional. tweets and facebook posts from the ground, from the queues, tell story after story of communal supportiveness and goodwill; sharing food, water, fans, umbrellas, tissue paper; willingly keeping places for strangers who have to leave the queue. the public services come out of it glowingly: rapid adaptation and response to changing ground conditions, swift and efficient organisation and deployment of people, equipment, sustenance; technological capabilities and technical preparedness; public communications; cooperation of public services across branches and ministries: no one comes out of this without feeling enormous confidence in the public services -- again and again i hear: if there were one day a disaster, a national emergency, this level of emergency-preparedness and responsiveness would see us through.on monday returning to school an american professor who had watched the state funeral said to us: the way you run a funeral is very interesting: very well-organised, dignified, powerful and yet also very understated. i like that he recognised that: our emotion is true but never hysterical.
